Personaly, I'm not very delighted with the vanilla start idea. Reason: all 2k empires have Natural Merchants trait. Not the best use of 1000 rp in 2000 rp game. In spite my respect to the RP side of this game, blaming the vanilla empire design through the game is not the best way of having fun
Although, it will be a perfect excuse of loss
and also it will guarantee even start (all empires are virtually the same).