Just to elaborate a little on what dmm touched on: I think he's very correct.
If you think about it, coordinating an ongoing TCP game with 2 or 3 people shouldn't be a problem. Coordinating a TCP game with 5 or more people could get hairy. Add even more players and the problems increase exponentially.
"Well, so-and-so can spare an hour saturday between 8 and 11, but what's-his-name has to take his wife out. Meanwhile who's-his-face has a wedding to attend sunday, so he can't make it saturday after 10. Etc., etc..." Schedule problems will also be compounded further by different time zones.
With this in mind, it seems that the most enjoyable TCP games will be played with around 3 or 4 people. And a large quadrant with only 3 players could get... well, boring quickly. Now, fill the remaining slots with a few of the current Version AI's and you've got basically just a few minor hindrances until you can get to one of the other human players. Fill the empty slots with a few good, solid AI's and the game would really take on some color. It would be really cool to have to seek out alliances with your human buddies in order to survive a vicious AI onslaught. I guess you could accomplish this easily enough with the current AI by using Team Mode, but then diplomacy with the AI would be rendered useless.
Then again, all of this is pure speculation as we have yet to see how well TCP would work. So maybe I'd like to see the TCP first so we can start seeing how it plays. Honestly, I started writing this as an argument to improve the AI first, but now I find that I'm completely torn on the issue.
Sorry for wasting everyone's time with this absurd post of mine hehe
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