Less tracks for a more open sound, or does it really matter?

I would say that EQ and different guitar sounds are your friend here

You mentioned you wanted to add "texture" - I think you almost need to change your mindset and completely forget how individual elements sound and just think about the bigger picture

Eg - I would suggest using extreme EQ on the different parts so that you make the best of each sound - IE if you have a throaty mid range guitar tone take the lows and highs out, then find a nice thin/scooped tone and take the lows and mids out (being quite extreme)

On their own they may sound "weak" but together you should start building the "texture" you are after without increasing the mud

I would also suggest panning everything to the centre whilst EQing and not rely on pan for separation until you are happy that you don't have a mushy/muddy mess - panning will then help open things up

Good luck!

First of all, don't believe everything you read in trade rags. When in doubt, use your ears. Listen to the finished track in question and ask yourself how many separate guitars you actually hear in the mix. The answer will usually be 1. If that producer needed 20 tracks of mics and alternate takes to get to that 1 guitar part in the final mix, then so be it. But don't look at those 20 tracks and think you're hearing 20 different guitar parts because generally you're not hearing more than 1 or 2.
 
Beyond that, everyone else has already given you great advice. Treat reverb and delay as though the mix knob controls the price and be careful about how much you spend. Also if the song really does contain multiple unique guitar parts, hard pan them as much as possible. Rhythm guy? You get the left speaker. Lead guy? you're in the right speaker. Singer guy who thinks the the other two guitars aren't enough and the world needs his 6 string contributions on top of it all? You get panned 1/3 one side or the other depending on what you're playing compared to what they're playing. And then you get eq'd and compressed until there's no danger of anyone getting hurt.

A picture is worth a thousand words, and all that...this shows how in many places in a song, there are only a few tracks playing. The overall sound is still big, though, because they create so much space for each other. (Of course this is only one song, but hopefully you'll find the dissection helpful.) 
 

 
This is a recent song. The top three tracks - Drums, Rapture Pro Gibson Bass, and Rhythm Guitar play pretty much throughout the song (which is rare for me - normally I'll drop these out in a few places).
 
The green tracks are vocals and the lower four tracks are all Rapture Pro parts. Note that until measure 26, most of the time there's a maximum of four tracks playing. There are two short parts where in one the harmony vocal plays, and in another, there's a drone. Still, that's only five tracks.
 
Starting at measure 26 is the "big chorus." The Staccato Key and Plucked Key are panned oppositely, and work with the guitar to provide texture. Even the "biggest" part of the song so far is 7 tracks.
 
The solo starting at measure 42 has only 6 tracks, and note how soft the guitar track is - that's to make room for the lead at the bottom. The "massed vox" are just a choir where I recorded a bunch of parts into Take Lanes, then collapsed them all to make a chorus. They provide a background.
 
8 tracks play only at the very end, where the two vocals are both happening. The Power Chords in track 5 are there to add some final emphasis.  

Like I have said before if many of you suddenly had the opportunity to work with a really great producer and you showed them where you were up to the first thing they would do is rip out about 60 percent of the stuff that is in there now.  They would be saying do you need this, do you need that, why have you got 15 acoustic parts here when only one will do.
 
Listen to Steely Dan for the ultimate in economical parts.  The trouble is the music in most cases is boring and not great so people are trying to make it better by filling it all up but it just does not work.  The music say in Steely Dan's case is brilliant so then what is going on there is just the minimum to get the message across.  I like Craig's example above.  He has sort of nailed it actually.  I bet that music sounds good and big but still has the message with only 7 or 8 tracks.
 
You should be able to see what I call the black backdrop behind the music.  If you cannot then you are going down the wrong path.  What you guys are doing by piling it all on is creating what I call a grey backdrop.
 
No amount of carving out frequencies and stuff for parts in other parts compares to not having so much going on in any one point.  All fantastic mixes have the back backdrop in common.  Even Dark Side of the Moon does.  It is so obvious to me.  You can walk around inside the mix and touch it.
 
The trouble is we have too many tracks available now.  There is an interesting thread going on in the Techniques area on why working with very limited resources makes you better.  I only had 4 tracks to start with (in 1980) but spent years perfecting the art of making incredible (electronic) music with just those 4 tracks.  Every sound counted and had to have a god damn good reason for being there.  I then moved up to 8 tracks for years and really mastered the art of making great music with only 8 tracks.
 
When I studied my Jazz degree many years ago it always used to blow my mind how complex the music could get with only 3 or 4 musicians.  You should be able to do it with same number of tracks.  When Return to Forever came out here only a few years ago there were not many of them on the stage you know but Oh My God did the music get complex.  Why?  Well for a start the music was ridiculous and so was the musicianship.  Seems that the better these things get the less you actually need to get the message across.
 
Even when you want to create a dense complex piece it is still amazing how little you need to actually do it.  In complex classical music yes with 80 musicians or more you can still see the black backdrop behind.  Because many of them are playing the same parts and there is not actually not so much going on when you listen right into it.