To answer a few of the questions and to give a little update, I did get a chance to play a couple of turns. A quick rundown of what happened (certain to be the majority of any action for my run.)
First off, we do not have a commercial wonder yet. Next one gives us our golden age. But we can build non-commercial wonders.
State of affairs at the start of my turns - 10 cities rioting, courthouse builds everywhere, minimal corruption everywhere (commies baby!), Steam due in 8, with minimal gpt coming in and a bit over 1000 gold in the treasury. Oh, and we can support many many (over 100 easy) more units cost free. We have ROP's with both Mongolia and the Byzantines. Why, I'm not sure, but I guess I won't be eliminating them anytime soon.
Start off buying embassies with the power brokers to help with the deals. Spain will have Magellans in 14 turns (Commercial so we don't want it yet anyway). This brings us down to around 600 gold.
So, since we are quite a ways up in tech, I trade Physics to those who can pay getting Economics, Music Theory, 3 more luxuries, a bunch of gpt and gold to allow me to drop the lux rate to 0%, up science so we can get Steam in 6, and still pull in around 25 gpt or so and our treasury is now restored.
I switch a number of courthouse builds off to libraries, aqueducts, etc. With corruption so low, courthouses will be needed, but libraries will fill in some culture gaps up north in New, Newer, Newest, and even Newer Korea. And help research. The aqueducts will help use all the land we have. Afterwards we can hit up courthouses.
And I set Pyongyang ( I think ) onto Newtons due in 20. No one else can build it yet.
The next turn, after the riots settle, I kill the the Palace build in Boston (still 30 turns away)

. The Palace may be minimally better there, but the city is so underdeveloped, we need to do something. Switch it to Bach's (only available wonder NOT commercial) due in one. It will help with future happiness problems and deny the AI. The AI is going to get both Smiths and Magellans - but we don't want them due to Commercial ( okay, I
do want Smiths. Moving along... ). Its not likely we could build either from scratch and get them anyhow as the AI has the headstart already.
The rest of my turn will be pretty much managing the builds and workers. Producing some extra workers and building some more units when it makes sense. Sariwon is going to be a
very strong city for us once its built up. It has flood plains and quite a few hills. Some cities up in old Sumeria will be strong as well.
A note for the future. Luxuries are going to be
very expensive for us due to our size. But we need them. As long as we are maintaining our tech lead, we should use tech to acquire luxuries and gold. There's no reason for us to be on the edge of riots at this point considering our large lead over the AI.