My liege our people await your orders(A simplified civilization,the fact that its just skirmishes can get repetitive)
Civ is a Turn based game and isn't really a very "war-like" strategy game.You could even find better strategy games if you just want a long war. The game has no true story so it's as open ended as ever!The normal campaign has you leading a Civ and competing with others from 4000BC to 2100AD(really,3 or 5 hours, a turn is a century) with 4(there's a 5th secret one, but it's nothing special)victory conditions, but only 1 winner. The maps are 100%Random and mostly natural in the beginning and are covered in a fog.Sadly this can be bad as you can't customize the map to your tastes or even chose your opponents and its going to be skirmish after skirmish so the game can get repetitive.Exploration,research and expansion are really important as there are many interesting things to find on the maps FIRST!(villages,lost wanders etc)t'is true, the more technologically advanced societies always beat the less advanced ones. To help an adequate tech tree, management screens and combat engine will have you making orders very simply and with other Civs competing against you, even willing to combat your forces if they see you winning or to win, you better hone your resources to the object you're focusing on(This is very addictive).The combat in this game can be fun, though you don't do the battle however units stats+ or - any modifications from terrain or unit advancement etc affect that out come of a battle. The problem is though that sometimes units with lower stats take out units with greater stats, this can help with realism as unexpected things do happen on the battlefield but it does get annoying when a unit with 20 defense gets beat by a unit with 13 offence! Also it still seems as if weird things(like pikemen destroying fighter aircraft) are plausible in this game.
There are other modes as well which should keep you playing, such as the online(I hear is slow,but still) and scenarios, which are however not that diverse from eachother.
The games graphics aren't that top notch but their good enough however they do slow down sometimes and you can sometimes wonder why and sometimes there's texture clipping.The art style cartoony, but this adds charm to the game,unless(You have got to see Shaka angry and Battle animations look good) you don't like that kind of stuff . The sound overall is subtle, but after a while it does repeat and can get annoying and the gibberish is going be weird, yet adds more charm.
The main problems of this game are that they seriously simplified Civs formula, even lower than it should have been. There could have been more things for this game.Eg you can't trade any resources like iron and diplomacy is limited to trading technologies and war, nothing else. Still it is worth your money and quite fun and with 16 different Civs and 6 difficulty levels, you'll be playing campaigns over and over, just make sure to play it after short breaks to reduce repetition.