

Civilization 4 was good at launch. Naturally it got even better over time.
Worth a mention that 4 is the most recent of these games released primary on physical hardware. That meant patching was a more difficult process so they actually had to hire a bunch of play testers to test stuff (and fix the problems they found). Contrast that to the approach of the most recent three games, which had their customers pay $70 for the privilege of being beta testers.
This is a shitty way to develop games. We should be mad about it because we deserve better.
Did they ever open up Civ VI’s code the way they did for IV and V? Prior to VII coming out, they hadn’t left any way for modders to do the kind of deep dive total conversion mods which happened with the older games.