Well i guess its a bit more difficult for Ian since the gold is useless once the game ends. But for me its more surprising akots isn't being more aggesive towards ian as his production is better then the rest of ours combined.

Also there might be additional 'strings' attached to akots deal with ynnek that ynnek didn't share with me. But thats just speculating

1830 AD

No real changes from the last update, akots and ian are still fully focused on a space race.

But first a quick look at my cities. Nothing special just going through the motions. Slowly upgrading my military in case the AI or mauer get some funny ideas. On the other hand mauers been a pain lately so i might have to go over there and shut him up:D
http://img57.imageshack.us/img57/5734/byz1830a1yp5.jpg

This is my spying at work. The roman city of Cumae. Akots is in a GA at the moment and while i'm about to discover steam power he is going for superconductors. Actually he and ian are pretty much level on research speed now and on techs too. But since akots has more than double the production of ian he is very firmly in the box seat.
http://img148.imageshack.us/img148/9...z1830a2kj3.jpg
Also the turn after this screenshot akots built the appollo program. The turn after that, ian built his.

And finally the view from space. You can see i have sight of a few cities around me. Hopefully i can get a look inside one of ians soon so i can at least have a nice view of the fight to the finish
http://img57.imageshack.us/img57/6008/byz1830a3dq8.jpg

1860 AD

We have hit 300 turns. For now it seems Akots is running away with the space race.

First off a quick look at my cities since this is my spoiler afterall. Not there is much to see that wasn't there in the last screenshot.

http://img67.imageshack.us/img67/4726/byz1860a1wa2.jpg

And here is the victory screen. Akots has both engines and all his thrusters built along with the docking bay and cockpit. In the cities i can see into 2 are a few turns away from finishing casting parts. To date Ian has only 1 set of thrusters built. So unless he has a whole bunch of parts that are going to be completed in the next few turns akots will walk away with the win

http://img67.imageshack.us/img67/5891/byz1860a2ex0.jpg

I would estimate akots will have his ship at AC before turn 330.

1878 AD

Akots has launched his ship and with not i alot to do mauer and myself will just go to AI so akots can finish off the game.

For me this wasn't the greatest to play because of my starting location but i'm not one to make too much fuss about it. It did give me a chance to practise some MMing and just generally trying to get the maximum out of my icy land. Also was fun trying to be a bit sneaky with the dipomacy side of things but akots and ian were to far ahead to do any damage to.

Anyway i took a bunch of sceenshots to record the finishing state of my nation which did manage to finish 4th:D

http://img234.imageshack.us/img234/5...z1878a1yb0.jpg

http://img88.imageshack.us/img88/6665/byz1878a2xb1.jpg

http://img181.imageshack.us/img181/3...z1878a3yw7.jpg

http://img181.imageshack.us/img181/2...z1878a4mv6.jpg

http://img234.imageshack.us/img234/7...z1878a5um0.jpg

http://img218.imageshack.us/img218/7...z1878a6he1.jpg

That is quite a detailed spoiler and a great fun to read, many thanks. Sure, your terrain was horrible. I've looked at the starting screenshot and spent some time thinking what could have been done differently. Cannot tell exactly what I would have done in this type of situation, it looks quite tough.

Like i said at various stages i'm not the type to go "bad terrain reload". I've played some bad ones in SP games but this has to be the worst. The capital was good, i just needed a second good spot that was next door to it then i would have been more confident at taking someone on, probably Bodean since i had his measure in research speed as it was. I did have a bit of fun seeing how far i could spread my religion, had i reached 50% i would have claimed an unofficial religious victory;)

But still i don't consider it a game lost, i had a good chance to learn from it and look at ways of maximising things more than i've done in the past, so hopefully when i get a good start i'll be able to get even more out of it.