Thinking about it, my main problem with multiplayer these days, aside from finding people to play with, is finding a timeslot where all involved can play which is more than 15 minutes long.
Aside from all the BULLSHIT that surround that game, that's a thing I rather like with the new simcity, the fact that the multiplayer is asynchronous and persistent ; though I don't see how you could pull off asynchronous gameplay with games like Civilization, aside from Play By Email - but then if I want to play a game that will take a year to be completed I'll just play
Apocalypsis.
By the way, that game is a good example of how you can pull off an "asynchronous" strategy game : each order take a certain, fixed amount of IRL time to be executed. The only problem is that sometimes, when you go to war it pushes people to stay up at 4 AM just to launch a few offensive orders so that they will be synchronized with other orders they had given - but then I'll put that on the same level of "dude WTF" as playing starcraft against Koreans.
