Lord Tirian
Erratic Poster
You might want to read this playthrough - seeing stuff in action is usually way better than any review.Some of the comments here have me worried (haven't played it yet), but my fear was that Civ V will be a dumbed down, shallower, "consolised" version of Civ. And it is sounding like this is indeed the case.
The vibe I'm getting from the playthrough (and the demo I've played too many times already) is that the game only gives a shallower first impression, because the complexity is not on the surface, but rather hidden away in the interplay between things (example from the playthrough: since economy isn't linked as tightly to science as before, you have to balance out more stuff than before - it just doesn't appear that way, because there are less "knob" so to speak, like the sliders).
Combat and city sieging is also much, much more interesting and deeper than every civ before (where it was: get the biggest stack, launch attack), positioning and tactics are actually crucially important as far as I can tell.
It's probably one of these "easy to begin, but hard to master" games.
Cheers, LT.