I'm feeling ambitious...

[Loser]

I dig number one. But they should all be the same race, Oxy-Rockers I think, with the same empire build-out, or very, very close to the same.

Actually, in the interest of making the various succession states especially equivelent, you could start them as unattended empires and make the centrally located old-homeworld empire fill out all of space and then 'gift' the various pie-slices to the unattended little empires, which then may or may not get to keep their homeworlds.

You need not fill all the facility slots on all the colonial worlds, leave that for later development.

The old-homeworld should be absolutly badass: many, many Large Plats, Fighters, Troops, defensive Star Bases.

And then all that's left is to make empire protraits of Kurita, Marik, Davion, Liao, and Steiner.