Depending on the plants and size of your setup, NFT and Drip systems lend themselves nicely to terraced setups, and with a little modifications in the delivery and return system/lines, a flood and drain is possible with just one pump also. But if you are planing on using buckets and not tubes or channels, modifying the buckets for a NFT probably wont be worth it. It sounds like the system is planed to be fairly large. If it were me I would go with a drip system.

I can think of two ways to run the drip lines. One run the main line from the pump all the way to the top then split the line into one line for each terrace you need, and a separate return line from each terrace back to the reservoir also. But the easiest way to run it may be similar to a NFT. Again run the main feed line all the way to the top, then let gravity take the return line down to the next level and drip through that row, and so on.

Also I would probably also want overflow protection (going from experience) especially for large setups both from each individual bucket, and each row. I can think of a couple of fairly easy ways to do this for each bucket, and one easy way to do it for each row. But kind of hard to explain, but let me know and I can do some drawings and e-mail them to you (too much trouble to post pics in this forum for me).

P.S. You may need a large pump capable of very high head height in order to pump all the way up the hill and still have enough volume to do the job. 6 to 8 terraces and 3 feet wide, sounds like you are looking at about 18 to 24 feet up the hill minimum. You can also use more than one pump (and reservoir) and break the terraces up into two or three sections.

I think run to waste drip system would be the best, a lot of trial and error though.

That would solve the the problem about needing to pump the nutrient solution all the way up the hill. The reservoir could then be at the top of the hill in the first place (even a little above the system), and you wouldn't need much of a pump at all. But that would be a lot of wasted nutrients for me, as well as cost unless you get them extremely cheep. Although elaborating on the run to waist idea, if you don't mind a little regular work. You could have a collection reservoir at the bottom, and just refill the reservoir by just carrying buckets of the used (waist) nutrients back up to the top yourself.

I have a 1.5hp submersible pump. I think that could do the trick.

homehydro if you could email me your ideas that would very helpful. I like where you're going with it.