Agree. And as an aficionado of sandboxes and software toys who's been playing Civ since Civ I, it would feel far emptier to me to turn Civ into yet another PvP

Agree. And as an aficionado of sandboxes and software toys who's been playing Civ since Civ I, it would feel far emptier to me to turn Civ into yet another PvP/meta/challenge oriented snoozefest.