Oh no! I suppose we could try experimenting with me substituting for you with the host PC. (Kicking you, and then switching to your slot). I could just send you screenshots and you could send me orders. We do have someone interested in being a substitute, however as long as you fully intend to re-takeover the spot once you have your computer back, I think it would be better for me to just do it. 14 turns is just long enough where it could really have an effect on the progress of your civilization, however not long enough for a substitute to be able to do anything meaningful.
On another note, I have figured out the problems with the shrines. For those of us that have more DLC than are in use, there is a bug with how the game loads pitboss. It is supposed to load with the same DLC as what the host has enabled, however this is not happening. The additional DLC somehow is causing certain builds to not work correctly. In this thread on the 2K forum they prescribed manually loading the game without extra DLC. This can be done by loading the game, clicking 'DLC', and un-checking all except the 2 expansions and Polynesia DLC. I'm going to try this for the next few turns to see if that allows me to build a shrine.
Finally, I am going to again propose that we start up a monthly story contest. Each player will have a vote (can't vote for oneself), and each reader will have two votes, or something similar. Each monthly vote a player wins, gets him one point. Whenever we complete the game, the person with the most points win. I think this will stoke a bit of interest on both sides. As far as we are concerned, the writing has slowed a bit (I'm guilty of this). On the readers, not really seeing much interest. Perhaps an interactive element could help with this.