There's a line between "bug" and "game-breaking flaw", and some of what I listed crosses it. Rather than correct these issues, the past 3 patches have done things like INTRODUCE bugs into overflow, spread culture missions, and "balance" the game by making barb galleys spawn 4x as often. Yeah, THOSE were DEFINITELY priorities over unit selection working and having the victory conditions balanced. Absolutely...provided you're on some kind of illegal substance.
Sure, every game has bugs, but most post-release games that anybody considers good do not carry high-impact flaws with direct gameplay for years.
Starcraft II has been out for one month and is already a more complete game, despite some balance issues (which can't even touch the singular issue with spawn balance in civ IV, mind you), but even if we ignore a model company, games like the much-maligned call of duty: MW2 have fewer bugs (and some of them were actually patched in timely fashion), LESS (though not 0) interface lies to the player, and better resource optimization. In fact most games that are rated as "good" manage a FAR better handling of bugs than civ IV, and did it years and years sooner, usually by the time they were released.
Maybe it's because the guys rating civ IV don't understand the game at all (Inca being called one of the worst civs is a prime example). Maybe it's ignorance/apathy from the community. Maybe it's the game version of "beer goggles", and most people somehow think this game is well-made. Maybe its the sad lack of good TBS competition at the moment. I don't know.
What I do know is that civ IV is OBJECTIVELY an incomplete game, and they're releasing a sequel in 22 days. I have serious issues with that, and frankly I'm somewhat appalled that I am in the minority in that regard. There is a reason that most of my youtube videos have gone over to starcraft 2, and that is because it is a LOT less frustrating to play it. Things like the apostolic palace and the ridiculously flawed diplo engine in this game make the cheesiest proxy gateways, 6 pools, and turtlewalls look like 100% fun and balanced things to counter. Bad as proxy gateway is (it's being patched in 1.1 WHAT A CONCEPT), it is nowhere near the imbalance and stupidity of the AP...and yet look! They're already tweaking its impact on the game in 1 month.
Civ IV brought us a patch with attention to relative spawn positions (and not just the broken capitol evaluation) by...oh wait, they *never* did that. Okay, but at least they fixed unit selection finall...aw hell. It's ok though, because in the vaunted BTS expansion they finally added strategy to the AI for each VC rather than slapping on mass bonu...wait no, that was Jdog and his betterAI team. BTS only taught the AI to stop tech and vassal whore itself for culture, none of the other VCs are even actively considered. Well, at least they made SURE the correct code for overflow in the unofficial patch was not implemented in 3.19 and left it that way officially
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See a pattern here? It's not a pattern you see from GOOD companies that make GOOD games.
Not fixed in 5 years. Not ever going to be fixed, by the looks. Good companies fix things in their games, especially gameplay-breaking things. As much as I've loved civ over the time I've been here, every stack-move with a worker, every worker moving into known danger w/o interruption, every BS accidental DoW, every game I've had to deal with a GUI that lies to me has taken a toll. The guys in charge have made it clear they care more about bells and whistles than actual, BASIC gameplay, and that is an excruciatingly unfortunate decision in a strategy game (or any game for that matter).
