Although multiplayer works now its still a bare-bones interface that needs improving. This is what it needs:
Custom Games:
1) "Game list" still freezes (albeit for a shorter time) whenever requests are made to the server. Requests need to be done in the background.
2) The time taken to connect to other players needs to be shortened.
3) The "game list" needs to show ping and performance of every game. Because its P2P it should show the slowest ping in that particular game and the worst performance.
4) Need some kind of display of player rank in custom game. In Pantheon we build up experience - well we need a visual indication of this and it needs to be transposed to custom, in order that we can find matches against players of similar skill.
Pantheon:
1) Get rid of AI totally.
2) Have the option of 2 vs 2, 3 vs 3, 4 vs 4, 5 vs 5.
3) Have an Arranged-Team option.
I agree with your principle (2nd half of the quote). At the moment, I win too easily against newbies, and I get "gang-raped" by teams of quasi-pro guys who know each other and coordinate efficiently against teams of average players (who do not know each other). I don't mind losing and learning (and I never quit), but an unfairly imbalanced team setup spoils the match almost from the start.
I disagree with your suggestion of displaying the ranks, because the system is broken. I have played about 12 custom games to the very end, in April, and the official ranking hierarchy indicates that I have only played 1 game (0 win / 1 loss) ... while it rather should be about 8W / 4 L .
If you're going to indicate a player's rank, you'd better be sure that the official ranking system is always correct (after the daily update).
(I play under my dad's nick, because there's a bug which causes that our new Impulse Account nick is not recognized after log-in!)
1. I believe GPG already has a solution for this, but have not yet made it public.
2. The time taken is the amount of time we need in order to connect all of the players. It is directly attributable to each player's connection speed, so if a slow player is chosen, it will take longer for all of the other players to connect to that player. However, there may be some minor things we can do to decrease the wait time. I'll see what T-Man thinks.
Pantheon:
1. We're working on decreasing the amount of AI, but I don't think we'll be getting rid of all AI.
3. When clan support is implemented, this may come with it. I'll try to push for it 
Sorceress, the stats are inaccurate for the moment, but we are trying to fix that. Soon enough the ranks will be a good representation of a player's a skill. Actually, I think showing the "Experience" number would be far more helpful. Seeing someone with 400 experience versus someone with 1200 experience should tell you right away how good that player is.
And, if you haven't already, I'd recommend contacting support at support@stardock.com about your Impulse account issue. They'll be able to help you with it.
Bara
