I think Turks mirror should be the first match of every set, like how most RM tourney sets start with Arabia.About the civs, I liked a lot from some previous MoA tournaments qhere some games had to be played with an specific civ (goths-britons-turks). Problem is that it's very hard to find a perfectly balanced triangle and after 2-3 rounds, everybody picks the same.
Another possibility is to have 2 games played as random and inverse civs
Maybe make the game speed 2.0 until one player reaches Castle Age 111. What would be the effect of reducing the space inside the walls?
2. How about more vills to start?
Arena can be a lot more fun if we can reduce dark age and feudal age. Empire wars with feudal start is another option but I think that would take away a lot of the civ bonuses and hence reduce some strategies.