Wouldn't a multiplayer game of Civ take literal months to complete? The game is slow enough when each AI player makes their decisions within a few seconds of hitting the "next turn" button.
Hybrid turns help. When not at war, human players do their turns simultaneously. This has the downside that you might occasionally find yourself beating another player to a ruin or something like that, but for the most part it's benign. You still get to do your turns sequentially in case of war, which does take time.
All in all, it doesn't take
months. Sure, it takes longer than it otherwise would, but it's not really that bad. Also, you can enable turn timers, which are immensely useful when more than 2 players are involved.
This is pretty obnoxious considering all of the AIs (four) in my Civ game were each doing this and each declared war on me at the same time. I've been a peaceful civ the entire game (except when Washington declared war on me I took half his cities to teach him a lesson). The AIs always want to do everything the hard way.
I guess, but imagine how anti-climactic it would be if they just played the game normally. The entire game could be completely peaceful, you'd think you're doing all right, and suddenly, bam, fucking Nebuchadnezzar is building spaceship parts and you can do nothing to stop him in time.