I would be interested in another edition of the Ratings Bash, as I do have to get even after my *Coughs* not that great *Coughs* record in the first edition.
I am not sure about the vanilla Empire setup though. If you would like to greatly reduce the Empire setup choices, perhaps you could consider giving, say, only -2000 racial points (that is, you need to have 2,000 points left when creating your Empire) or PvK Balance Mod. (Or a combination of the two, or...) I do love these tweaks making Empire setup harder rather than (almost) a no-brainer, and so I would prefer to keep the option of having different Empires.
My two mineral cents worth.