One of last years biggest and most beautiful time sinks was the city builder Dawn of Discovery. I don't think there's ever been a city builder paced quite so well. I have to use it sparingly, a bit like a controlled substance. I tell myself I'm just going to build a simple settlement. Then I blink and suddenly I've got a vast thriving civilization and I can't quite account for what happened to the last several hours.

On February 25th, Ubisoft releases the Venice expansion that adds a whole new faction with all sorts of unique goodies. But the most exciting addition is the multiplayer support.

Wait, multiplayer in a city builder? How does that work?

After the jump, I'll explain it all.

Multiplayer games are set up just like normal games, but with human players in place of the AI. It's a race to meet the victory conditions first. Alternatively, players can be grouped together on the same team, in which case they share control of everything: construction, money, goods, ships, and military units. Anyone can do anything at any time, so make sure to agree on some division of labor. Or at least get a Vent server up and running. You can play this way against another co-op team, against another single player, or against the AI.

One of the new setup options is to enable sabotage, which works in both single-player and multiplayer games. This gives you buildings called bases of operations, which look just like normal houses to anyone not on your team. All houses within a base's area of influence will be patrolled for spies. When one is found embarking on a sabotage mission, you have to quickly find him and click on him to thwart his plans.

A base also lets you sabotage other players, which costs gold, but lets you interfere with someone without being identified (your victim has no way of knowing who's behind the sabotage, so just blink innocently and say, "Who, me?"). The various things you can do are based on your civilization level. You can start fires to destroy buildings, initiate revolts that cause riots, or poison wells to make citizens get sick and stop paying taxes. A base in the Orient can even hire a belly dancer to steal money from another player's treasury. Tips, you know? Belly dancers don't dance gratis.

But why sabotage when you can steal something more than a handful of coins? The new town acquisition setting lets players take entire settlements from each other.

Once you've reached a certain level of nobles in your settlement, a new tab appears showing ownership of 5 council seats and a Key to the City. At first, you get one seat on the council and the Key. You can later purchase the other seats, but so can other players. It's a bit like a board of directors. So long as you hold three seats, you're safe. But if someone else manages to take three of the council seats, they have the option to buy the Key, at a price based on the distribution of council seats. And if someone takes the Key, he also takes all the settlement's buildings, resources, and units. Who needs an army when you've got politics?