Multiplayer games take place on randomized maps, and turns are taken at the same time. There's an adjustable turn-timer that begins counting down after the first player ends his or her turn, so nobody’s left waiting while the last guy decides whether Teriyaki is the best name for the newly discovered river- yes, while we we're playing as the Japanese, the game suggested that name. One strategy is to take your turn as quickly as possible and hope to cut your opponent's turn short, or you can plan your turn carefully and hope your opponent doesn’t finish too quickly.
There are usually five factions in play at once, and they're all free to form alliances, extort and attack each other as they see fit. For us, it was hard to not want to crush our human adversaries, so most of our "diplomacy" boiled down to telling our brightly animated warriors to do what they do best and crack some heads. (The single-player game can't quite replicate the fun of crushing your buddy's horsemen with a tank or an atomic bomb, so opting to form alliances was a bit more practical.)
Of course, before we could begin crushing, we needed to figure out how to play, so we turned on Tutorial mode for our first game. The game plays the same, but adds an extra advisor to your council who periodically sends you a message about what you might want to consider doing. Attacking a nearby barbarian village, building an army of soldiers and researching bronze all seemed like good suggestions. There aren't really any wrong decisions, since every technology you research or building you build will have an immediate effect on your game, and will open up new research and building options. There are no lame placeholder technologies that only serve to open up more research, which is another way the game keeps things going quickly.
