Piggybacking-ing here to say I played my first Empires game as well. 3 player, also with 5 Empires cards and 5 from the rest.
Engineer, Settlers/Bustling Village, Enchantress, Gladiator/Fortune, Temple,
Gear, Oracle, Cutpurse, Smithy, Expand
Landmarks: Colonnade, Tomb
Tomb was absurd. Temple is a lot better in 3 player, especially when everyone picks one up. I managed to buy it for +6 VP at one point because everyone kept missing $4, then got another 2 VP from Colonnade. I got an early lead but ended up losing because I bought a Bustling Village over Expand. I was worried about not getting enough of the only +Actions, especially in a 3 player game with only 5 Villages, but the 3rd player never contested them and it turned out 2 Bustling Villages was enough. You didn't need a lot of money on this board because Fortune was the only +Buy, making money past $16 pretty worthless. The player next to me got Fortune a turn later than I did, but had better draw setup. They triple-Provinced with Expand and Fortune too many times too quickly and managed to catch up just in time.
It was a kind of boring board (Settlers + Bustling Village are literally the only non-terminals), but it was still fun.