People actually play Civ5?

I originally thought civ 5 was way better than Elemental, and I now feel really dumb. It seems Elemental is actually evolving into a very nice game, even if I wouldn't recommend it for the moment. Civ 5 will probably be allright with full conversion mods (as the editor's policy tends toward simplified strategy games, the gameplay is quite straightforward).

Yea, Civ5 sadly had no replayability for me either which was... unexpected.  I played a couple full games after it came out and I just have no desire to load it up again.

Full conversion mods are nice, but you can't run them in multiplayer... or have animations in multiplayer... or successfully load a saved game in multiplayer... and since I typically play Civ with my friends, well...

Coding multi-threaded anything is hard to teach.   And it's not so much the coding as it is the debugging and testing.   The bugs are non-reproducible most of the time, and you have to have thorough knowledge of how the code works to think of ways you might get unplanned for out-of-order execution.

I couldn't agree more.

I'm very surprised that my earlier predictions I made to myself came out somewhat right. From the start I kinda expected Civ V to be a bit of a letdown. I could tell because they seemed like they were kinda taking a few steps back from Civ IV in the pre-release news. Elemental, however, I expected would be kind of a niche-type game, but would eventually evolve into a better, albiet less well-known, 4X game.

Well, the number of people who buy a sequel based on previous games is not necessarily related to the number of people who frequently play the sequel.

Best regards,
Steven.

Forget about the multi-threading, just teach them how to program AI.

The bastards are taking their time patching that game, and it would not suprise me that they were pouring most of their resources into an expansion pack rather than improving the game that I bought, never had a crash, it's just damn boring, first Civ game I have ever disliked.

I jump onto the 2k forums now and then to stir up the fanboys.

Civ games generally suck until the complete version with all the xpacks is released. That's when they've finally gone through enough iterations and play to be fun. That's also when mods tend to kick into high gear, since all sorts of modding functionality is added over that period, and since an SDK is usually released sometime near then. 

Heck, I only bought Elemental after all the xpacks were offered free with a purchase because I expected exactly that. If you don't, you have unrealistic expectations about the skill of developers and the quality of testing possible. No development office has enough money or time to put the game through enough testing or development to get it right prior to release, full stop. It's only after it's released into the wild and people start breaking it and complaining about this and that feature that it can be appropriately honed. 

So in about five years we'll have two excellent strategy games to pick from -- Elemental and Civ5. And until then, we'll have whiny threads full of posters with buyer's remorse.

Civ 4 bored me right out of the gate.  I ended up letting my brother have my copy.

The new features seemed more annoying than interesting.  As for Civ V, well I'm focused on Elemental at the moment.  The setting is more interesting.  You can only beat up on the Russians, Egyptians, etc. so many times before it loses the thrill. 

Plus, Elemental is easier to mod than I originally expected ,and has me wondering about doing a GalCivII mod now.  This is something that I never really felt the need for in Civ (i.e. the units in other unit's clothing syndrome).

If Brad is able to develop an awesome AI for Elemental, well that should be his little trade secret.  The Bees will know, though...

The issue with civ is not just crappy AI. It's "streamlining" and overall direction. I know each civ got better with patches and expansions, but V is beyond any hope.

I've created a small artwork of upcoming Civ VI: