Most addictive TBS in gaming history! (For now)
An interesting new concept is the founding of religions,which allow players to track the troop movements of nearby civs that have "adopted" your religion.However,this does not have as much impact on the game as there is no religion-centered victory condition.A future version of the game could do well to make religion a more powerful concept.
There's just so much positive things going for this game,it's hard to write them all down,I unabashedly suggest you just buy the game and "settle" down for some serious town-founding and empire-building.
Civilization 4 is a great TBS for gamers like you.