A new Civilization game has been announced.

[TinCow]

One of my favorite aspects of Civ 4 is how multiplayer friendly it is. My wife and I regularly play games together and it's immensely easy and fun. There are even 'deathmatch' style maps that are designed for multiplayer and team games. So many options to make the game exactly what you want it to be. Pretty much any style of play you've ever had in any of the previous Civ games can be duplicated in some manner.

I agree that it's not really "new" in any sense, but I think the proper way to look at Civ 4 is that it comes closer to perfecting the game than any other version, especially if you play with the Warlords expansion. If there was one thing I could change about the game, it would be to make the tech tree larger. That said, they've done an excellent job of making sure that the game is balanced. There's nothing that's too overpowered or underpowered. Everything can be countered by something (except possibly Praetorians in the ancient era).