You know what there should be? An experimental mode. This allows the player to tweak with the status of units to whatever they like, such as having armor, amplifying damage, increasing attack animation, etc.
It'll only be accessible to membership users, BUT member users can invite non-member friends to experiment with them.
As for starting an empire, the game will automatically choose order as default, but that's always changeable in-game.
Upon choosing experimental, the player can only choose one AI, but difficulty and race of the AI is always adjustable in-game as well.