Potentially a great game, feels like a beta rather than a release, and cliche, but yes, majesty meets civ.
The layout will be very familar to anyone who has played Civ 5. Once again no stacking is allowed (even if you are just moving units, grrrr). There are 3 races to choose from to lead, each with their own strengths and playstyle. As with any civ-style game, your objectives are to expand, conquer, research and win the game. There is the obligatory several paths to choose from to win, such as kill off your opponents or research the big spell that will end the game. Diplomacy with the other mages is spartan, to put it nicely. No choices to build alliances, no choices to form trading pacts, nothing outside of trade stuff or go to war. The spell research is nice, though there is simply no way to tell what you need to research to get what, or even if there is such structure. The lack of documentation extends to several other facets of the game as well, like the buildings, though thankfully the buildings can be expanded to show all that are possible, and thus you can plan out how to grow your city. That is very helpful, as even up to now I still have no clue how to destroy buildings or kill off units I no longer want.
The units are nicely done, and like Civ 5 and 4 you can get them experience and level them up. However, once again you have no real idea what abilities lead in to whichever future abilities you want to get your hands on. Also the game doesn't flow on to the next unit once you're done giving instructions to the current one (instead you have to click a button above the end turn button, or find the unit and click on it), nor does it have any hotkeys so you can quickly tell your unit to guard, rest, etc. Outside of Enter to end the turn, there is no hotkeys whatsoever. Which other damn game in the 2010s doesn't have hotkeys? As such, getting your units moving around the map is far more cumbersome than it should be. It also has a lovely (sarcasm) trick where you have to click the left mouse button to tell the unit to stop whatever previous command you had given, the number of times I've accidentally sent a unit scurrying off to the nearest city when I've wanted to build something within that city...
The AI is pretty dumb, however that's to be somewhat expected. Even in Civ 5 the AI left a lot to be desired. If Firaxis can't get a decent AI sorted out, I'm not surprised Ino-co couldn't either.
There are probably other things I could fault, though the game does play well, and is certainly is enjoyable, well worth the $20 it sells for. I'd happily pay $30 if it just took a few more nods from Civ and most other games and was not so damn clunky to play, improved its documentation, implemented hotkeys and improved the diplomacy.