It keeps the addictiveness and detail of the PC versions while working brilliantly for the console platform.
For those who have played the Civilization series on the PC, this game is just as in-depth as its PC counterparts and is just as addictive. The only thing that is missing it having to build workers, which in many ways is good. You can still micromanage cities if you like, like having workers concentrate on science output instead of production output, for example.
The battle animations and visuals are smooth, colourful, ascetically pleasing and just as detailed as in Civilization IV. The maps are nice and big but they are mostly water, with nowhere near as much land as in the PC games. This is not a bad thing as cities borders don't expand anywhere near as much as before, even though you cities do improve at a similar, if not even faster pace.
A game will take you several hours but is not as drawn out as Civ IV, with technologies hardly taking any more than 10 turns. Another advantage is that if there is nothing to do, like you have something that will take 9 turns to build, it will do those turns straight away. There is no waiting around in this game. All this shows that Fraxis have thought hard about the console medium and have adapted accordingly without losing the clear Civilization identity and heritage.
The only disappointing thing about this game is that the multiplayer takes forever. Not because it's slow, it's just that your opponents seem to take forever for finish their turn. Sometimes I was waiting a few minutes, which got very annoying after a while.
All in all this is a brilliant and well thought-out game which works well on the console platform, keeping the depth and addictiveness of it's predecessors. I would recommend this game to everyone, even the most hardcore PC strategy game fan that would refuse to play a strategy game on console because they think it would be terrible.