What are you exactly having problems with? if you have a dedicated server, and dont know the exact details about setting up an empires server, you will find almost everything about it at the Empires wiki: http://empiresmod.info Also I believe there used to be an australian empires server (or still is), probably died because there arent many Australians playing the game yet.
Goodness knows how much bandwidth you'd need for a 20 person server. Oh, I know, get an STS-1 connection! Hehe. You'll need a computer with a good processor, as well as a decent amount of RAM (the more RAM, the faster the processor, as well as the more memory bandwidith, the better.)
