Also... it's this kind of comment, that we are saying what we're saying:

It's not to people who are expecting reasonable things like multiplayer after the game finished.

I would have to be payed to play this.

You've missed the point by mis-interpreting the words in my post.

I didn't say 100% polished, I said it would be a 100% playable game when it goes gold.

...and so while I cannot also not define what 'polish' is to you (only you can) or to Stardock, my assumption with that is when the game has gone gold, the game is 'done', the game is 'finished' - it will have enough 'polish' in their eyes to be sale-able.  

But I never used the word 'polished' in my post, and the words 'polished' and 'finished' or 'done' have different meanings to different people in different instances.

For instance, does a 'finished game' mean 'no more bugs' to you?  Because it sure doesn't to me. 

I think I can use an absolute statement here:  there are always bugs in games after release!  Games are never perfect, and always need fixes - and I specifically said in my post that there would be support and fixes for the game post release.

If I made you think I implied otherwise, I apologize.

Honestly, I'd rather any real MP development be done with Sins of a Solar Empire... Adding Ladder support for 1v1, 2v2 and 3v3 for example...

It all comes down to what we consider a "finished" product. 

To me, feature wise, the game won't be really finished until some staple elements will be in. Again, take flying units. EVERY 4x game has them at some point, either natural, magical or technological in nature. You just can't do without them, as they add a needed "strategy twist" to the gameplay. Not to mention the flavour aspect. Walking dragons, really? 

We know they won't be in at first release but it's reasonable to expect them in the expansion at least. Focusing on other things when the game is still missing genre-staples is not a very sound policy imho. I'm positive that when reviews will start flowing, the point of missing flying (and naval!) units, even two years after Elemental, will be raised (it's one of the initial, baffling design choices that have doomed Elemental to the Second_Tier_Game status, imho and unfortunately). Of course, if you consider Multiplayer to be a genre-staple as well, then we're in a weird kind of agreement...

The problem is that elemental is not structured well enough to be played as a multiplayer game. You cannot have a 500 turn game played in multi-player, it just does not work. The primary reason is that a player's turn can take between 20 seconds and 20 minutes depending on where he is in his game. For example, a player might be skipping turn to reach a destination or wait for a certain technology, while another player could have a lot of management to do on his turn.

Lan support could be OK, because people can coordinate their action more easily. They can say, "OK now it's the time to design unit, or do a lot of management". Or, "can we wait 2 other turns before managing stuff". Or "I am going to make a coffee so take time to fight your battle", etc.

To be easily played in multiplayer, a game should take at most 50 turns, and players would need to have an equivalent number of things to manage every turn so that the time spent is equivalent. The low number of turns would reduce the number of time the player have to wait for other players.

I'm currently in a multi-player game of Armada 2526. We started it when the Supernova expansion was in beta back in February 2011. We are still playing it. We're at turn 142.

Armada plays at a much faster pace than Elemental or Galactic Civilization so I honestly don't think multi-player would work very well because of the slower pace.

I would pay a dollar to be able to play online so some of us forum trolls could resolve our issues the old fasioned way.  I'd also pay another dollar for hotseat. 

1.  Lord Xia vs. Trojasmic

2.  seanw3 vs. Heavenfall

3.  Das123 vs. senthai

and so on...

Yes you can.  I've had that many times in Civ 5 and both AOW and AOW:SM.  I'm not understanding where your getting this stuff from. Look TBS games are going to take longer than RTS games and they SHOULD.  I personally don't want a fast TBS game were 1/2 the features were taken out for MP just to make it faster for those who's attention span is 5 minutes.

Most games in the above usally takes several sessions for completion (we always play with the largest map settings with max players AI/Human. Never play small maps because they are not fun...yes fast but not fun)

It think the option to play as you normally do in SP is a very important option to keep in MP.

However, I'm sure the devs could allow you to set/change the variables pre-match to make for a shorter co-op game. Tech-Levels people have available on start up, what spells you can/cannot use, the beginning size of the cities you've founded, timed turns etc...   Either that or quick-click,  pre-made templates specifically designed for a shorter game.

I know it's only a dollar, and I'm not saying it's outrageous to ask for a dollar for the development time, but charging extra for something that most recent strategy games include in the initial cost is sort of silly. If you want to work on it, then work on it, but don't nickle and dime players with things like this that I'm sure many of us figured would be included in the price already. Maybe a "pay what you want" style DLC to enable multiplayer would be a better option.

That said, I'd probably never play it, as I don't usually like multiplayer. I'm too casual and people get WAY too competitive in MP games.

And that is fine as long as I the option of playing MP as I would SP. Now simultaneous mode is a must so you can still do things while waiting for the other people.

lol One of my friends had the same opinon but I told him to treat anyone you play with as just an AI. Ignore them if they insult you because after all they are just some dumb AI in the game and crush them.

I do this all the time in any MMO game were I'm playing strangers like in MMO's (Wow, Star Wars, DAoC, EQ etc.) and in FPS as well as TBS games (don't play RTS unless it is Totel War.

But normally with TBS games I'm usally playing friends so there is not drama to go with it.  People thes days seem to have thin skin and get thier feelings hurt to easily. I blame those that promote playing games that they don't keep score and that everyone gets a trophy. Those people that so want children to never have thier feelings hurt and protect them against everything which of course does the child a disservice when they have to face the real world because they were not prepared. Anyway I could go on.

Personally, no.  A lot of my friends don't play type of games I do.  (Them - mostly shooters, Me - RPGs, TBS )  

I would be interested in some kind of ladder or whatever.  Or even like GC2's way of having one player upload their scores and contribute.   I would pay a dollar for that.  

I don't tend to play these games online vs other people but provided a hotseat (i.e an offline multiplayer option via the one PC) option was included then yes I would gladly pony up an extra $/£ etc to support the addition of multiplayer.