MY OBSERVATIONS
  "Hey what can I say, I like to yibber-yabber..." {grin}

• Problem with game not recognizing CD in CD-ROM to allow playing of music bug fixed!
  [From what MicroProse told me, this problem may still be persistent in some machines although they are unsure as to the cause. They suggest checking to ensure that you have up-to-date drivers installed on your system.]
• Instead of activating Cheat menu, you can now toggle scenario to go into effect through the new Editor menu.
• When playing single player games, you can set your own password (your "username" is set by the name you set for yourself during pre-game setup).
• A new feature is the timer, which controls how long you have to move your pieces in a multiplayer game. If during the course of gameplay this interval wishes to be changed, there must be a consenses among the participants that it is acceptable (would be damned unfair if the host of the game could use this as a tactic to throw his opponents off).
• Chatting with human players is done through the "Chat With Kings" interface (multiplayer equivlent of consulting with advisors in the "Throne Room", which yes is still present). This option is not available on Hotseat because all participants are at the same location and using the same PC (so you'll just have to curse at your enemies in person. ;))
• To play the game, you need to have one of the Civ CDs in the CD-ROM drive. This includes the original Civ, CiC, FW etc. After this initial check, you can swap the CD if you like or elect not to have one in at all (but remember if you choose the latter route, all the multimedia effects will be unavailable to you as it was before).
• When you discover a scientific advance or aquire scrolls of wisdom, the screen you are presented with is more "user friendly" then in the previous version of CivII. In addition to offer you a description of the particular advance, it allows you to view where on the Tech Tree this advance came from, which include previous discoveries that got you to that stage. In fact, you can view the entire advance list, click on one of them and view ITS position in the tech tree similarly.
• This may sound a little chessy, but here goes anyway... perhaps it is just my 32X CD-ROM drive and 64MB RAM on board, but when I previouslly had CivII installed, I found that the Throne Room rendering was rather cumbersome. Now, however, it's loads just like a dream! (And no I won't tell you what dream I could be referring to).
• I really dig (heh, can I get away with that term?) the Negotations interface with other human players. If you're anything like me, you too will be amazed with the wide variety of options that you have to trade with and for including units and yes, even territory (cities)!
• Finally, links have made inroads into this game! Under the same screen you can click on another advance's title and find out what its prerequisites are and what it allows. In conclusion, more in depth than ever before!