I think the game is great but multiplayer takes too much time, i ended up with a 3+ hour game. Even on fast settings, it takes way too much time. This may be ok if you "know" the people in real life you are playing against, but casual games with people around the world are not feasible, because continuing the game later is not guaranteed to happen because everyone is on different schedules. I end up dropping the game for more important matters.
There may be some of you out there that can afford to put in 5 hours or more but it takes the fun out of a great game when you can't enjoy it with others. Plus its just flat out not healthy to be sitting on the game that long. All i ask for is a setting that speeds up building, research and all that so the game can progress faster and we can have shorter multiplayer games. Just give us one more stage of higher speed.
