Civilization 4 (III)

Playing the second rounds of CivIV, this time trying to stick to a religion and spread it, I ended up founding not 1, not 2, but 3 (three) religions, meaning I was generally ahead of my competitors in Warlord level [That’s medium]. Close to achieving the Diplomatic Victory, ended up (another Time victory):

• Besides the ‘Fog of War’ bug, game play is good: my laptop is a 512 MB, Intel 82852/82855 GME card (64 MB) with a 2.4 GHz Pentium 4. Problematic is generally the endgame between 20 turns and 5 turns: I expect 1 GB will make a great difference. Turn off virus scanners for sure: I had problems installing the game with McAfee on.
• CivIII is a joke. On warlord level, the AI is about the same strength as Civ III. However, the Diplomacy AI is stronger than I initially expected. A couple of times I was caught with my pants down when Opening borders to ‘allies’.
• The UN features are limited. Handy to make it to Secretary-General (ban nuclear missiles is definitely the first thing you should do)
• The music is actually great. Firaxis opted to go for recorded music from major record companies: from classical [Brahms, Bach] to modern [John Adams’ ‘The People are Heroes Now’]. 440 Meg of MP3 goodness. Hey, was that ‘Edelweiss’ I heard there? Har-Har!
  The titel song is actually great for a change. It be nice to see a credit list for the music.

Next game.