When I play a strategy, whether it be single player or multiplayer, the most important  thing to me is being able to have some say over how the game will be played out.

One of the reasons some people like multiplayer is that you get a lot more variety. But having played multiplayer for years and years (I love multiplayer personally) there really aren't that many strategies. At least, not when you get good at it. 

The problem with computer players is that players have very little control over what they get.

What we, as developers, need to do is empower the user. Empowering doesn't mean writing a bad AI and then throwing up ones hands and saying "Look, it's scriptable". By empower, I mean that there should be a lot of different options available to players when they set up their game.

Imagine an "advanced" button next to each player that let the player pick:

• Resource Bonus (-50% to 200%)
• Aggression Level (1 through 10)
• Strategy Type (A, B, C, D) where most players would wnat to choose random but it would have various general strategies that TBS's and RTSs have.
• Intelligence (1 through 10 which the higher the #, the more CPU it would use).

There are other factors as well that players might want to mess with that I'm not thinking of.  But what I'd like to see is the ability to have a lot more control of how my opponents play so that I can get a greater variety of playing experiences.