10 turns away from landing, and holy moly these turns are taking excruciatingly long...
Same here. The duration of turns, not the landing, that will take a little longer. I was not going for earliness, my main goal was to reach a population of 320 Million, so it was just any city with nothing better to build was doing spaceship sparts.
And I think I will have to replay my last turn, somehow I have crushed my science output! Not sure why, at the beginning of the turn the box was almost full, then I cashed in a lot of vans, during next turn's city processing cycle there was no discovery, at the end of it it was still empty, after cashing in more vans it was still. Not really sure what had happened, I save the game multiple times during each turn (in case the game crashes or I need a break during the turn), and keep the save at the end of the turn before pressing enter.
So, next part:
540 Tatung founded on Swamp
560 Elephant on island 11, supported...hm, we will settle there and explorer and ellie will go hut-hunting
580 Masonry from jungle hut
; Macao founded on island 11; oops, now Chengdu is in trouble, no choice but to shrink down to size 1
600 50g on Jungle
620 Land on main continent
640 Myst.->Philo; Adv. tribe on Main;
660 Legion+Math from huts, was hoping for something towards Mono
700 2*25g;
720 Adv. Tribe+50g
780 25g + Adv. tribe; Kaifeng founded on forest island
800 Ok, we cannot handle any more cities! Barb horses from hut! Ouch! Philo from hut! Yeah!
820 Research Republic (Mono is blocked, args!)
860 Republic from hut
880 Research Mono; 50g+Legion
900 Another AT, ... Oh, the hut @38,48 is gone, somebody must have been here
920 We see a french elephant
940 Approach French ellie, give some techs, peace, cannot exchange techs, we are strong and our own key-civ
960 Run into english Liverpool, sign peace, they offer construction, not now; 8 barb horses...
980 Just short of Mono, 8 vans are standing by
1000 Mono->University; Paoting founded
Stats at 1000AD:
pop.: 610k; Cities: 17; techs: 20; gold: 35; Gov.: Mon; wonders: LH; TR: 0D/0F
units: 9 settler, 18 warrior, 2 phalanx, 2 legion, 2 elli, 6 boat, 3 van, 3 explorer
Goals: Colonize main continent, find rivals, build Michelangelo (next turn)
By then, I had 4 cities on the main continent (one of them was destroyed soon after by barbs). I didn't know anything about the rivals, haven't met them and they had built Marco's.