To me, III was the sweet spot.<p>IV added some interesting ideas, and could have worked really well, but the interface and design was an ugly mess.<p>V sorted the interface and design, but seemed a very shallow shadow of the former game.  It also seemed to want a ludicrous amount of resources - a simple isometric view that always seemed to need as much PC power as Far Cry.  Games bogged down to plain slow from mid game on - too much turn waiting, not enough playing.  I gave up on V quicker than any previous Civ and spent most of my Civ time since in Europa Universalis.<p>If I buy VI at all it&#x27;ll be after it&#x27;s been out long enough to have plenty of <i>real</i> reviews and opinions on how well they did.  Some of the ideas sound interesting, but the real test is how the balance ends up.<p>Don&#x27;t like the cutesy graphics style though, so would hope for a mod or post-processing fix.