Hmmm... difficult question. I think I try to do the same as yourself; finish and polish everything as much as possible, before letting anybody play it. -As you say, some errors are bound to show up, especially if you're modifying the whole package. On the other hand, some new ideas might pop-up during the playtesting, so I think its good if there is some room left to implement them. -So I guess you can do it both ways around. My previous scn "Hammer.." was playtested with an early version. Jesûs Munoz (kIndal) tested as the Danes, and another friend of mine played the same version as the Celts. And both games gave me quite different and very helpful perspectives, so when I made the changes I thought was needed, it really wasn't tested much after that, by others than myself.
With classic Civ2, I found it quite beneficial just to turn on "no human player" and watch the AI fight it out. Somehow this don't works with MGE, (or I may be wrong, it might be settings dependable), but here you don't get to see computer player movements slowly enough to see what's going on. -This was somewhat beneficial in order to judge long-term effects of the tech race -rate of tech exchange, what kind of units appearing when etc. -But of course, only playing it yourself will give you any idea of the real playability of it all! -Taking over an AI controlled tribe in midgame gave me a good feeling of what was going on at that time.
-But it was very much like this : playing it, oops there was a flaw there, fix it, play some more, a minor error, fix it, play again, so I didn't actually play a full game without altering anything until after the scn was finished. At that time, it was more like : sit back and just play it, oh, this could be done better, but there it is, this is very funny, but what can I do about it, it's the rules, and if I'm gonna beat him, I have to do this and that. And then it was quite fun!
-There's certainly a limit to perfection! -and as you have said before, the fun of it is no.1 -so if a few things is a bit iffy, it doesn't matter so much, if it works and is fun to play.
-It's only after playing it a LOT lately that I realize a couple of really basic things (such as techs), which REALLY should be altered for the next version, to make it even more playable and historically interesting.
I think what other people can do is very much in the way of play balance, to try out different tribes and strategies, and see how the concepts works out -long term-, as you can't possibly play it all out yourself, because you often get used to just your own kind of thinking. But other players will never fully understand how you've done the tech tree or set things up, so that's all left with you.
