As a long time Civ player, I would have accepted a Civ 1 port onto the iphone (such fond, rose tinted memories), so this was a pleasant surprise.
So, my little review:
iphone aspects:
Movement has taken some getting used to. Ive have a few mis moves, but nothing game chaning yet.
The screen is divided into a grid, but an "even" one, so there is no square at the centre of the screen, but a junction, and if the screen wants to centre on a unit, it puts the unit to the bottom left. On a normal zoom, this means you can move at most 3 squares, and two if you want to go south-west, because of the large info box on the unit. I know its a tank, I can see the main icon. The name is cute and all, and the stats are good, and perhaps the info on what upgrades it has might be useful, but generally this could be much smaller, and allow a bit more room for moving units around. If you zoom out a little, you better have thin fingers, or else it gets a bit dodgy moving things around, and you have to accept waking a few units, and the odd one ending up only nearby where you want it.
No Civilopedia. This hasnt really mattered, since with the basic CIV knowledge its pretty straight forward. Im sure theres some finer points im missing, but I guess I could look around this site, and find the rest out.
CIV REV
The simplification of the tiles into one of three resources (basically), while initially a horror, actually makes a lot of sense. The reduction in units and techs doesnt leave anything missing, and the way naval support and planes work is good too.
But, we seem to have dropped corruption, or any mechanism to prevent ICS. Its not always been solved the right way, but since CIV2 it has at least been recognised as needed. Hell, if I had found that there was a hard capped max number of cities per age I would have accepted it as the 'simple' way of overcoming this.
I dont know if its because of ICS or what, but my major objection is that it is much easier than CIV 4. I might have played CIV since version 1, but I know I am not a good player. I would have put myself at about Noble/Prince level of CIV4, when I stopped at Christmas (distracted by Carp), but I have just played a single game through Warlord, Kind, Emporer and Diety, and won convincingly on each.
Simple strategy or 3 warriors to get huts and barbs, then Settler spam, sealing choke points to grab the continent for me, then backfilling. A handfull of specialist cities means I am back in the tech race, with cash coming in. Cash means I can rush buildings, including temples and cathedrals, even in the specialist cities. Tech race and culture means more GPs and bonuses. Maybe I got lucky in the last Diety game, in that the culture leader Rome (culture leader, but unfortunately a little behind in tech and production) declared on me, and I discovered that captured GPS and wonders count towards your Culture target. Which was nice. Again, ended up having to chose between a cultural and domination victory.
Perhaps these are not early victories, and the challenge will be to hit some dates I see talked of here, but it does seem now that I will have to set myself some limitations to find challenges, rather than from the difficulty level.
Well, at least its got me back into CIV, and I will be starting a new CIV4 game tonight, and look forward to getting throughly trounced again.
Other than that, it plays well, and I have seen no instability and had no crashes. I have a lot of spare space left on the iphone, but I dont know if the game needs that or not. It has certainly filled my journeys on the tube, and I will continue playing, despite what I have said above.