If I've *never* played this game, should I start with vanilla?

CyTroll said:

Although I still haven't figured out if railroads made it into the final release or not (I'm still in 1600s in my first RAR marathon speed game).

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They got renamed to some massive wagon train unit as using steam in the 17th century didn't make much sense. The concept of having a great unit, which requires special roads is still there though. It's just a graphical change.

CyTroll said:

Nightinggale, I'll definitely give RARE a go after this game btw. I was just hoping to see a final version come out before.

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I'm not sure there is ever a final. There is no active development right now, but it picks up if/when bugs are found or somebody wants to make something new and interesting.

CyTroll said:

I'm a veteran player, probably older than most of you here and since I have become a father,

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I'm not sure about that statement. The forum users tend to be older than the reputation, especially the modders. I for one remember when civ 1 came out. I also remember how awesome it was to get a 40 MB HD, which meant I didn't have to switch floppies while playing.

CyTroll said:

I have taken a completely different approach to PC games. Instead of rushing on every new version of my favorite game franchises as soon as they hit the shelves, I now tend to wait a couple of years before buying them so that:
a) I can get all the extensions in one buy (and typically at a good price too)
b) I get the final official patches from the beginning

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I completely agree with that one. I bought Neverwinter Nights 1+expansions when the second came out and shipping was half the price. Even better, the last patch included an official no-cd patch. When I bought NWN2 SoZ (the newest expansion) it had problems with long loading times (part of the reason why it gained low review scores). With the computer I have now, it loads nearly instantly. It wasn't on release due to the frequent load screens. Interestingly it seems to me throttled by CPU data decompression rate or memory cache I/O speed rather than HD speed.

CyTroll said:

d) I also have immediate access to final versions of the best mods out there

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On the other hand, I regret I didn't join the modding community until 2013. Imagine what it would have been like if I was one of the first to mod the civ4 dll. However I was still a student back then and wasn't as skilled as I am now.

CyTroll said:

e) incidentally, I can also get by with hardware that is slightly outdated by latest standards.

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True, but also the games tend not to lag or wait at newturn. NWN2 SoZ is a good example of games being released before the players have the needed hardware.

Yeah, I was there for Civ1 as well. My earliest significant PC game memory is Wizardry I (Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord) and Ultima 3 (Exodus). I used to play these on first generation Mac (without HD...).