Dear god, I just realized this as I got the game started, had a whole evening prepared to play with my friend, whom I've played Civ4 hotseat for the last 4 years or so very extensively. This game is now dead-weight to me past the few single player matches I want to play.
Can't believe I was so naive that I didn't check this when the release was coming up, I was just under the assumption that it's in because it was said that it would be in. And seriously what kind of an idiot dev team slices the hotseat out of the game, the only enjoyable multiplayer-mode for many many fans of the series?
I mean seriously, this is like the next Heroes of Might and Magic game coming out and the developers cutting hotseat out of it, the very essence of the entire game.