I have to confirm champ , ban or masteries 57 seconds before time ends , because it wont save in time Funny enough , I still have about 100 fps in game . <| sep |> Personally I think IV was the best . The AI was pretty reasonable , the map selectiongeneration was good , there ' s tons of modded content out there that can easily downloaded , and the game is balanced with opportunity cost , not with limits or restrictions . If you want a comparison to V or VI , tall and wide are both viable , unit costs feels much cheaper you can build a balance of units and infrastructure if you do it right , naval combat is completely different , and the tech tree is less linear . Also , there ' s a fantastic civic system that really allows you to specialize your empire . By the way , I feel that IV has the best diplomacy of any civ game . The quality of the AI is a real strength of Civ IV . It ' s pretty smartbalanced on monarch difficulty without the AI getting cheaty . I ' d recommend getting Civ IV and playing it with the BTS expansion . It may seem difficultcomplicated at first , but the UI is informative and It ' s clear how the game progresses . Achieving that advancement , however is a different matter , and that ' s the beauty of the game design . The game will let you try pretty much anything , but that doesn ' t mean that all those choices are viable . It ' s for you to figure out is a better to build a cottage and work that early , or to build a mine ? It ' s apples and oranges , but you ' ve still got to make the choice and the game doesn ' t tell you what the answer is . It tells you explicitly what each option does , but you have to figure out which is better if there is a better choice , and in which situations each choice is better . Maybe it ' s better to produce a unit directly , but maybe it ' s better to sacrifice a population or two to make it instantly . That ' s for you to decide as the player .