I can't find that thread (was going to give a link to it), so I'll recap what I said there. This works on medium to huge maps on challenging. I suspect that leasing colony ships would be more important on small maps since it's more of a race with fewer prizes, but on the larger maps, keeping your spending at 100% as long as you can gets you more colony ships than leasing them does.
First turn:
1) Set your spending slider to 100%. Turn your tax rate up till your morale drops, but don't let it get below 70-80% early on. Drop social spending to 0%. I usually go with an even split between military and research, but that's because I've got a few places where I want to be first to reach in the tech tree. Purchase a scout (260BC up front, not the per/turn stuff).
2) Send your survey ship and colony ship towards different stars near Sol. Your survey ship should move towards the center of the map, or the nearest cluster of stars (more likely to find a decent star/planet).
3) Research: I take Communications Theory/Universal Translators/Diplomacy/Trade before anything else. Why? Because unless I'm on a really big map in the corner and fail to expand well, I'll make contact with at least one other race before I finish that series of researches, and before I finish that, I'll reach the point where my treasury is in the negative numbers. I can keep my funding at 100% if I sell Communications Theory/Diplomacy/Trade fast enough. Never hold back on selling techs that increase the number of trade routes if you're selling tech on a regular basis, as it will increase the amount of money the other races have to buy your tech, and some of those routes might just head your way, especially if you have a nice juicy star system with lots of trade-enhancing starbases in the neighborhood. This isn't to say that you should treat all of your techs that way. I usually hold back on Universal Translators until they're common, so that everyone is trading with me rather than each other.
Second Turn:
1) Send the scout after a third star.
2) Switch Earth to creating colony ships.
Subsequent Turns:
1) Don't land your colony ship on the first planet you find, land it on the first good one you find. Unless you took a PQ pick, ignore anything less than a 15, and you really want an 18 or better. On the other hand, you don't want to wait too long to found your first colony. Also remember that you're claiming systems, not planets, so don't worry about grabbing the second-best planet around a star until you're having problems finding new stars, or you're streatched out to the point that you don't think you can defend your entire empire.
2) Don't let your balance go negative. If you haven't started trading or selling techs soon enough, you'll have to turn down your spending when your balance gets close to zero so that you have a small positive monthly gain.
3) Monitor your morale, lowering your tax rate to keep it up around 70% until your tax rate is at 33% or you're trading enough that you can lower your taxes to about 30-33% and still maintain a positive cashflow. Tax money is good, but so is Morale, so you need to maintain a balance.
4) As soon as you get Diplomacy, turn social spending back on, set Earth to build diplomatic translators, and any other colonies to soil enhancement or banking, depending on your cash flow. Yes, other people will say manufacturing center first, but at this point, we don't have the tech for that.
5) As you develop your planets, use a govenor. It makes it much easier to make sure you don't forget anything. Keep maintenance costs in mind. Also keep in mind that if you build a manufacturing center or research lab, or any similar social project, that it will have a double-impact on your economy. First, it will incur a maintenance fee. Second, since it's increasing the manufacturing/research ability of that planet, it means that it will cost more money to maintain 100% spending. Also, keep in mind that just because social project X isn't worth it on planet A doesn't mean that it won't be worth it on planet B. I usually maintain two govenors, one for the default worlds, and one for my 5 or so best planets. These planets get more of the upgrades, because a 25% manufacturing boost means more when your manufacturing is 50 points/turn than when it's 5 points/turn. I also restrict my shipyards and such to these core planets, as usually my best planets can crank out as much military ships as I need, and I usually don't even need more than one or two unless I'm actively at war.
6) You'll notice that I haven't mentioned morale-boosting structures anywhere. That's because I prefer to deal with morale with morale-boosting techs and trade goods. Mid-game I might consider throwing some morale-boosting buildings into core worlds if their morale is under 60% to keep their production up.
7) When it looks like you've grabbed all the systems you can, switch to constructors, and grab every resource you can. Then, mix the two, filling in the secondary planets in systems you own, and building up the starbases (defense/mining/etc.).
8) Have a tech goal in mind at all times. I'm bad at this, I'll start picking techs without remembering where I need to go (an in-game tech-tree would really help).
9) Keep your scout and survey ship moving at all times. When you've scouted enough, put your survey-ship on auto-survey. Micromanaging the hunt for anomolies may be tedious, but when you get to the point you can auto-survey, every little bit helps, and on large galaxies, there's enough anomolies out there to keep you going till the end of the game. Last game I even had 4 Rangers auto-surveying (they were tough enough that I didn't worry about loosing them). If you run out of things to do with your scout, sell it to someone.
10) As an aside, my second tech branch is usually Industrial Theory (for manufacturing center), followed by NanoElectronics/Sensors to get Eyes of the Universe. This isn't important on small maps, but on large or larger maps, the sensor bonus means that colony ships can do their own scouting. I'll usually get Stellar Cartography next, since I like maps large enough that I probably haven't explored the whole thing yet, and if nothing else, being able to send freighters out towards uncharted yellow stars hoping to find a race homeworld has worked on more than one occasion for me. Also, the AI is willing to buy Stellar Cartography, even though it already has that ability.
11) While I don't advocate selling every tech, sell any that you don't think will get you killed. Taking money out of their pockets means that much less they have to use to come after you, and having it in yours means that you're working that much faster to get ready for them if they do come. Dead-end techs are my favorite.
I'm sure there's more, but I can't remember what they are at the moment.
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