I never was a Civ player, but through involvement in a different gaming community (Descent) I ended up as friends with the guy (Bob "Sirian" Thomas) who led the Civ IV alpha-testing effort. He noticed that they didn't have any inexperienced testers to look for the sorts of things that would make the game hard to understand for new players, so he asked me if I'd be willing to get involved.

In the middle of all of the balance tweaks the expert players were calling for, the devs took the time to listen to my newbie feedback along the lines of "every so often this chart showing political alliances pops up, but I have no idea how to trigger it intentionally" and they added easy-access buttons to the HUD for me. At one point I counted something like a dozen minor UI improvements that had come out of me saying "I don't understand what I'm doing". They, of course, didn't make any game-balance tweaks for me because I had no business even attempting to comment on game balance.

The fact that they knew not merely to listen, but what types of feedback to listen to from which testers, really made the game shine. They listened to experts when it came to strategy, and noobs when it came to discoverability, and all sorts of players when it came to general aesthetics and coolness. IMO a lot of game-design efforts could learn from that.

4 was by far the best 'classic' Civ experience. That being said, I think the one unit per tile change in Civ5 was needed and added a lot of strategy to actually fighting. My hope in Civ6 is that tiles are smaller and that cities and other features can take up multiple tiles.

I tried playing V. Probably spent 15 hours on it to make sure it was the game and not me. Finally decided that V and I just would never get along, and I went back to IV. Best of the series, imho.

Agreed. Civ 4 with Beyond the Sword was the pinnacle of the series I think.

Thousands of hours I lost in that game.

I prefer Alpha Centauri and Civ 3.

MOO2 was much more to my liking. (I still play it)

Civ end game are just brutally boring and just never really wanted to finish them. The start and middle were the best parts.

I agree. I like 5, in all the ways that it's different- but I always feel like 5 has a long expanse of seemingly meaningless turns until all of a sudden things get good. Then it will have another long lull between interesting events.

Maybe in a way, the team finally got their model of Civilization true to real life? :)

The Brave New World expansion really fixed this. With the world congress, trading and collecting art, there are no more meaningless turns in the game. Definitely try it out.

I bought all the expansions in a Steam sale (I think it was like $5 or $15 for all of them, couldn't press buy fast enough). You're definitely right about BNW having a lot more to do between turns. I kind of forgot that World Congress was part of the expansion- I can't remember playing Civ 5 without it. It's one of my favorite parts of the game, though I do wish it was a little easier or possible to get other civs to form a voting bloc.

It's not that difficult. You just need to have something another civ wants, and trade them for their vote on an issue. Also, you can form your own voting bloc by allying city-states.

4 removed it's anchor to the real world. I wasn't playing on earth anymore, along the tapestry of human history and invention, against the great leaders of every epoch.

It's just some fantasy land composed of abstract references to the real world, and I find it hard to care.

Most "expert-level" players seem to think so, as well. That said, the rest of the series are not at all bad games.

no, missed everything between alpha centauri and civ5. I just picked civ5 up out of nostalgia when the humble bundle ran it.

Civ 5 is definitely the weakest game in the series. I think Civ 4/Beyond the Sword was the highest point the series has yet reached.

That was my first impression, but I've actually found that I enjoy Civ 5 more. It's more dynamic and polished, and they've removed exactly these aspects of the game that I used to find annoying.

No Baba Yetu, though :(

I felt that way before the Civ5 expansions. Bounced right off of it. With the expansions, though, I enjoy Civ5 quite a lot. It is emphatically not the same game as Civ4BTS, which I still play pretty regularly too, but it's a pretty decent spin on the formula as far as I'm concerned.

I loved Civilization: Beyond Earth, except I could not stand the 500 turn limit. It killed the longevity of the game for me.