[FrankTrollman]

Civ III was indeed a dissappointment. It was more complicated and pretty, but not actually better than Civ II.

Indeed, the best that series ever got was Alpha Centauri (which was made by a different company, but the same people, so it's part of the series). Brian Reynolds is doing Rise of Nations, which is real time, and Civ IV promises to still not actually have the original staff that made Civ II so astoundingly awesome.

Alpha Centauri II is not on the table, and the people doing Civ IV seem to still not actually get it, so there's no help from that quarter. HoMM in all its incarnations has always been a great game, but has also never ever been good in multiplayer and there's just no reason to play it that way.

Seriously, other than Dominions III, what turn-based strategy would you actually play with and against your friends? My Crystal Sphere doesn't see all that far into the future, but I'm just not seeing anything else even being offered that is going to be a decent TBS multiplayer game. This is a genre that has been completely lost to the Playstation Generation.

The closest competition Dominions III is going to have from anywhere is the next installment of Advance Wars for the Nintendo DS.

-Frank