I shall continue to represent the minority

Myself and 2 of my friends greatly enjoyed Civ IV's internet multiplayer. However I admit that I had never tried a public game... and to be perfectly honest public multiplayer "rooms" wouldn't interest me at all (and would probably be a very daunting prospect for a turn-based strategy such as galciv 2). I much prefered to relax and play online with my friends while chatting to them with ventrilo.
I do love to play this game with AI, and lets face it, the AI will still be a very large factor in multiplayer games, but I was unable to convince my friends to purchase this game purely because there is currently no multiplayer support.
I realise there are many complications to multiplayer with this game, who would want to wait around while an opponent designs a new ship?

As a reaction to the poll results, I believe it would be closer to a 50-50 opinion because some people will not have purchased this game for the very reason that there is no multiplayer... and so the potential extra customer's voices cannot be heard.

I greatly prefer Galciv 2 over Civ IV. Multiplayer would keep this game on my HD for years!

I want to change my vote to yes now that Ive played more. I would love to play this online, or even just on a LAN

I voted no both because of the lost features and because $20 just seemed a little too much for just one new feature.

$10 for just a multiplayer feature seems right to me.

But also, since it comes down to either multiplayer or other features (new techs, a new tech line, improved AI, new governments, maybe another race, hopefully a feature that lets you be able to choose to build an older version of a building if you don't want to build the latest and greatest version of the building) I'd rather have those features over the multiplayer.

I see that you have a poll that shows a full third of the people on this site would buy a MP only expansion pack for $20, but you have no idea how many people would pay $20 for a SP only expansion pack. Somehow I think it will be less than the MP only pack.

I was one of the people that was glad that you made the game SP only. But that was because I liked the first game with the exception of the bad interface, graphics, and sound. (The gameplay was good though.) I figured that this would be the same, except it would fix those problems. It did fix those problems, however it is nowhere near as challenging as the original game (at least for me.) I often got beat on only normal difficulty in GC1, but I have yet to come even close to lose in GC2, even on Masochistic Difficulty. For this reason only, I would like to have the opportunity to play against another human being, so that I would get a new challenge.

I would also like to see the race AI's to be split up in GC3 with another person coding some of the races to give them a little more flavor. (Have two people coding AI, hopefully giving the different races a little different flavor and strategy) Even though they are slightly different, they all are very similar in many ways - such as how they build their ships amongst other things. It is obvious that Frogboy has specific strategies that he usually uses, because all of the races do a lot of the same strategies. I am not saying that he did a bad job - far from it - but I find that the races generally have similar priorities in what they build, research, and design (ship design).

Anyway, I wish you luck on selling your expansion. $20 is a little much for me, but I am sure there are people here who will buy it and love it.

It's clear you guys have no idea what you're talking about when it comes to multiplayer and it's clear you don't have the talent to make it happen creatively or technically.

That is a very strong statement. It is also, structurally, falacious.

The design (and production) choice to not implement multiplayer has no bearing on whether or not they could do it. Just like not picking up a piece of trash doesn't mean that you couldn't; it just means that you can't be bothered at the moment.

As for the relevant question of what other features would one want for an expansion:

* Espionage. Do something more with it. Possibly even an espionage victory, with espionage techs.

* Planet Defense and specialized military units: Say, planets can have planetary defense grids capable of killing off whole fleets. But, bring along a special planetary siege ship, and that grid drops. Planets can have shields, which requires a huge fleet to breach, but bring along a shield-cracker, and it goes away. These should be in separate tech trees. Starbases should be able to build similar modules to protect themselves. The goal is to slow down invasions and allow someone to be relatively strong without having to have a large military. The downside is that it takes tiles.

* Influence Defense Starbase Modules: There need to be modules that can protect a planet from influence attacks.

* StarBase Galactic Wonders: A new kind of starbase. Requires building a new base of a new type. If you research down a particular tree long enough, you get a series of modules to build. If you build all of those modules on a WonderBase, it provides a massive (galactic wonder-quality) effect. The benifits are that they don't take tiles. The downside is that they're starbases, so they're vulnerable.. And there should be lots of useless modules to build between the initial base and the actual wonder power (or perhaps a gradual increase in ability). The Wonder Base, if destroyed, can be rebuilt by another side. Eyes of the Universe should definately be one of these; that way, it wouldn't be so incredibly powerful.

* Starbase capture: Resource bases, in particular, should be able to be captured. However, this requires a new tech and a new ship module.

* Starbase Interdictor Ships: A ship module (big) that suppresses the output of non-resource starbases inside a particular radius of effect. It must be stationary for a full turn before it becomes active, and it can't move while active. Using one should be considered an aggressive act, of course.

* Better battle visualization: Play Wild Arms: Alter Code F. It's battle visualization is very dramatic and very effective. Learn from it. It does have discontinuities, but nobody cares; it looks really cool.

* Planetary Siege Missiles: A module built onto a ship that allows it to function as an orbital bombardment missile. When it "invades" a planet, you can select a non-wonder improvement to be destroyed. If you have no espionage, then the missile picks something at random. Should be a very expensive, very large module. It's better than orbital bombardment, because it's something you could see coming (if you're not close to the source), and the missile is expended, so it can't be done forever. Also, siege missiles would be stopped by planetary defenses, as above.

* The "Genesis" Torpedo: A ship module that turns a ship into a "Genesis" weapon. It can turn a Class 0 world into a higher-quality one, depending on your society's "Genesis" rating. The ship, of course, is lost in this act. You should only ever be able to use like 3-5 of them (neutrals get one more) in the entire game, but there should be a new branch or two of the tech tree to support them. They cannot be used on already inhabitted planets. Improving your Genesis rating would improve the quality of all previously Genesis'd planets.

* The Anti-Genesis Torpedo: A ship module that allows you to unGenesis a previously-Genesis'd world. Not unsurprisingly, this is considered a hostile act. Previously Genesis'd worlds need to be indicated as such, with perhaps a fragile ecosystem or something.

* More explicit control over galaxy generation: Perhaps via some kind of Lua scripting interface, were we can specifically determine where stars go, how many planets they have, and which stars are homeworld stars. Failing that, just better control over galaxy size and number of planets and habitable ones. Real numbers, not "phrases" like "abundent". Actual percentages. And being able to select galaxy sizes based on actual numbers of tiles (5x5 is too small, but 8x8 is too large for my tastes. I want to increment by 1).

* Bomb Them Into the Stone Age: An invasion tactic: Your goal is to raze the planet to the ground, killing everyone who isn't on your side. The enemy should get a population bonus, because the non-tax payers are going to come out once they realize that you're trying to kill eveyrone. The result is an uncolonized planet. Perhaps an added version could include a mass-driver one, but it would drop the PQ. The purpose of this idea is to get rid of buildings that you don't want and can't ordinarily remove.

I've been playing for a couple weeks (despite the bugs) and have two sorts of requests.

First, some make it easier ideas:
--a "best offer" button so I don't keep slowly working to make sure the credits stay green
--a gauge of how useful my counterpart thinks his and my offers are. (credits are a uesful measure)
--a "revise design" button that replaces existing modules with their more advanced counterpart within the same series -- so Laser I gets replaced by Laser II. But Laser V does not get replaced by Plasma I.
--tooltip text telling me how many modules my starbase has -- preferably broken down by category -- attack/defence/production/trade/sensor for Economy, for instance.
--different shading (crosshatching?) for zoning starbases. The current gray on black is hard to make out.
--different colors for Starbases and exploited resources in your Zone. They're hard to pick out on the mini-map.
--a range circle for how far ships can travel in a turn. Don't try to resize it while in motion.
--ability to upgrade freighters involved in trade routes.

-----
Now some big ideas.
--Try to get the races to stand out from each other more. Anyone here play Twilight Imperium? Great board game with double plus distinct races.
--Ability to render some worlds habitable, paving the way for late game colonization. Perhaps through massive terraforming, orbital colonies (living near/over, not on). This requires distinguishing among the Size 0 planets. I like the idea of building tiles and launching them at gas giants. Jupiter has an easy 15 hexes, but needs lots of work.
--Ability to build immense scale structures -- Ringworlds. Dyson spheres.
--Variant tech trees. Perhaps with some XOR gates. Good/Evil with associated techs is a clear step in this direction.
--Make the UP less random. Some techs/projects/activites allow setting the agenda and provide an advantage with the voting.

Rylen

An online version would require some very complex classes to work well, I'm guessing that's why it would take up 3 or 4 "slots." I could see a hot seat mode not being very complex compared to a normal online game. If the game Ai truely treats all opponents equally and all of the races information is stored the same way, not much code should be need to be modified ( The only thing I can think of it the Diplomacy Menu). I could see a hot seat mode being more likely, which is good because that is the only kind of multiplayer I like to play in these kinds of games.

That's my $0.02.

As for Multiplayer options? I voted 'no'

As far as options go, Think Tradewars 2002 OLD school. The replayability on that was GREAT.
ahhhh old times.

anyway. I would like to see completely different sets of ship jewelry for each race (with a little overlap for basic parts) so each race's ships would look distinct. for example, one very organic looking, and another smooth and sleek.
perhaps a 'shiny metal' finish to some parts to add to the eye candy. a ship jewelry expansion alone I'd pay for.

Also
according to the game history, races used to move around via wormholes prior to the hyperdrive. why not have a permanent wormhole as a possibility for anomalies? or maybe something more dangerous.. a black hole that will eat your ships.. maybe slow movement in a certain sector

Heres another idea to go along with my other ideas about renvoating and making combat more cooler, first make relistic damage, if a laser beam hits the shield generation then the shield generator is down, if the hull of the ship is hit with rail guns than show the detailes of that, not just the damage that we see now but much more relisitc looking ones that corrispond to where the ship was hit. and also explosions the explosions in the game are the same over and over and over, add some cooler explosions and make it look more plziing, like making it explode from the inside some times.

Admirals, this goes with the idea i said before about diffrent fleet stratiges, have adrmrals contol yr fleet. this would basicly mean that the ai will control a sector (compsisng of mutipal fleets) or a fleet. u give it general orders like protect the sol system and then the ai takes over and uses the fleet accodnely. and the admrals of course would gain expierance as time goes on. and each admaral will have thier own stregths and weaknesses. this of courese u can take command of the fleet, to do yr bidding, so its basicly letting the ai handle most of the fleet aspecrts but u still can take over or change the orders, and it may be possible make it so that u get reports from the adrimals each week a sourt of battle report. this will help a lot when yr fighting a 3 front war and u have 20+ fleets to manage at the same time and still maintain yr planets it will make it easer

If only two "slots" are left after multiplayer, maybe these two slots will have to be given to features which enhances mp experience while being nice in sp (simple player) too.

Ex:
- Diplomacy features permitting backstabs (great in mp... not bad in sp)
- More specific kinds of political, economic/other alliances. Disarmament or whattever.
- Insertion of "colonialism" and "influencing policies" of others' world
- Metaverse-oriented material, competition, whattever

But maybe those voting for a mp XP-pack wouldn't have voted mp at the expense of sp... like me, which had not thought about this

Where was this poll?! I haven't seen anything other than the 1.11 patch poll for a long time now.

Instead of multiplayer, which holds zero interest for me, I would like to see an in-game galactopedia, comprehensive game editor, custom soundtrack support (please), more 'jewelry', more portraits, the ability to start a game with every system explored and colonized (evenly) and a certain number of tech's researched, I would also like an enhanced planetary invasion module that didn't rely on reflex and had more options for the player. Yes. I would like this and buy it.