I was genuinely impressed with Civ IV, though I hadn't played the earlier games. It definitely is one of the more dynamic strategy games, and the constant acquisition of new types of units allow (or force) you to constantly adapt your strategies. I spent countless days playing the game last year. At first I thought this was definitely a "desert island" game too, but after I'd played through several campaigns I got tired of it and moved on. The thrill of a game like this is really in learning rules and strategies, and getting to see all the different types of units from all the eras. Although a game like this offers far more replayability than most games, there is a limit.

I might not feel this way if the game wasn't so technically off. It's very unstable, and crashed repeatedly on my PC. There's a version out for the Mac, but from what I hear, it's also unstable. It's extremely frustrating to lose an hour of gameplay to a random crash, and it's also a pain to have to save the game so much. Once you get a big enough game going, forget it. You'll be lucky to last 10 minutes before a crash.

However, I'm already eager to see what Civ V will look like! Hopefully they'll get that memory leak fixed!