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I haven't. I'm just a tad bitter about the whole situation and although I'm sure the unofficial patch is great I think what I really need is a break from 4x for a bit.
Check out Battle Brothers. Way above average for what is. So long as you are at least somewhat partial to a spot of harcore TB combat I'd wager it'd beat another swing at Tyranny. Moreover it runs sweet as a nut with ne'er a bug in sight.
As for your question, I think my answer will not be very "satisfactory" unfortunately, but I'll give it a try anyway:
The reasons why I say that are:
a) Literally no recent game has upheld the quality standards (when it comes to bugs) of the great games of the past (or at least that's how it seems to me, it's possible that without the internet we were simply unaware of many bugs back in the day).
b) Most recent games change so dramatically (and frequently) with patches, add-ons and DLCs that it's frankly hard to even manage to discuss about them without confusion (e.g. maybe version 1.0 is incomplete, 1.1 is a buggy mess, version 1.2 is boring, version 1.3 is amazing and version 1.4 introduces new game-braking bugs or something).
c) I'm personally finding very little enjoyment in 4X games lately. Maybe it's all these factors that I mentioned above (and in my retrospective), but it's also possible that a big part of my disappointment could simply be attributed to me, as I have much less free time (and much less patience) than I used to. I also buy a lot more games now (almost anything 4X that comes out) than I used to (because I want to support 4X developers) but I consequently have less time to spare for each and I give up on them very quickly if they don't "ensnare" me from the get-go.
Note on "patience": I never had much of it even when I was younger (and even less today) and I never truly enjoyed struggling to "decipher" how a game works, which is why my favorite games of the past where those with the most detailed manuals and/or great tutorials and comprehensive in-game encyclopedias that laid bare all the rules and mechanics in a very clear and transparent way, much like a great teacher explaining a complex subject with simple and intuitive concepts. I'm sure that I'd be into more modern 4X games if they bothered to provide that kind of tutorial/manual.
So, having said the above, it should come as no surprise that the games that I truly love (and fully "fit my criteria") belong to the distant past. Specifically, these 4X (and "4X-lite") games would be: Civilization 1 (Mac/"Civnet" version), Civilization 2, Alpha Centauri, Medieval: Total War 1 and 2, Heroes of Might & Magic 3 and 5. I find these games to be not just nearly flawless but also (for me) perfectly standing the test of time even after all these years.
In addition to that, there are some -slightly more recent- games that I have "enjoyed" enough (but not loved, as each has their own flaws that make them not fully fit the "criteria"), such as: Civilization 5 and Beyond Earth, Endless Space 1 and StarDrive 2 (preferably the versions with all the expansions). I've tried getting into Endless Legend and Endless Space 2, Distant Worlds, Civilization 6, Stellaris, Age of Wonders 3, Star Ruler 2, Galactic Civilizations 3 and Master of Orion: Conquer the Stars but with only minor success with just a few of them (Endless Legend, Civ 6 and Stellaris). This inability to find enjoyment in games that thousands of people seemingly adore has made me honestly ponder if "there is something wrong with me" though (as shown in my posts here) I have also pin-pointed a lot of reasons why those games don't align with what I truly look for in a 4X game.
The problem is all those old games had bugs. Everyone wants to look back at the old Civ or MoO games or whatever as completely beautiful bug-free creations. They weren't. They had problems with them, some critical problems. They games you get on GOG now-a-days are not the same thing you bought in 1991 or 1993 or whatever. They're updated, fixed versions. CD Projekt took the time to fix many of them or developers went back and fixed those games themselves. PC gaming has ALWAYS been a buggy mess. We don't remember it that way very well because as kids we didn't really care.
And you're not even listing old 4X games that were horrible about bugs like When Two Worlds War, Master of Magic, Star Wars Rebellion, and so on. The 90's had tons of bugs.
I never played any of the specific games you mention (I also didn't play any of the MOO series during my youth, so I didn't mention them in my examples -good or bad- either). Also my references are not to the GoG (or even Steam) versions of any of those games but to the "disc" versions I got back then (e.g. Medieval 1 on Steam now is super-buggy, keeps crashing, but I had 0 problems with the disc version). Though I'm sure they had their share of bugs (no software is ever free of them), for the 7 classic games I list I honestly never experienced anything bothersome in the hundreds of hours I played them (e.g. I don't count bugs like the Ghandi AI going "nuclear", it's not bothersome but funny, interesting even. Now, if an AI bugged and stopped building units that would be problematic, if the game crashed all the time, got stuck between turns, often glitched graphically, etc, that would be even worse. But it really didn't happen with those particular games in my particular system back then).
And also this. Bugs are just another "symptom" of a bigger problem, that modern designers (due to increased complexity, using 3rd party game engines, early access, easy to patch digital distribution, etc.) lose track of the "whole" picture, no longer bother to define (for themselves, not us) when a game is sufficiently "feature complete" and no longer put any thought on how to best "teach" the game to the players (because also what to teach if it constantly changes? ). And I don't have the patience to try and decipher with trial and error what complex mechanism they have implemented each time.
I'm truly sympathetic with the plight of modern developers, I've seen from up close how difficult it is to navigate the field between buggy engines like Unity and the astronomical demands for state-of-the art graphics, animation, AI and so on (all for lower selling prices than in the past). I'm even in awe of people like Dan DiCicco of StarDrive and what he's managed to create as a solo developer.
However, all these reasons are really pretty irrelevant from the perspective of players. Unfortunately the end result is the only thing that matters, and if a game's greater complexity/more content also causes it to have bugs that -specifically- reduce player enjoyment (or waste the players' time) then the tradeoff is not worth it, in my opinion.
In conclusion, if any of you enjoy modern 4X games more than the old ones (and are not bothered by any of the aforementioned problems) that's absolutely amazing and I'm so very happy for you! For me though, the experience in my favorite game genre has been nothing but frustration and disappointment for some time now. And though I keep buying and trying anything that comes up in the genre (and will always do so, if I can afford it, to support the devs) I truly feel that something has gone fundamentally wrong in how 4X game development has evolved. Maybe (probably) I'm in a tiny minority that believe this and maybe I'm as much to "blame" for my lack of enjoyment as the devs, but hey, that's why we discuss our opinions in a forum.
I look at it differently. If you do not want to endure the "paid" beta... AKA gold release that can last up to 18 months after release, then I saw wait to buy the game. This is both a benefit for you and a warning to the developers.
You get a solid game at discount, and the developer has to keep working on the game and then make less for it.
Or...
The developers stop releasing buggy messes!
I don't agree with modern games having more content. They seem to have less mechanics and less well thought out and polished mechanics. Keep in mind when I mention content I also mean AI quality, depth in combat both early and late game. When the polish isn't there, when the mechanics serve only to slow the game down as to pad out the game time (Stellaris's warscore mechanics or Civ's warmonger stuff comes to mind) then the content is less than old games.
Are we looking at the genre as a whole? or game by game?
New games as a whole.
That is true, but the AI actually put up a fight and you know, weren't completely unable to play the game. The only exception I think would be Master of magic, where the AI really was that terrible.