Quote Originally Posted by ah_dut
Do you people think it's worth forking out £35 or thereabouts or is there a better game to get at the moment (legally bearing in mind I'm under 15 and have no credit card etc)
Remember you're taking a risk with your money given that lots of folks are having problems running it. If you really want to buy it, try and buy it from a store that has a good refund policy so you can get your money back if it doesn't work.

But Kek's advice ain't bad. If you haven't played a Civ game before, get a copy of Civ3 with the Conquests expansion. You should be able to pick them up for a song. It will give you a feel for the Civ paradigm and whether you like it or not.

Civ4 has better graphics, but in many ways it's not much different from its predecessor. And there are some features of Civ3 that are actually better - the human advisors for example.

The one thing I would do before playing Conquests is go into the game editor and wind corruption back to about 50%. At the default 100% setting, it's just an exercise in frustration.