Hello everyone,
I've been lurking for a while and finally decided to register. I've been playing the Civilization series of games ever since Civ I in 1992. I played a lot of I and II, some III and IV, and now I'm focusing on V. I still have a soft spot for some aspects of IV, especially the random events, the vastly improved diplomacy, and the rock-paper-scissors aspect of combat, i.e., units specialized against other types of units, which could be stacked together for protection.
I was slow to warm to V, especially 1UPT and the "randomized" or "chaotic stupid" AI approach to diplomacy, but I've been won over by the gorgeous graphics, the city-state system, the sheer number of unique civilizations, and the tremendous number of options available through religion, trade routes, and the World Council. The monotony that crept into earlier versions of Civ is gone.
I must be the only player who learned V by winning the Polynesia "Paradise" scenario four times in a row, once with each faction.
I mostly play on King level because I'm still learning, and I like to have the flexibility to try suboptimal strategies or policy choices, especially role-playing. If I play Egypt I will open Liberty just to build the Pyramids
and if I am Japan you can bet that I will go for Himeji Castle and Shinto.
Immortal and Deity seem to be like playing grandmaster level chess, where every move is planned out in advance and there is only one winning strategy. That does not sound like much fun to me.
Anyway, I hope I can learn more about this game before VI comes out!