I'm definitely up for a game, and this sounds fun. The last SG we did on hard was a bit of a snooze-fest IIRC (birds?), but this has some interesting challenges - I actually wonder if no espionage and no invasions (we'll have to tech everything - and hope it's in our tree!) might actually be quite crippling. And if we say "no diplomatic overtures == no diplo at all", yeah it's almost "always war" as well. But it does fit the theme ...
It may have looked easy, but that is because it was done correctly - Brian Moore