For the first succession game, I don't think it's necessary to do anything too crazy. We're all still learning here, and I would prefer to hold off on the truly crazy variant stuff until I feel more comfortable with the basic gameplay. With that in mind, I'm going to suggest this setup:
Civ: Japan/Hojo
Difficulty: Emperor
Game Settings: Standard speed, Ancient era
Map Settings: Small, Inland Sea
Variant Rule: No Commercial or Harbor districts 
This is a simple variant. Everyone knows by now that the trade routes are extremely strong. Going commercial districts into industrial districts at every city is pretty much the one right choice at the moment. Let's take that off the table and see what happens to the gameplay. Note that this does not mean that trade routes themselves are banned, only commercial and harbor districts. We'll get one free trade route from the tech tree, Merchant Republic can provide two more, and some Great Merchants grant additional ones. We'll need to think carefully about where to send our very strictly limited trade routes, both for the bonus tile yields and since they're the only real way to build roads. (Does this mean using Military Engineers in this game? We shall see!)
Japan is a natural civ to pick from there. (Rome would also fit but working around limited roads is intended to be part of the fun.) Japan gets three half cost districts, none of which are commercial or harbor districts. (Japan gets cheap Holy Sites, Encampments, and Theatre districts.) Japan also gets an adjacency bonus from putting districts next to each other, which seems like it could make for some fun planning as a team. I'm picking Emperor difficulty as a level that should be a challenge without being too unwinnable. I prefer Small maps at the moment to keep micromanagement from getting out of hand, and I haven't tried Inland Sea yet, so let's give that one a spin.
I'm looking for a team of 4-5 players for this game. If there's a ton of interest, then there's nothing to stop us from running multiple teams using the same setup, on the same map or different maps. Succession game etiquette is similar to PBEM or Pitboss games: make sure that you can play the turnset in a reasonable amount of time (a day or two), contribute to team discussions, and try to write interesting reports. We're not grading anyone, but it makes the whole thing a lot more fun.
One final thing: I have the Aztecs preorder thing, so if anyone knows a workaround for those who don't have that, let me know. I'm sure we can figure it out. Who's interested?
