Good writeup! I'm curious how moving your Palace to Egypt worked out. Did you notice an increase in income? Obviosly it should help production in the newer towns, but did it make up for the loss in the original core? With the newly-weakened FP, I didn't think a palace move would pay off, but I haven't tried it in v1.15 yet either, so I'm interested to know how well it worked.
Also, you mentioned saving a research turn during your Scientific Golden Age, but everything I've seen says it doesn't work right. Did it work out for you? It would be a nice feature if it did.
As for the space decision, I have faced that dilemna before, I hate it when RL time constraints force me to change my choice of victory condition, but it happens. Almost happened on this one, I had a "contingency plan" in the back of my mind of going for domination if I didn't think I would have time to ride out the culture (of course, I didn't have the military to make it happen, but that's another story).
