Lot's of great stuff. I'm really curious how the new diplomacy mechanic will work in praxis. Same for ideologies. I'm also really happy, that single-player will remain the main focus, and that the races won't be equal.

Wow, that was some ugly formatting on that page 

At least it had a bunch of good content.  I especially liked what was said about 64-bit.  We really should move to that as a community, because 32-bit is only holding us back at this point.  Kudos to Brad for saying to hell with it and just doing it already.

EDIT:  And I'd also like to point out to Brad that some of us almost always play as evil

I'm sad that it's that far out I was hoping Summer/Fall 2014 release, they're talking about a Spring 2015 release, oh well, let's get it right I'm sure it will be great.

Later release Better Game I`ll go that way every time!!

.....Some races will be better than others in multi player......(get over it)

.....We are not going to cater to Multi-player at the sacrifice of the Single player game...<<<< This sells me!

Lots of good stuff in that article. 

Its not going to be tactical (thank goodness)....

Its not going to be MOO! (again thank goodness...)

Add: some of us almost always play as "good"

I myself am a fan of evil. I loved the evil robot. Oh and getting money for all the trade of other empires, temple of evil rules.

I love neutral, because you never know what I might do. That is true evil.

It would be nice to get away from the Good vs. Evil model, and hopefully Good is dumb as well. It was a great annoyance to me. It had got so bad that doing evil until you researched "Xeno Ethics" was a good strategy. Becoming good there after only required a large sum of money to be payed (or to be paid for by lease). It was bad enough that I used to research "Xeno Ethics" early so I could avoid random events (thereby keeping a good conscious), so that I could be good without being crippled for doing so.

I usually hold off on researching or trading for Xeno Ethics so I can get the random events that potentially give me extra research bonus/influence/moral so on, then once I got it accidently I'd pay to be good

I do that too lately. I try to hold off researching it until after the colony race (often some time after that). I like getting worlds that give ship quality bonuses (they often become my primary factory worlds). The primary reason I research "Xeno Ethics" is to get the good techs (which usually give bonuses to defense and such).

YES!  Finally, balance is fun and all, but it isn't necessary for a fun game.  Everquest and EQ2 and Dota2 are great examples about how not caring about class balance can still create a fun game w/o all the moaning about balance.  Just create a race that fulfills a role, and feels powerful in the role.  The right player will come along and do wonders for it.  Thats what I'm talking about, thank you Brad Wardell

Go to the article linked to in the opening post and read both pages of the interview.

Yeah, he knows that...hence why he said in the article that no one wants to play as evil and I felt the need to mention...

Never mind - at least we've completed the circle now.

has any Steamworks multiplayer ever been good?

they sell it to all these devs by namedropping stuff like CS, L4D, TF2, etc. but all those games use servers

then when the games that actually use steamworks come out, the networking is complete garbage (eg. civ 5, aoe 2 HD)