Now that spore is availble for everyone, is it better then civ, or just very different?

I voted for Spore just because I haven't played Civ in like a year and haven't missed it much. i've loaded it up a couple times, but I can't stick around for very long. I'm hoping Spore is different.

You are comparing different genre's.. a silly idea.

Yeah Civ 4 is a great game,
from what I read about Spore, it is not anything like Civ 4
It may become so after some patches and expansions...

I voted spore but I don't think it's better then civ3.

Yeah, I still play Civ3.

I think both have their merits. On occasion I like a challenge and on occasion I like to just do the dominating while going through the motions.

The civ/city phase plays much more like Command & Conquer than Civ of any version.

For me easily Civ 4 thanks to Fall from Heaven 2 Mod.
Otherwise i whould more likely have picked Option 4 with a slight leaning to 3.

Yeah, I still play Civ3.

Same here..

What isn't better than Civ4?

Two very different approaches and play mechanics, though similar topics. The only similiarity is that Soren designed both.

Soren was brought on to help finalise Civ and Space phases. In reality WW designed it, SJ was like the apprentice brought on to take the design bits WW couldn't fit into his schedule. :)

Spore is a piece of crap gameplay wise. It can't touch Civ4 in my opinion. It's interesting to me that they pulled off the part of the game I thought couldn't work, and utterly failed on the more conventional parts of making a game. There are very few 'interesting decisions' here.

Civ4 easily. Spore is basically just an editor, the stages are either poorly designed (Cell-Civ) or just a big unplayable mess (Space)

I like Spore right now but wait a few days until the "new game" effect wears off and I can give you an unbiased opinion then.