Just a minute of looking helped me come up with something else. Right now I'm just referring to the first four pieces that get in each others' ways so often:

P
N
S
Gs

So I move the knight forward, replace the iron general with a silver general (with a gold general on the reverse) and place that piece third, and have the goose in back. This allows the pawn, knight, or goose the first move. Once the pawn or knight has moved, the silver may move. One may move the pawn and knight, or silver and knight, without having to move any other pieces forward. See, this was part of the problem: once you moved one of your pieces forward, you had to move it again just to move another piece, and thus place your first piece in danger. This way two pieces may move. The silver and goose also have an option for retreat. So a player, even with such weak starting pieces, can still rearrange the pieces a bit as part of his opening moves. What do you think?

I should make sure that we are on the same page here: the gold moves just like the silver, only it steps one backwards instead of jumping 2 backwards.