I beg to differ. Yes, multiplayer is coming strong, but pbem and single player is not a thing of the past. People who don't have internet access (yes, they
do exist) want to play single player, and for that they need a competitive AI so I say keep improving it. Even players who have internet access may not have the time or incliniation to spend several hours a day or an entire weekend playing a game over the net. They want pbem so they can spend a few minutes a day on the game and have plenty of time for indepth diplomacy and roleplay via email. Then we have the LAN people. They can play SE4 now with a little work distributing the files but the workload can be minimized with a script or a batchfile so they're pretty much setup. Then there's always people who want to play cooperative against the AI and they want a strong AI. Then there's people like me who wants all the above and then some!
Bottom line is options people. The more the merrier. SE4 already have plenty of options but there's nothing wrong with adding more imo.