Captain versus captain. Two captains are selected. Everyone enters. The captains then take turn choosing team mates by skill or proximity or favoritism or ... Not sure whether trading specialist should be allowed or not. I would guess whatever the captain or players chooses. Once all the players are chosen everyone is locked into their team. End happens when 1 captain is eliminated.
Risk like missions. Everyone is assigned a secret mission. A mod knows the mission. The first person to complete their mission says bingo and a mod reviews and declare them the winner or a liar.
Random specialist. A list or rolls are compounded for each player or every player can share the same list. Based on the roll each hire they have to hire 1(offense) 2(defense) 3(other) 4(promote offense if not able to hire offense) 5(promote defense if not hire defense) 6 (promote other if not hire other).
As a side note in one of the previous custom games people got tired after 2 weeks in where the number of specialist starts makings things a bit more difficult. I think the games should have a cut off timer. Either that or the games need to make people be more aware that the game will take 3 months to finish

. At the end of the cut off timer everyone help the leader win as fast as possible while maintaining whatever specialist report order players are in.