Interestingly, the game appears not to pop up and tell you to choose city production, you have to notice that in the bottom right, same for science and so on…..At least it doesn’t let you skip a turn before you worry about that.  So I actually like it better.  It was far too easy to say you’d deal with something later and then forget.  And all the messages queue up there for you to read.  I used ALWAYS lose track of those in civ 4.  Especially since they used to appear when I was busy on something else and disappear before I could act on them.  And here’s what it looks like when you decide to what to build.

I choose a scout first and that turns out to be a good thing as I’ll reveal later.  Then it’s time to choose where to go scientifically.

Since i’m right next to a mountain, I go for mining first.  Then I send my warrior out to explore this continent.

I like how the advisors are grouped together rather than spread out.  Before it was so tedious to visit them all.

Ruins take the place of huts and that makes a bit more sense in Civ while huts make more sense in Colonization.

And here’s some info about ruins.

Looks like you can’t use space to end turn, but I guess that’s because of the interface changes to let you know to move units and build in your cities.  Units can still be told to chill with space and r still builds roads.

First improvement I build is a farm…rather than irrigation?  In fact, it looks like irrigation is gone now.  I find a second set of ruins.  Then I find some enemy units in a fortification (barbarians).

War looks awesome.  Not killing a unit doesn’t mean you die.  In other words, you can have combat where you lose hit points but don’t die.  It’s not as final as in civ 4.  It’s more like everyone has the withdraw upgrade from civ 4.  (Imperfect analogy)

It costs culture to change civics – now called policies so you need to know which to pick.  They provide much more targeted bonuses now.  It’s pretty awesome.  Wheels needs to be discovered for roads.

Met my first city state.  Unfortunately, it’s militaristic!  Actually, at least at the easiest difficulty level, this turns out to be a good thing.  It means he gifts me military units.  At first, keeping them happy sucks.  It takes so much money.  But later they ask me to get rid of those barbarians I found above and then they’re essentially my friends forever because now it’s easy to just shunt a payment off to them every once in a while to keep the friendship and keep the free units coming.

Tip:  you have to click “show queue” to queue up city production.  Oh, so now there are natural wonders and you get benefits for building near them.  I found Mt Fuji.

Found the Germans.  it’s so cool that he speak German when I meet Bismarck.

Then I met the second city state, Dublin.  Also militaristic!  Third city state – copenhagen.  They’re at least maritime.  Finally found Berlin  Got my fist golden age!  Apparently this comes from happiness now!

My second city – Shanghai – gives me my first wonder, The Colossus.

I reach the midieval era by turn 88.  Turns out I’m rich!

Turns out only a certain number of horses are available to  use.

Eventually I get my first trireme!

Then I get two great scientists.  Bismarck gets a bit testy about that army I showed you above.  I like that the AI is playing more realistically, even on Cheiftan level!

Dublin attacks germany so I take my chances that he’ll be distracted and decide to go to war with him since he made a city where I’d wanted to make one before.

I take a city and have puppet, annex, and raze as options.  I annex it.

Bismark sues for peace and gives me 6 gold per turn, access to iron, access to horses,  329 gold, and his second city.  I raze this city because it’s too far.

Last thoughts?  The fact that you cannot stack units means you need to have more strategy because units can’t pass each other as easily.   In other words, the unit has to have enough movement points to make it past the other unit.  This is the first civ game wehere it makes sense to have your units on the edges of your civ, which is neat because it’s more realistic.  Finally, I get a great artist and a great work of art now called a culture bomb!  (Which is what it always was!)  I leave you with a view of my empire.