- From the get-go I stole a worker off Churchill, I declared war on him around 3100BC once I saw a worker adjacent to my warrior on the outline of his territory. This way I didn't have to bother wasting time building a worker myself, this slowed him down, and we made peace about 10 turns later. Nabbing a couple workers from neighbouring civs is really quite easy, it gives you a huge boost because its so early in the game, and you'd be surprised that ai civs will usually make peace a few turns later since they have no units to attack with.
- I declared war first on Ghandi since he isn't protective, and quickly nabbed his 3 cities with a mix of axes/swords (that i promoted to cover to counter his archers, but actually when I attacked he ended up having axes himself - so I could have been mor efficient here)
- Since Stalin is Industrious, from 3000BC-1000AD, I built every almost single wonder except availible in my capital excpet ToA, and GLH(which I captured from Ghandi anyways). This way I had tons of +GP birth points in my capital where I also built National Epic and I opted to settle almost all of my great people there. Every 8-10 turns I added a specialist to the monster, I think I was getting over 500
a turn from this one city once I built oxford around 1100AD. By 1000ADish, I had 5 scientists, 3 engineers, 2 great prophets, and a merchant settled in my capital which with represtentation gave me a huge research boost. (especially with oxford)
- I had Massuleum of Massallos (sp?), and ended up starting 5 golden ages.
First golden age from was from the free great artist you get by discovering music first (I always do this - but usually to switch to a religion and Org. Religion civic w/out anarchy), second from taj mahal, third from Collesseum(sp?) quest which I was lucky to get, and 4th, 5th, from 2 then 3 Great people. This totalled 12x5 = 60 turns of golden ages, which made up a significant part of my game, about 20% actually (60/300) was played during a golden age.
- I'm used to playing on Immortal/Deity difficulty so playing on prince seemed really really easy for me (I don't mean to sound smug, I spent a good 3-4 frustrated months learning how to beat noble-price difficulty till I started reading these forums, but I probably play civ4 way too much) I went through the game rather quick, conquered the two neighbouring civs asap, after I realized this is meant to be a space-race and replayed from 1400my early-mid game wouldn't have changed, conquering early still helped even for a space win.
- I never bothered with factories / space elavator / 3GD, the beeline to superconductors I think was smart and you'd be surprised how many techs you can skip when you only research the "space-essential" ones.
- In order to pay for all the maintence, but keep a 100% research slider, I had most cities hire as many merchants as they could support and build "wealth" when there was nothing else important to build. Since I had libraries/Universities/obser.'s/research institutes in most of my cities far before markets/grocers/banks, having a 100% reseach slider was the most effiecent way to spend commerce since my science was giving a larger multiplier off the base commerce then gold.
-Since I knew I had to switch to then keep State-property asap, I mainly built workshops as my improvements, sure a few towns/farms here and there, but witih caste system/SP workshops are the ideal improvement (especially since freespeech/universal Sufferage were out of the question)
-not really sure what pitfalls I had, I'm sure if I knew from the start it was a "space-only" game I would have played differently, but in general, things went rather smooth, and was surprisingly fun.
and
Cam H - You really did a nice job on the initial post with the slyish lay-out, its very impressive
what was your strategy? Did you do any real 
moves that you regret? Interesting to note your slingshot! 
