You are a genius Jason! (only because no one seems to have mentioned it yet.)
 

Thanks very much for the update Jason. Will check this out.
 

So, am I understanding correctly that the new program will not have the ability that the old one does to run games on a LAN without connecting beyond the firewall to the outside world? Four friends having a LAN party can't just play Settlers, they have to connect to the website and deal with sending all their game play out to the net and getting it back, having their game throttled down by their internet connection speed and the fact that they will all be sharing the same bandwidth? If that's the case, I'm definitely holding on to a copy of Sea3D, just for LAN use, even though it means we won't have access to Cities and Knights content during LAN parties. Some of the places we have had LAN parties didn't even have an internet connection, let alone one that was broadband.
 

You can already play the Cities Online client on a LAN and always will be able to.
 

Though, I should add, if you're at a LAN party, by definition all the computers in the same room, why aren't you actually playing the board game face to face? ;)