Re: How many races do you play against in SP?
The AI rarely actually manages to take out its opponents even when it has quite a bit of superiority--it'll reduce them to their homeworld, often, but it won't finish them off for reasons that aren't completely clear to me. Because of this, I think having tons of players results in smaller empires (because often you won't have enough room to expand until and unless you flatten an enemy or two, and as I said the computer's not all that good at that).
On the other hand, I feel that the AI doesn't expand hard enough in late midgame, even if it doesn't have any opposition to its expansion.
So in my not-so-humble opinion, the goal is to have just enough AIs that they start seriously bumping into each other at late midgame, just as they slow their expansion. Unless you're playing on a small map, at which point you probably want somebody in your face from Day 1 (tried it, won, but didn't enjoy it).
8 players seems like a good number on a large map, give or take.
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