After wondering whether the game would work on my underpowered laptop (1.4 Ghz, 512 RAM, 32 MB graphics card), I dl'ed the demo and it worked fine, so I took the plunge on the full version. To start, if anyone had doubts about this game working on their weak system, forget about it. Dl the demo first, but especially after the patch this game works like a charm; it only started hiccuping late into the game when there was tons of crap on-screen, and even then it was perfectly playable.
It's almost hard to call this a "game" because it's basically gaming crack. I had a day off Saturday (no school, journal, or other work on the docket) and just played the thing all fucking day, and could have gone on for probably two more days before just dying like a pathetic WoW player or something.
I did my first two run-throughs on Warlord b/c I just glanced over the documentation and relied on my Civ II (heh) skills + feeling my way through to get the hang of things. In the first game there were several key elements regarding Great People and so on that I didn't realize until the very end. I was still dominating score-wise (I think you'd have to try hard to not dominate on Warlord) and deciding what to win on basically when Montezuma (annoying warring pest on my continent) declared war on me (I think I refused to give him some trivial amount the turn before), after which Alexander and some other vic from the other continent hopped on. I was playing as my leader of choice, Louis XIV and building up Wonders, but I had built up almost zero defenses, so I went from completely stomping everyone to just generally stomping everyone (one civ got within 400 of me on score), but I did notice that the CPU really ramps up the aggression late-game even on this very easy difficulty level, which I found cool. Anyway, I held everyone at bay and declared peace with them, but Montezuma eventually somehow stole a diplomatic victory from me when one of my big allies fucking abstained. Diplomatic victory seems very random and a big risk to the leading civ if that civ hasn't been bribing everyone the entire game.
Screw you Montezuma!
My second game, on Noble (with Louis XIV again), I went in with a much better understanding of the rules and strategy. I built up army and diplomacy from the get-go and spread out a bit more early on, locking some unsettled areas within my borders and then colonizing them before signing any open border treaties. This strategy seemed to work well as I waltzed through the game (again Noble seems a bit too easy also, but I hear the other difficulties which I will try next get pretty killer if you don't have a very clear strategy). My civ style is to be very non-aggressive militarily, but not pacifist either as I don't like having to give up techs to other civs constantly so that they won't attack me. I'm not huge on religion or exploration either; I mostly go after reasearch and especially wonders. I was basically biggest, most powerful, most cultured, most advances throughout the entire game (though I did get a bit of a gold scare early on and had to drop my research to 60% b/c I was spending so much supporting my far-away cities). I ultimately gained a space race victory (though I missed the ending b/c I had several progs running and the video didn't play correctly unfortunately), and then went back to an early-late game point and just wiped out everyone for good measure. It is kind of funny to see the crazy stacks the CPU gets out there; since I'm not militaristic the stacking is pretty novel to me, but pre-infantry units vs. stealth bombers and modern tanks was not so pretty most times (though I did get to see a few funny sword-shots on my tanks).
Louis XIV, renowned Frenchman, like myself.
Absolutely brilliant game; I look forward to my next day of complete freedom in a few weeks as this is certainly not a game that can be played (at least by me) in less than four-hour increments.
Obligatory shot of my huge widely-dispersed Civ circa 1838:
