Revert to Saved File

One comment from the thread Scott linked to at Sadly, No! really captures it:

The question is, how many more turns of Anarchy until the Iraqis can select Democracy as their form of government? And do you get the feeling that the Bushies always play on Novice level, and frequently revert to saved files when things go wrong?

I get the sense that the Bush administration saved in May 2003, and doesn’t have its autosave turned on.

Speaking of Civ IV, the v1.61 patch seems to solve the crash issues that start to happen whenever I move into the modern age. I generally like Civ IV, although I have some quibbles. I don’t care for how they’ve nerfed shore bombardment, as you can only damage a city’s defenses, leaving its economic development and units safe. I also used to love send my fleet up and down an enemy coast, destroying improvements as they went. That doesn’t seem to be possible anymore, unless you have aircraft carriers. I also have to wonder why they decided, in both Civ III and Civ IV, to make ships essentially invulnerable to aircraft. My bombers can reduce a frigate or galleon 50%, but can’t sink it. This makes no sense. Improvements, especially of the cottage-hamlet-village-town type, are more valuable, making their defense (and a defense of territory rather than cities) more important.

The diplomatic system is good, and more transparent than the system in Civ III. The financial system also seems to be a little bit more open to manipulation, which is always a good thing in this kind of game. I haven’t played that much with the civics, haven’t really pursued a religious strategy yet, and haven’t done anything with specialists.

Good to be able to waste my life again…