So, to recap my military adventures ...
- England was my close friend and also just North of me. However, she made the mistake of taking one of my city sites - goodbye Elizabeth
- Mali build my Pyramids and also had a civilization colour that was difficult to see - goodbye Mansa
- Spain was another good friend but flipped one of my cities, took one of my city locations ... goodbye Isabella
- China started to put some cultural pressure on a few of my cities (and Beijing looked nice) ... goodbye Mao
Does anyone have any suggestions on how to get those workers to stop what they are doing? Here is my solution ... Saladin DECLARES war on Japan! ... and, bingo, no more workers changing my tiles ...
Hey - at least I was nice about it and gave them a full turn to run away - I could have easily nabbed those workers for myself. Anyway, I rolled into Japan and razed Tokyo (my war with China was still ongoing) to remove the cultural pressure. I then signed peace with Tokugawa - remember, this is a space victory game! - here is a screenshot showing how affective the Tokyo fueled cultural lancing was. I actually had to reapply the lance at a later date due to more cultural pressure from Japan ...
From here it was just a matter of settling down and teching to space. I teched to Rocketry (1855) and started the Apollo program, then to Robotics (1874) for the Space Elevator (rushed with two stored GP Engineers). I then set all but the top hammer cities to build cash and maximize beakers while I build the spaceship multiplying buildings in my hammer cities
- Kumbi Saleh - 68 base hammers (Iron Works city)
- Mecca - 43 base hammers
- Timbuktu - 33
- Hastings - 28
- Walata - 27
- Thebes - 27
- Kufah - 27
- Alexandria - 26
- 1878 - Satellites
- 1882 - Fiber Optics
- 1885 - Fission
- 1890 - Fusion
- 1892 - Refrigeration
- 1896 - Genetics
- 1898 - Ecology
I had initially thought this would take a total of 32 turns to finish all the space enabling techs based on the 3079 beakers per turn that I was putting out when I started Satellites. At the end of Ecology, that beaker count was over 4700 per turn. I had selected this order so that I could start the bigger items (Thrusters - 1800 hammers, Engine - 2400 hammers, Status Chamber - 1800 hammers) while I was still teching the 'cheaper' items (Life Support - 1500). I was trying to plan it so that my biggest hammer city came available just as I finished Ecology so that it could start on the Life Support (approx 6 turns) and that my other cities didn't finish their ship builds after that projected date.
This means that you build your bigger ship items in smaller production cities and your smaller ship items in bigger production cities. It actually sounds round the wrong way but I am fairly sure that is the quickest way to actually finish your ship - remember, the ship doesn't launch until the last item is built.
As it turned out, I teched too fast for my production to keep up so while Kumbi Saleh finished the Engine, Mecca finished the docking bay then started on the Life Support. Here are the Ship builds in order ...
And Mecca in that same year - 1906 ... notice that they both say 3 turns to completion ...
Well, those 3 turns in Mecca where GA assisted and next turn, ex-GA, it still said 3 turns to go 
. Also notice the three shrines that I was running in Mecca with over 100 gold (300 after multipliers) that they were generating per turn. I generated my 18th GP (an engineer - whoopie do!) in 1909, just in time to freeze him for his trip to the stars. Look at all the GP points that went to waste ...
Finally - here is a shot of my land looking West from Mecca - I just love the way this camera thing works ... here you can see right round the world ... notice Mecca appears twice (red arrow in the background) ...
And, finally, in 1910, it is off to the stars for us ...
