I'm curious at something, Juggernaut, why did your team refuse (at least some) of EvilleJedi's models? I'm not being critical of the decision but it does puzzle me a bit. PS: If you ever need another coder/mapper feel free to send me a PM.
Not sure why yours isn't working... have you modified the dat entry for the starting stuff? Here's what I've got my custom campaign <Campaign Name="My_Campaign">
<Campaign_Set> Custom_My_Campaign </Campaign_Set>
<Text_ID> TEXT_CAMPAIGN_mine </Text_ID>
<Description_Text> TEXT_CAMPAIGN_SINGLE_DESCRIPTION_MINE </Description_Text>
I don't know what campaign_set acually does. Text ID sets the menu name Description text has the starting stuff. Not sure if this will help at all :/
You can give any faction AI by modifying ( in campaigns_singleplayer) a little line next to the faction name. i.e. somewhere in the file you will see something like this ...rebel>SandboxHumanPlayer - I don't remember what goes in the ... ...empire>BasicEmpire ...pirate>None - Replace "None" with basicrebel OR basicempire, depending on how agressive you want it.