Very fun game, if you like the style...
Although there are slight things in this game that needed to be tweaked more than they were before the release, this is an overall solid title.
The fact that the game takes so long to play a simple play now game, is a little frustrating at times, and at times you will be upset there is a time limit (well, turn limit). There have been games where I have been done playing for twenty or thirty minutes, and the game is still going because the opposition had more troops in their city than I was expecting. But there are also games where you can play for two or three hours, and complete the game because the turn timer ran out, and you have only defeated one Civilization. It's things like this that are a little frustrating, but at the same time, when you finally do get that domination victory, it is very gratifying.
There are five ways to win a game: Domination, where you have captured all of the capitol cities in the game, Science, where you are the first to complete a space civilization, Cultural, when you accumulate twenty great people and wonders, and finally Default, which is when the turn timer runs out.
The best thing about this game is how easy it is for a newcomer to pick up, and at the same time be a true challenge for someone who has been playing it for 40-50 hours. There are five difficulties, each significantly harder than the previous. When you decide it's time to move up from the most basic difficulty, to "warlord," it is quite a jump, but if you are truly dominating on the simplest difficulty, it makes it's a challenge, but not impossible to win on the next difficulty.
One of the things that is most annoying is the dialog, or lack there of. You're advisers and all the other leaders talk to you quite often the problem is, they don't speak English, or Spanish, or any other language, they just kind of make random sounds, that are supposed to be voices.
Overall this is a solid game, with hours upon hours of playability. This was my first attempt to play a game in this series, and from what I've heard this game is very different from the others, but either way, I will be checking out other Civilization games in the very near future.