/* delurks */

I don't often post to forums, but I have both Galciv 1 and 2, love them both (although I suck at both ), and just wanna add my congrats to the team at Stardock. You've developed a great game and a great franchise to build upon. Kudos to the indie developer....

T

/* lurk */

9.0 may seem slight relative to big brother CIV IV with a 9.4

But as has been said before and is worth saying again:

A 9.0 on Gamespot is a rarity, plain and simple. You should savor it.

One thing to understand on review sites like Gamespot (and magazines like CGW and CGM) is that there is no "entity" that writes the reviews - in most cases a majority of the reviews are written by freelancers. So, for example, the person who reviewed GC2 at Gamespot is not the person who wrote the review of Civ 4 and may not agree with the review comments and score that Civ 4 got. (in this case the reviewer is a big fan of CIv 4, but would not have given GC2 a lower score solely for lack of multiplayer since he never played the multiplayer part of CIv4. But's lets give creds to Civ 4 - it can be a great, mature, polished game without any slight to GC2 - if you like either one you should get the other, they'll be your two favorite games.)

But the editors who run the web sites and magazines do have the "opportunity" to adjust the reviewer's suggested score if they feel it is out of line or inconsistent with the rest of the site/mag. The amount they'll do that depends on the site/mag, the rep of the writer, and the article itself.

FWIW