Quote Originally Posted by Simon Appleton
Imp2 is very much a game first and feels rather "gamey". For example, armies can teleport into surrounded provinces. As a historical simulation, this would be unacceptable but as a game it is arguably justified as it helps get a fairly good AI.
I have to disagree with that. I think it's overall a very good simulation as well as being a good game.

The "teleporting armies" feature is one that used to bother me too, to such a degree that at one stage I stopped playing because I felt it was too unrealistic. But when you think about it, given that each turn is a year in length it's really not so strange that armies can "teleport" anywhere from one turn to another. Also, you can only teleport armies from one continent to another so long as they start in a port, so it's not as though movement is completely unrestricted.

Quote Originally Posted by Simon Appleton
But the particular selling point of Imp2 IMO is how it minimises the micromanagement that plagues Civ. With Civ, you have to micromanage each city's economy and this gets onerous in the late game when you have dozens of cities. In Imp2, you have economy wide sliders for everything and need very few "agents" (builders & engineers etc) even when the empire is large so the micromanagement does not get excessive.
Yes, that's a very good analysis of why Imp2 is more fun.

I always enjoy the early part of Civ when you just have a handful of cities but after that it all becomes a bit of a chore. And the combat system in Civ is crap. Unfortunately it looks like they are more or less going to retain that system in Civ4, which will be a big disappointment. I was really hoping for something better in the next instalment.