If I did multiplayer I think it would be in a co-op context.
Making the game into a competitive RTS would really break a lot of the core concepts driving the design. Namely: it's not about winning, it's about the story.
A competitive context would break because the game isn't close to being balanced (what with all the random events and degenerate strategies). In this context competition becomes meaningless.
If we had several players working together, however (say, on the same colony, or in allied colonies close together), they could experience the AI Storyteller's stories together, maybe help each other in times of need, stuff like that. And we wouldn't have to balance the game for PvP.