Hey Infanteer;
Yeah, i bought it the other day! The install was quite buggy for me, I'm used to software being quite seamless, especially by the time you get to a fourth version. After all what program doesn't come with either an uninstall button on the opening menu or a complete program that is installed in the menu? I had to hunt around on the cd to find it! Not public friendly programming. I kinda felt like Scotty in the Star Trek movies talking to the computer mouse... Oh computer? ;D I'd also forgotten civ's reputation for each version being quite buggy until fixes get quite high in number, around #14 or so ;D!
Tried to play the game, it seems it takes more turns to develop the units, but I have technologies on 100%, and am amazed at how fast I'm discovering these in this version! Way behind in improvements and such. Haven't tried to play with the religions, yet! Looking forward to that twist in the game. The board is quite different, I haven't played the other games that it has been developed around, other people have mentioned, so it's all new to me - much better so far! I haven't had it crash yet, but I'm hardly into it enough to be doing anything really task load heavy.
Personally, I like playing more modern times, and don't have the time to develop mods or scenarios. Am awaiting for some of my favourite scenarios to come out in civ iv! There are some really, really talented people working on those! Some of them are such great fans, that I'm sure they've been given or have had access to Beta versions! Firaxis' would've been nuts not to have them involved in the development.
Anyhow, really like the potential I see so far! I think I'd put away civ III for a couple of months when it first came out until they'd developed enough fixes to make the game workable - not a good reputation to have! Then it won a lot of quite prestigious software development awards, which surprised me! Epic games require epic fixes -