Even though I like both RTSs and TBSs I have always refrained to play anything from the Civ Saga, while I read all the review since CivI up to CivIV I was always scared away by the apparent excessiyve difficulty of these titles, so I have no background whatsoever, now after 150 + hours playing the game I feel entitled to have an informed opinion about the game and I got back my money worth.
Overall: I like the game quite a lot, what I heard is true, it's addictive, especially if you like Ucronian (alternate history) scenarios. Beating down Germany on a world map in the year 2050 with a fleet of "Roman Nuclear Submarines armed with ICBM" is simply priceless. Of course there are some serious issues with the game, some have been dealt with in time with patches; some others are still to be dealt with and the AI is all but perfect, especially if compared to the much more versatile human brain. Also, from time to time, the game appears a bit "dumbed down" which is good at first because it makes the learning curve less steep but bad later on when you become confident with the game because you feel somehow limited.
Stack of Doom vs 1UPT: I have never played with the SoD system but I quite like the 1UPT system, yes I know it is rather not realistic on one hand, but on the other hand it stimulate strategical thinking (making use of chokepoint and avoiding getting choked), considering possible movements and counterattacks from the enemies, protecting weak units to avoid being overrun etc... The drawback is that AI has several problems handling this kind of strategical thinking. Add to the mix the AI has to be programmed to make "mistakes" every once in a while but possibly without the player realizing it did that on purpose (I guess no one would really like an AI that never makes any mistakes as much as no one would really like an AI that let the player win on purpose).
Diplomacy: I agree with the most common rant, in general AI behaves like a schizophrenic, I remember a post about stating the player appears schizophrenic to the AI as well (Obliterating city states, killing neutral settlers and trying to trade with hostile AI for instance) and I concur. Something's not right here, hopefully though they will fix it (given enough time, support and patches).
Hardware Problems & Crashes: I must admit I must have been lucky, apart from a corrupt game (more than 400 turns) caught in between 1.0 and the first patch I did not have any serious issues nor random crashes. Also, I did not experience any particular slowdown (except for loading times but I blame that on my choice of not installing the game on an old 7200RPM rather than the brand new SSD I have on my system. I reckon though, my rig belongs to the "lucky category" since several players aren't that lucky and are experiencing frequent crashes.
Steam: I don't really like to be forced to use it, and I opted for the compromise of buying the retail version of the game to at least avoid downloading 5+ GB of data (I don't have a lightning fast internet connection as you may have guessed already) but I got used to use steam and I don't mind it that much now (I am far from liking it though).
Game Community: I like to read about the games I play, discuss things with fellow player, ask for the occasional help and in general share my passion for videogames and I must admit I found a quite lively community which is certainly a plus in my book.
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Originally Posted by the man of doom
Most of the civ 4 vets went back to 4 though so maybe play SP for a while 
