Ok, there is a 3.0 preview posted
HERE. With it, you can create empires for this game, and check out the changes. I will probably make another Last-minute change or two and you guys might catch some things, but this is more or less it and I'm confident the empire selection will not change, so you should be able to create empires using this.
Let me know if you have any suggestions or spot any problems.
Thanks,
PvK