True enough, though the last human move usually just change things tactically, not strategically.
The big problem with pathfinding is roads. Since they change the cost of movement through a place, it makes the best pathfinding optimisation (precomputation of paths) impossible to apply in civ games.
The number of civs should not be a problem as far as time is concerned. Number of units and cities is much more important, so the time spent for a turn should only be function of the size of the map. I think this is a realistic goal for any civ game (the strategic evaluations for each civ will not change every turn, otherwise they'd not be strategic, so they will probably take only a small amount of time and can be run in the background).
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