I think its a great idea with some small problems. We won't be able to reliably mod Empire till at least a year after release, so that major patches can be released and basic research can be done into the entirely new engine. Also the amount of work needed to mod it will be far more than is needed for EBII. Indeed, because it is a new engine it will make it harder to mod, we don't even know how many faction slots will be avaliable (may be less than RTW), naval battles may not be suitable for classical era due to game mechanics, and I have no idea why you think the Ai will be tons better.

Foot