Simply Awesome
When you start out you have the choice of who you want to be. To name a few you have the choice of, India, Aztechs, Romans, Americas, Spanish, Japanese etc. you will begin with settlers, they will dig gold and harvest food for you. You have the freedom of making decisions that will determine your fate. You can choose to make a tight knit colony and stick to a small area on the map, or your can scour the globe and stretch out your legs building new cities with your settlers. I just won my first victory on easy and I ended up with 7 cities. I used the Americas with Lincoln as the leader.
I played my first map and I have to say there is a bit of a learning curve. I was going to war and disrupting a lot of enemy's territory. I got my butt kicked, so it forces you to learn a steady strategy. Your neighbors will pop up on your screen every now and then and threaten you, or offer knowledge, also offer peace.
You will research various attributes throughout the game the more cities you have the more you will be able to research. You'll research things such as the Alphabet, Literacy, all the way up and eventually the automobile.
The Spanish throughout the my game offered flip-flopped a couple times at first offered peace then I started growing rapidly and they decided to take a couple of my cities an break the peace treaty. I was able to build my military and beat there ass back to there own territories and walk them right back out of those very cities they took over. Like I said before you will have a blast. You set your own pace. You can research as fast or as slow as you want.
If you want a break from Mario Cart, or your FPS games, give this one a shot if colonizing and strategy is your cup of tea, you won't be disappointed.