Civilization IV

The good news: multi-player capabilities have been expanded, the leaders for each nation state include a variety of personalities (i.e. Catherine the Great behaves differently than say Stalin), permanent alliances have been added and expanded, and they have tweaked the gameplay to allow for much faster games.

The bad news: It has all been 'cutesie-fied' with animations and graphics that lower rather than raise the realism. Ugh. Units will have a single combat value rather than the old defense/attack/move values - which I see as a move backwards - the a/d/m ratings date way back to military board games and to lose that linkage (not to mention the flexability of building different units) just irritates me. They've also added religion as one of the factors your nation has to navigate - which is fine to a point, but couldn't they have added a different bonus for athiest countries who eschew religion alltogether?

So, is it the debacle that Moo3 was? I doubt it. That sucking sound can still be heard. Is it going to surpass the gameplay of Civ3 Conquests? I doubt that too. Am I going to buy it when it comes out? Of course.