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Improvement? If you loved previous Civilizations, and would love to play the newer, more improved version, then please don't buy this game. I have beat this collection on the Emperor difficulty level. (I play CIV II on Deity difficulty every time, and I always win) But I am not pleased with my accomplishment on the Emperor level of this game, especially when considering my experiences on the next highest difficulty level. The most important thing to consider when buying this game is this: Do you want the game to be challenging strategically? Or do you want the game to be pure number of units vs. number of units? I recently played a few games on the difficulty level above Emperor. I noticed a consistent streak of my units, when attacking computer units in the beginning era of the game, to suffer loss after loss, regardless of unit variables. The streak was so completely biased in favor of the AI, that I decided to check it, by reloading the game a few times, with the random, or should I say "random", seed retained. In the three tests I did, I had archers going against the spearman of their one city. In the three tests I undertook, I lost these many units: 7 archers in Test 1, 9 archers in Test 2, 9 archers in Test 3, before I won a SINGLE BATTLE, and furthermore, the AI had CLEAN SWEEPS of my attackers, measured by hitpoints, at a ratio of 8 to 1. The Archer unit has an attack value of 2. The Spearman unit has a defense value of 2. I witnessed ridiculous streaks of 15-20 hitpoint battles won in a row by the AI. I have rarely seen such streaks of success by my defenders, upon being attacked by the AI, when I had the HIGHER defense values, including "bonuses". I have NEVER witnessed such streaks when my units had the same defense values as the AI attacking units, INCLUDING the situations where I had defensive "bonuses", and all of my observations were on the difficulty levels of Emperor and below, which discounts the theory that what I have experienced was because of the higher "difficulty" level. In other words, their defenders, on supposedly defense-free grasslands, in supposedly defense-free towns, without the defensive bonus of city walls, beat my attackers, in three separate reloads, 25 to 0, with me scoring a few hit points, and with their defenders clean-sweeping my attackers (the AI winning battles without losing a hitpoint), at a ration of 8 to 1, before I took out their FIRST defender, who had the same defense value as my attack value. This game is a fraud. The designers of the game, in response to several message boards, presenting similar studies as above, posted on the longest running Civilizations fan-sites that exist, such as Apolyton and CivFanatics, swear that the AI does not gain any battle advantage on any difficulty level, much less the higher ones. Guess what? Their lying. Test if for yourself. Waste whatever money you have on this collection, or the other previous incarnations of this game. Go right ahead.