There's a patch already, huh?
How many patches were there for the original Civ? Five or more, I think? How many patches were there for Master of Orion I and II, and Master of Magic? At least three each -- I think it was more. For that matter, how many patches have there been for SE IV now? Seven?
This is the 'software business' today. You don't FINISH anything. That's too expensive. You get it to the point where it's good enough not to be embarrassing at first use -- that is, you have 'plausible deniability' that you didn't know it wasn't really finished.
Then you release it and hype it with lots of advertizing. Some games don't even have plausible deniability, of course. (cough)Outpost(cough) Then you gather the bug reports from your paying beta testers and start releasing patches. It works this way in business software, too. At least MS has had the grace to call its public beta phase a beta phase, and treat it that way, for new Versions of Windows since the 32-bit Versions started coming out.
I'd say wait another year and then get the 'latest' Civ III at that point. That's what I intend to do. Same for Master of Orion III, frankly. I wouldn't be dumb enough to believe the hype and buy it as soon as it's released. That's the public beta not the final game.
For that matter, SE IV Gold is finally gonna be what SE IV was supposed to be. It's the nature of the industry. Everyone is in a huge rush and thinks that anyone who takes the time to actually finish a major piece of software will end up publishing an obsolete 'white elephant'. And guess what, everyone rushing along with the same belief makes it true.
The whole industry is a herd of sheep forcing itself over a cliff. So, to avoid frustration I have resigned myself to always using obsolete software. I'm currently running Windows 98 and will not upgrade to XP until there's a next generation released. By then it won't be too expensive to own hardware that can run it fast, either.
Run the previous generation of software on the current generation of hardware and performance is not an issue. And the worst bugs will already be fixed.
[ 20 December 2001: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]