Our friends at Ironclad are experiencing first hand what it means to make a 4X game that has really good multiplayer.

Each time we do an update, users (almost exclusively hard core multiplayer users) come out and make posts decrying this or that change to the game.  To the casual visitor of the site, you'd think the sky had fallen "1.03 is ruined!" or "We need an emergency patch!" but when you actually look at the content of the post, it's always some trivial tweak that users believe has resulted in some fundamental game change. 

What it usually boils down to in these kinds of games is that players of a certain faction get very upset if their faction (or class in an MMO) is at a perceived disadvantage.

In an MMO, you have to take such concerns seriously. But in a strategy game, where most people are trying to play it single-player, it still needs to be looked at but also prioritized in with a lot of other variables.

A lot of people demanded that Galactic Civilizations have multiplayer.  One can imagine the amount of resources it would take dealing with users demanding absolute perfect (or at least what is perfect in the mind of an individual user) balance.

I would show you more on the Sins forums but right now someone is attacking the forums with a DOS attack (no doubt someone who lost a multiplayer game?) so they're currently down until we can block it.