1. We need fixed rules.
2. In a tournament of regionally organized teams, we can't have just a single server. We need several to choose from on different continents. The admins of the servers should not be allowed to play on their own server. Then, there are several ways to go:
- The location of a match is determined randomly. There are simple transparent protocols that allow distributed random decisions that can't be foiled provided there is a trusted hub; to generate a random number from 0 to N-1, let each team pick such a number, add them and take the remainder of a division by N.
- Like the above, but distribute the match over three randomly selected servers.
- Play half of the match on the server one team chooses, the other half on the server of the other team's choice. To make that work, each half should be one huge time limited match in the AA sense, and scores should be added simply. The rules (see 1) need to state whether kill points from after the match half was declared over by the server should count or not.
3. We need fixed rules, known in advance.
4. A corollary to 2, we need more than one server. I can host one, Lucifer volunteered in IRC. Luke seems to have the capacity as well. Tank's been bitchin about how his servers eat up all of his bandwidth, but perhaps we can talk him into it. One server further east than Germany would be nice, too.
5. We need fixed rules and game settings known in advance. Variances ("Server Weather") in the settings can only be allowed if not only the admins don't play on their own server, but also the whole team the admin is a member of doesn't play there, because otherwise, there could be accusations that the team knew the weather in advance.
6. A corollary to 4, the tournament needs to be run by someone with direct or indirect control over many servers. The only two bodies that come to my mind are the Federation of Clans and well, we developers.
7. Every team needs to nominate a leader. This is one of the things that made the Ladle work, I think, and it was missing from the ITW, leading to the German team coming in in anarchy without an authority person to decide who should go in the case more players join than can play. The server admin should just set TEAM_MAX_PLAYERS to whatever applies to the current match according to the rules and not rely on the teams to sort it out.