The video works today. I dunno what was up with the servers a few days ago so it's not just a driver fix that did the trick 
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In playing Galactic Civilizations and Elemental: War of Magic recently, it is interesting how these similar games are all different. The faster mode was discovered haphazardly by me when I started a game. My sister and I were quite impressed but the a 10-person match took us some 9 to 11 hours to finish. The biggest issue was, we won the game, but it didn't end. I had, by the end, my sister and 3 other people allied with me.
My sister was unable to get one of the AI to ally with her, only had it under a cease fire so I told her to go ahead and send them to oblivion. After doing that, it still didn't end the game because two of the remaining AI were not allied with each other, and we had to figure out which one to destory. That part of the game wasn't fun at all. If anything, I won first, my sister second. I would have really preferred a game option which enabled this sort of play so you could finish in places and finish early. It took us another two hours to really get to the finish line. Maybe adding in some method of play to steamline a lot of the experience would be helpful. I don't know how that would work, but on the Fastest setting, ships travelling around went pretty quick so that wasn't a problem.
Making Envoys was quite a pain because they were expensive, took up ship slots, and were hard to keep alive if say, you were cease fire with someone but that person's ally wasn't cease fire with you. If those ships could at least have the decency to leave the hostile area until they knew or thought it was safe to go back as an Envoy again, then I think it'd be a lot easier to not worry about my 500 credit ship going out to die.
I'm getting really curious now if I'm playing the game right at all. I really wonder how you're supposed to play this game. When I play Demigod, I'm sure I know what I'm doing, when playing Age of Empires (any version), I know what I'm doing and that I'm doing it correctly because I've been playing and reading about it for years. With the added Diplomacy in Sins of a Solar Empire, I'm even more lost. This is the first game like this I've ever gotten into, and I feel as though, even if I can win, I don't know what I'm doing.
