Very nice upgrade from Civ III. And still playable for us folks with limited brain power.

While some aspects haven't aged well (the doomstacks borderline ruin combat once you're spoiled by Civ 5's One Unit Per Tile even though people complained about it when 5 came out), there's still a lot to love about Civ IV. I always loved how micromanaging the cities felt in this one with things like health to take care of and the very large food/gold/production icons on the tiles, and the web-style diplomacy screen that actually gives you a visual map of who's at war with who or who has peace treaties with who is such an elegant design it's shocking it was dropped from later installments given those games focus on streamlining. I think diplomacy in general is at it's best in IV, the characters feel like more of a presence and I love the little mini-window so it feels like they're just dropping by instead of dominating your whole view while you're trying to do something. Defensive pacts don't really trigger that often in 5, but here they're a crucial part of politicking and lots of fun (one time I had pacts with everyone except Mao and kept deliberately trying to make him angry to goad him into attacking me but he never bit. It was hilarious).

Oh and it introduced the world to Baba Yetu which has far transcended its videogame origins and been played at the signing of actual peace treaties ( google "Baba Yetu Mozambique peace treaty"). If that's not the single most GOATed music track in the entire medium I don't know what is. Maybe the Mario theme but I dunno, Mario never signed a peace treaty with anyone.

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