In the middle of all of the balance tweaks the expert players were calling for, the devs took the time to listen to my newbie feedback along the lines of "every so often this chart showing political alliances pops up, but I have no idea how to trigger it intentionally" and they added easy-access buttons to the HUD for me. At one point I counted something like a dozen minor UI improvements that had come out of me saying "I don't understand what I'm doing". They, of course, didn't make any game-balance tweaks for me because I had no business even attempting to comment on game balance.
The fact that they knew not merely to listen, but what types of feedback to listen to from which testers, really made the game shine. They listened to experts when it came to strategy, and noobs when it came to discoverability, and all sorts of players when it came to general aesthetics and coolness. IMO a lot of game-design efforts could learn from that.
Thousands of hours I lost in that game.
MOO2 was much more to my liking. (I still play it)
Civ end game are just brutally boring and just never really wanted to finish them. The start and middle were the best parts.
Maybe in a way, the team finally got their model of Civilization true to real life? :)
It's just some fantasy land composed of abstract references to the real world, and I find it hard to care.
No Baba Yetu, though :(
