Slight hijack

In 4x games, there are two possible approaches to gaining an economic advantage. One is to focus more on developing your own empire, and hope to do a better job of that than the enemy. The other is to use a pointy stick, and try to slow enemy development further by poking the enemy than you slow yourself by building pointy sticks.

In MOO 1, I have always been a proponent of the former strategy, at least in the earliest portions of the game. I will often start building some real offensive forces (i.e. not carboard cutouts) around TL 12-15 or so, but usually not before. This seems especially to be germane on small maps (what I usually play) since the defenses at any one planet are relatively large in comparison to the total supportable fleet size, and since pretty much any planet can be within striking distance of the enemy.

However, I'm not certain I've given the other method a fair shake. I would have thought this would be quite a challenge to accomplish given enemy bonuses to production, and the expense of building and maintaining a significant offensive fleet. Still, just because it doesn't suit me, doesn't mean it might not work. Someone on the GalCiv board is claiming that it's possible to stunt enemy growth in the earliest phases of the game through early military strikes. Has anyone tried anything like this on Impossible difficulty?