B. Call the week after and request vacation time.

[First thing after that...]
1. Test Civ3 for an infinite-ranged missile. (If you don't know what I'm talking about or why that would be the first thing I look for, don't worry. The people at Firaxis know. )

Hey, Yin, are you sure this thread isn't a secret firaxis interview to recruit beta testers?

STOCK MARKET TAKES NOSE DIVE
CEOs say "no workers left after Civ3 release"

Save every turn. Take out pen and paper, note any bug I came across. Try to see if the bugs are reproducable. Note down all reproducable bugs. Once those are ironed out by the nth beta release, I'd start doing extreme things like ICSing forever with all opponents turned down, playing on a map with no land except single-dot islands, etc. Writing out detailed reports from my notes about the reproducable and non-reproducable bugs.

Important to beta it on the min spec and lower .. Im developing software which originally we thought would be min spec P166 64Mb ram (NT4.0) .. got it running happily on a P75, 16Mb ... Its saved us Millions in replacing 1600 workstations

In terms of Civ3 .. acheiving a workable game on a low spec = £££ millions $$$ .. as it allows more people to buy the game, who don't want to upgrade.

OK .. other stuff to test for, Screen resolutions, different Graphic cards, Key pressing (I let my 7mnth old hit the keyboard and see if any key combo's like ALT-SPACE, throw the game into the background and mess the colours up etc.. Play music with WinAmp and block the sound card before I start up the game !! ha ha .. pull the CD out and odd points, and see if it crashes, or requests it back again ... (you can tell I support mission critical software, "MUST NOT FAIL" is my middle name)..

Can the software recover if your in the middle of a network game and the comms goes down ?? Save & load, Save & load, Save & load ... see if anything happened ??

Then finally, once convinced that the game is crash proof ... I will play the game, and test out all combinations of events .. Ticking them off as I go along, making sure everything does what it says it will, and looking for the predictable nature of the AI ... to see if its rule based AI ..

Well, its a nice dream .. im pretty sure Firaxis can happily carry out all the tests we suggest..

My advice to them is .. play CTP2 for a night .. it will focus your minds to what happens when testing isn't properly carried out.

IF YOU FAIL TO PLAN ... YOU PLAN TO FAIL ...

Thank my lucky stars. Then I would play one game straight through to get the feel for the game. After that, I would attempt every possible strategy I can think of. Try anything I can think of to have the game crash. And play, play, play. Each time getting closer to my goal of filling up two notebooks of bugs.

"If I were to buy the game months before it was expected to be released, the first thing I'd do is..."

Truth is, if I were seriously doing this, I would spend a LOT of time at the Great Library. people have seriously played civ2, and some outstanding stuff is there.

READ THE F'N MANUAL (If the beta ships with one, of course)

After that, check the install to insure it installs.

Then, play and play and play and play...noting any abnormalities then sending a big long email (or fax or whatever is necessary) to Firaxis to help them make the absolute best Civ game ever.

If Civ3 is even half of what I've read about on the boards, I'll be playing it for quite a while....

... oh, and yes, I also would play the game...

At the end of the week, I'd start fooling around with the text files. Then I'd send them my version of the text files, with a little note saying, "Just a suggestion."

Install the game, look for bugs in the installer. Try as many ways as I can think of to crash the game especially using the cheat menu (the game hasn't been made that can withstand my crashing attempts ). Play a few games on a random map, with the lowest, highest, and 'average' no. of civs. Look for obvious loopholes/bugs in the program (e.g. something like incremental rushbuying in civ2).Test all difficulty levels, make sure Deity (or whatever it is) is hard enough to get me killed on the first go, but is possible to win, and make sure Chief is easy enough for me to win on the first go.

Try out more extreme cases i.e. odd maps etc. Look for super wonder/improvement combinations that seem unbalanced. Look at how the AI civs do in my games... make sure one civ doesn't consistently jump far into the lead while the other civs get left behind, for example, or make sure the AIs can't be easily tricked/crushed by my huge military. Look for agression in the AIs, if they never attack you or poorly defend their cities then there's a problem. Make sure all the ways of winning work.

ICS - maybe the best solution would be to make the AI use ICS tactics properly.. makes far more sense than making settlers cost 2 pop points.
Of course- only when your past King level or on Deity or the newbie players will cry in terror at the marauding Mongol hordes

Bugs are really annoying , I'd rather play the tested finalised version.. but i'm still happy to Beta test
beta tests are much better than alpha tests.. supposedly
Gamma tests are just taking the piss though (the 50 patches needed for some games when they should have been tested for more than 30 minutes)