Awesome, thanks. How high would you rank simultaneous play? Were there AI players taking part in simultaneous play in W3?

The AI did not take part in simultaneous games. Those were human only because obviously the AI could finish it's turn in 1 second and no human could move that fast.

How important simultaneous games are depends on 2 factors:
1) AI Strength. If your AI strength is high/good then players can have a very enjoyable experience playing solo with plenty of challenges especially if the AI has multiple levels of difficulty. In that case they are going to tend to stick around and play and eventually they will want to test their skills against other human players.
2) Turn Time in Human Games. Many new players at Warbarons would play a solo game to try things out and like the game and then sign up for player vs player and when they realized it might be days between moves (esp in a game with 6-8 players) they quickly got bored and lost interest (only really dedicated players will stay interested in games where you may only move 1-2 times in a week). Even 1v1 games where you may wait a few hours to a day between turns is a no-go for many players. This is why simultaneous games are needed so 2 or more players can meet online and finish an entire game in 2 hours or less.

KGB

Obviously the AI could easily adapt to the rules and participate, but whatever.

WarlordsX.com now incorporates the W3 combat rules including spells, abilities and simultaneous play. However, it's still in the debugging phase but open to skilled Warlords as I understand it.

Yeah, and there's random maps galore.

Thanks for bringing this to my attention but it does seem to be rather buggy in its implementation - for example the map screen doesn't seem to correspond to what is actually on my screen