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Important requirement for MP
If MP is going to capture more than passing interest, the game really needs to have an option for equalization of starting locations. It usually ends up that all of the Human civ's end up starting near one another. One or more have cows, wheat, rivers and other tiles that allow quick ramping of production and food for expansion, while other civ(s) languish with jungles, mountains and deserts around their start position.
The result is a game that will encourage quick abandonment by many players, once they realize that they can't crank out those settlers at half the rate of the other players or the AI. Usually this can be dealt with in the world of SP, either by hanging in there and doing battle, or by restarting the game, but in the cutthroat world of MP, it will be very difficult for even the best players to dig themselves out of the hole provided by a bad start location.
I think the best way to do this is to add game setting for equal starting positions. If this option were checked (and it should be default for MP games) the start positions would be assigned as locations with equally beneficial items in the 21 square radius of the start. For example, grasslands might be 1/2 point, grasslands with shields 1 point, wheat would be 1 point, river tiles would be 1/2 point, cows 3 points, wine 1 point, etc.
Firaxis would have to tweak the points for balance as problems are encountered,
Once the issues of connectivity and lag get worked out, I think this is probably the biggest gameplay issue that needs to be resolved in order to have balanced MP games and make multiplayer a worthwhile alternative to solo play.
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