Any great game (as for great books or movies) has a "quid" that make it great.
Keeping it to the follower, while improving it enough to make sense to buy the new version, is of course the most difficult part of the job.
We can't forget that as years pass and available technology changes, the customer are ready to raise their expectations.
Sometime a game series simply squeeze any juice available, and the genre needs a fresh restart. Sometime the designers make a great job and grab the gamers interest once again.
I suppose any players feedback is whorty, because Firaxis must feel us as really interested, to keep up and make a great job.
For me a player (as any consumer) should aim a bit higher to have a worthwile game, but others prefer minor tweak.
That open an interesting debate of where future strategic games must aim: large customization can be an interesting proposal, just to obtain a unique main game structure (the core engine) with lot of customized module (extension) attached on.
Just look what happened on Doom / Quake world, with some common engine under some quite different games. Stretch this concept to some limits and... what about special edition of the same game?
I'll be back on this argument in a few days, if someone is interested.
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Admiral Naismith AKA mcostant
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