What's the point?
I already know that I would have given up on this game in less than a month if Stardock wouldn't have made any patches. I have no desire to relive all the bugs from the retail version.
Thankfully, more and more of the bugs from the retail version are fixed with each patch. Maybe one day they will have fixed them all and can turn their attention to all the incorrect text that has been in the game since it's release.

Sure, Stardock makes many and good patches but that's mainly because there have been so much to fix.

Want some cheese with that? Sheesh... can you point to a game which wasn't buggy when released?

Where did I give the impression that I thought it was a terrible game? If it was, I would certainly not be here now.
I said that it had lots of bugs. Many of them are gone now which makes it easier for me to enjoy the game.

Want some cheese with that? Sheesh... can you point to a game which wasn't buggy when released?

I'm glad that the "all new games are buggy"-excuse is working for you.

Can you point to any large software release that didn't have bugs? I know you can't, because there's no such thing, certainly not in the PC games market. OTOH, I can point to plenty that were released and then once the publishers had the money they did little or nothing afterwards. So it's not an "excuse", it's a fact of life: large software projects have bugs. Deal with it.

That to the side, the main point of this thread is NOT bugs but the improvements and changes. The OP was making the point that this game has been significantly developed and improved since it was released, and that it could be instructive and entertaining to play a 1.0 game so that we could appreciate all the work that has been done after we've paid our money. We're entitled to expect bugs to be patched - and they are being - but the improvements and enhancements we've got for free are a real bonus. When you post stuff like "Sure, Stardock makes many and good patches but that's mainly because there have been so much to fix." you sound pretty surly and ungrateful.

Complex games that are bug-free simple aren't doable with a reasonable budget, I guess. If games costed double or more, people would complain as well (and even more so, maybe). It's a bit sad, but that's what "Realgaming" looks like.

AND it would take the double time to develop. that just wont pay off. or stardock could have made multiplayer. (though some sort of hot seat would be rather simple anyway)

That's one way to see it. I prefer to think that more people would buy more computer games if they were fairly bug-free upon release.

Imagine: two game are released. one costs 100$ and the other 50$. as the first even took more time to develop, it looks rather old. And you dont even know which one is more bugfree b4 you played it. Dont tell me you would buy the old expensive one.
As I have already seen game which were far more bug free and i have seen games that were far more bugged on release than GCII.
The ones which were bugged were only released cause someone went out of money to pay the devs. thats almost a disease of new games (which seem to spreed atm.)

Conclusion:
To be honest, there were alot of things that should have been fixed b4 the release of GCII. But at least they fixed most of it in recent patches. Still there will be alot more patches as our (really) lovely GCII devs are doing their best to fix them all. But sometimes i feel like their priorities are a bit odd and they SHOULD let more moderators deal with the community to spend more time to develop the game.

A software engineer responds ...

All software is full of bugs.

Over the years computer software has become more and more sophisticated often involving millions of lines of code. It is a practical impossibility to test every path through the software and eradicate every bug.

Here is a little test for you - try writing a one or two page document (any subject, doesn't matter), read it, correct any errors you spot in spelling or grammer. Now give it to someone else. How many mistakes do they spot. Multiply that by the "millions of lines" factor above and weep.

Add on the fact that every piece of software we now write is dependent on many many millions of lines of other peoples software underneath it - the operating system, graphics card drivers, sound card drivers, ... weep some more.

Then there are numerous flavours of the operating system to contend with Windows 98, NT, 2000, XP (at least three flavours of that alone) ... weep some more.

You have to draw a line when you think it is good enough to let out the door - and, yes, economics does come into it.

Then there is the fact that one persons bug is another persons concious design decision. It is dismaying, but not surprising any more, how often I see "this bug must be fixed" comments that are talking about something they don't personally like about the design of the game - not a bug at all.

I personally love this idea of going back to the old version, it could be quite a refreshing and eye-opening experience to see just how much has changed in a few short months.

Incidentally - the person asking why its called a bug - see this Wiki article: Wiki - software bug

personally, i think people are too hard on programmers since they have no idea how complicate a program can be... oh well c'est la vie

Speaking of which, why the heck are they even called bugs? Why not axes? Because they make the game so choppy!!!111 Lololololol

Because early computer were also mechanical and real bugs made them to malfunction.
Since then every malfunction was called a bug.

The 1.0 release is just a so so game. Just look at how they changed the population growth. Heck the 1.0 release had lower population growth than the manual says population growth is ( .20M/turn ) and from 1.1 ( .075M/turn )on it is at least half of 1.0 i think. My conclusion is the 1.0 wasn't play balanced hardly at all if population growth had to be adjusted that much. I will say that 1.2 is a totally great game and i hope that they always have a download option for update 1.2 which for me is when GC2 became a great game.

1) It wouldn't need to cost twice as much, not even close to that. Fixing the last major bugs won't double the development time.

But you wanted a completely bug free game. Everything less is just a question if the producer think that it is bug free enough to be released and if it would be economic to delay the release anymore. And in my example the game for 100$ had no bugs but needed alot of money to develope and needed to be sold for more money to make any profit from it.
While you never know how bug free the cheaper game is.

2) Internet reviews. Heard of them? That includes people's opinions on discussion forums too.

Most of the bugs you will never notice just by testing the game once or twice. If so the devs would have fixed them long ago. (if they had the time)
Also i have seen reveiws of MoO3 where it is said that it would be completely bug free....on release. Anyone who ever played it should know how motherfucking bugged that game was and still is without any mods.

And sometimes you have waited so long for a game that you would buy it right away on the relaese date.

3) Not everyone gets ecstatic if a game has slighlty better graphics than the competition. I know I don't.

1. When speaking of the double developing time, i speak of years. that isnt just a slight difference in grahics nowadays.
2. Most ppl look at the graphic first. Well except for certain civilisation (and alike) games.
3. Updating graphics while developing wont work if you ever want to finish a game without bugs.

Maybe one day they will have fixed them all and can turn their attention to all the incorrect text that has been in the game since it's release.

Oh the irony.