Ideally one would like a beautifully balanced multiplayer custom scenario with no temples or ruins, using a suitable Chesslike Warlords army set. But as a way to playtest the rules, you can settle for less. Here is what I did to create a Playtesting Scenario for the Mac:

• Start with Hadesha Scenario, which I feel has the best balance of any standard scenario.
• Replace Default Armies with Bob's Tournament Armies. (See Proposed Army Set Info.)
• Switch all cities to building only ghosts. The idea here is that Ghosts are useless units, but you can pillage them to get a small amount of gold, thus reducing the net cost of installing the first production unit.
• Set all cities to a gold production of 24, based on army set economics.
• Sides to Be Played:
  • Yellow (Lord of Sloth)
  • Orange (Lord of Greed)
  • Red (Lord of Fire)
  • Light Blue (Lord of Flight)
  I thought these gave the best balance of starting positions; each player starts more-or-less in a corner of the map. Another possibility would be White-Yellow-Green-Dark Blue. Black must be reserved for the moderator in case of Random Turns being on.
• Each side receives 255 starting gold to purchase production early on. All useful builds will be purchased by the players; this is designed to eliminate the randomness whereby Warlords sometimes adjusts existing builds upwards or downwards in speed, strength, and especially time to build.
• I wanted to eliminate the ruins, but Warlords didn't like having them taken out. There aren't any heroes anyway; the official tournament scenarios shouldn't have ruins.
• Before letting players play, first turn is taken as follows:
  1. Accept hero.
  2. Retool and add production as follows:
     • Yellow - Explorers (Scouts)
     • Orange - Explorers (Scouts)
     • Red - Spearmen (Light Infantry)
     • Light Blue - Dwarves (Dwarves)
     The choices are made to slow down Yellow and Orange just a little at first, and to speed up Light Blue, all relative to Red. My sense of playtesting the scenario is that Yellow and Orange have a slight advantage and Light Blue has a slight disadvantage when all players are just given Spearmen.
  3. Begin building units.
  4. Disband hero and ghost.
• Second turn is taken to bring production within one turn of completion.
• Game is begun on turn 3, as first units arrive and players can move. Before letting anyone play, Yellow's Explorers are moved southeast to the gates of the nearest city. This is to prevent Yellow from putting the explorers into the bay and blockading Red before Red has a chance to expand a little.