When playing the board game Risk, some mates and I often choose our starting territories rather than randomly selecting them, so my suggestion is that at the start of speed games, each player should get 30 secs or 1 minute to deploy one troop on a territory of their choice. It could also be limited so that no player can place more than 3 troops on any one territory.
Obviously this idea would slow the start of the game down, which is why i'd suggest it only be used in speed games and also that it would be a game setting option, similar to fog of war or doubles etc.
What do people reckon?