Hi all
It's a lot of people indeed, and thus quite likely there will be delays. Just looking at my situation: I could probably play 2 to 7 turns a week, depending on my Real Life activities

. But there will definitely be times and can't make a turn for a whole weekend (though that will not be often), and I'm planning a 10-day skiing holiday somewhere in the coming 2 months (but that's just once). That's why I tried to set up the Casual Game.
If the 10-day holiday is problematic, I could transfer control to another player for that period, and skip a few turns. Not so good for my strategic planning of course, but hey, at least I'll save some gold ;-)
I agree with some here that if certain people are consistently delaying the game, we should host anyway, or if it gets really out of hand, replacing him with a computer player, if everyone agrees. I'll set up a master password for such a case (don't worry, I see no fun at all in cheating).
Let's just see how it goes for now and find out what the 'natural' pace is and go from there. For the next 2 weeks, I can probably play a turn each evening.
I'll try and start the game tomorrow evening (GMT). I contacted Manuk by email and personal message some times, but he has not responded yet. He sent a pretender last week but it was already taken by Micah.