How would you do this and make it impossible for someone to purposely fall behind and then work hard to win the game? It just seems like an effective way for a pro to taunt other players.

You could do that, or you could just work hard to win the game as is, if you fall behind, the other players now have an advantage, as soon as you surpass them, you no longer receive help, so you just become equalized for a while.

Kinda seems like this really boils down to good balancing, doesn't it? If a map is balanced well then it will be difficult for one player to pull so far ahead of the others that he's untouchable. On second thought though, If I was playing storm the fort or something similar (skill intensive) and my opponent got freebies just because I outplayed him, that'd make me not want to play. I think helping the underdog should be carefully applied to only certain maps.

This is getting old. Obviously, the aim won't be to make losers be equal to winners, so stop assuming that. You're just arguing. The point is to not encourage a loss because starting to get ahead causes an avalanche against the losing side, either because they have less chance to be as effective, or because the winning side now can be more effective then it already was, like from wep ups from kills. The initial gap can either be from a single decisive play, or a mess-up on the other team, but it's fail to play a map without hope of making a comeback, simply playing to the end to see how soundly you get crushed. Maps that aren't at all like this need not apply.

It does indeed all come down to balancing, and there's too much and too little/nonexistent. Don't simply assume there's not a "middle" ground somewhere, where it actually helps gameplay, and doesn't make people cry "BS!1" and leave. Extremes are very rarely the best option.

To understand clues as to what can cause problems, and subtle examples of working around it, refer to my colored post on page 1.

Chill buddy. We're just posting our thoughts...

I play Storm the Fort quite often, and it's no fun when you are against a complete newb, as you completely own them, I would love to see a system that helps them out a bit, obviously I would always have the advantage, as I have a higher skill, however, I wouldn't only need to apply that skill to the beginning of the map until I pull ahead, but to the entire map in order to stay ahead.

First of all, interesting topic and thanks for the initial insights on how maps become interesting (or not).
Thinking about it I realized that, without even knowing, I kinda sticked that rule "helping the underdog" in most of my maps that had any b.net significance.
The following are examples of my maps and how they achieved it. Don't get me wrong, I don't want to boast, or anything, I'm just posting what I analyzed after thinking about this topic, so others may use these methods.
All of the maps mentioned are unprotected and can be downloaded from the dldb.

Desert Strike
My newest map is pretty well balanced. There's basically 3 ways to win the game:
- Slowly build up your income making sure you always keep barely ahead your enemy by spending slightly less money for units, but build the right counters. "The conservative way"
- If you fall behind with income too much you can stop increasing income and mass temple killer units, hoping to overwhelm your enemy before his income advantage pushes you back. "The temple rush"
(Using workers to kill spawns you can make this strategy even more powerful as you should besiege the enemy's temple, which helps greatly with worker attacks. Success (or not) heavily depends on the micro skills and teamwork of the defenders)
- In a balanced lategame with clever usage of specials. The more units there are, the more powerful specials get.
This means in every stage of the game you have to carefully watch your enemies' strategy or they can gain the upper hand, as many units have the same cost to battle efficiency factor.

Sand Castle Wars DARK²
Even hopeless games can be won by successful drop against a unsuspecting enemy, and even weaker armies can win if you constantly open their block (blocks serve to gather an army, rather to send them to fighting 1 by 1) while managing to keep your block shut.

Defense of the Xel'Naga (DotX)
AoS like map. This map achieves it mainly through the extraordinary XP system. You get XP by "supporting" your computer ally by being near (not killing) enemy computer units. Now when you manage to push forward you will have to go back to your base to heal earlier or later. And there are only teleporters to the middle of the map, so you have to walk through your newly gained own territory for a while until you reach the frontier. During that time you get no XP, while the defending enemy heroes have much shorter paths to walk and thus get more XP. When 1 (of 3) of your lanes has been broken through and enemy computer units attack your temple you even gain XP while being dead, helping you even more.
There's also certain spell/item combos (especially invcincible spell / speed potion) that allow you to do suicide attacks on the enemy temple. They are hard (but possible) to do but also hard (but possible) to defend, so you even have a chance of winning if you're seriously pushed back.

This is what I'm trying to avoid, forcing the player to pull kamikazes to try and beat their enemy before they pull too far out of reach, however, the rest of your ideas are swell

Make the units balanced, and leave the rest up to player skill.

Instant game balancing.

I wouldn't call that kamikaze, because since the game is pretty balanced you usually don't fall behind that much (except when you're really playing noobish). So either it's only a little what you fell back then you can do the "gas offensive and live off of your remaining civs, coming out with even more money = more spawn (but less civs) in the end.
Or, if you really fell far behind with gas then you usually have a much stronger army, because it takes about 10 game minutes until a making one gas pays off. So if you're 2 gas behind, then you have approx. 20 minutes to kill the temple, which is usually enough.
I do that a lot actually because there are a so many gas loving noobs that don't have the right feel for the game. It's hard to keep up with their love for gas, so I decide to go for the quick and easy win.