This is the best Civ game for newcomers, and a still a good game for Turn-Based Strategy Veterans. Read Please.
I expected this game to be easy to play when I first started and I was new into the series. I played on the 5th Difficulty, which was King (above normal), it was a bit tough but really easy to handle, back to Prince(normal), it was a breeze. if you want challenge, play above King, if you just want to conquer everything without any actual work, then play on level 2 (Chieftain) which is extremely fun and easy. Don't try to play on harder levels if you are just looking for fun. After about a month or two, I bought Civ 4, tried playing it, it was a harder to understand everything for some reason. I didn't like it so much. The single player is what most people play, there are hundreds of combinations (perhaps thousands) to play with. 18 civs and 6 more from DLCs, not really needed though. There are Diplomatic, Science, Culture and Military domination. Time victory is also one but shouldn't be counted as one. Military domination is what you get the most fun out of. The other three are a bit harder and sometimes impossible if you set the era to later eras. Gameplay has been simplified with no more unit stacking and new hex grids that allows more strategic gameplay, because unit stacking is unrealistic and takes some of the fun away The instructors are really boring and doesn't help much, I wish they were fully voiced with animations or real life characters like in Civ 2. Also the diplomatic options are stupid as ever. You can't do anything with them really. You can't even tell them to join your empire or give you units. Now the multiplayer is not broken like what other people have put in their reviews, but it's best to avoid playing. No combat animations isn't a big deal, but there should be an option to switch it on and off. Other than that, the saving system also sucks in multiplayer, but it was expected. There are also some bugs in the game SP and MP but a lot of them has been fixed on the PC.You might still get crashes and cities not showing up or when the combat animations especially with the air units makes everything load slower and it makes you wait and watch it with a few second extra loading time. Sometimes you should force The modding in this game is great, but it doesn't work for me at some point. Some mods doesn't work well together and might make you stop your game and start over, but the vanilla game is good enough. Oh yea you need a good computer to play this game.
PROS
Best Civ game to start with
Gameplay simplified
Hex grids = more fun
Sweet combat animations
Challenge or/and fun depending on your starting choices/civ/difficulty
CONS
Bugs
dumbed down multiplayer
retarded and boring instructors
Abysmal diplomatic features.
Sometimes combat animations would load slow and some of it doesn't make sense (melee and muskets can defeat TANKS)
mods might not work well
DLC lawl
Might suck for more experienced players from previous Civ games