Well, it is far shallower than the PC civ series in terms of strategic complexity, unit types, social engineering (governments), diplomacy and so on. However, all the simplification was done with a sinlge purpose in mind: to streamline the game so much that it becomes suitable for a console game with a few hours of lengths for s game, i.e. it can be played from start to finish in one sitting even for the slowest victory types (e.g. cultural). This may not be so important aspect for single-player games, but for online multiplayer games, this is a huge enabling factor.
If you played a lot of the PC civ games, you know the AI is pretty dumb and once you gain some experience you can beat it very easily even at the highest difficulty level (deity). The same is true for CivRev. However, in CivRev you can play against other people online very easily. The games are fast enough, you do not need to pre-arrange or wait a lot for a game. You can go online any time and get a multi-player game going within minutes. This is such a tremendous advantage compared to PC civ games, it is hard to explain, you have to experience it. I've played civ games on pc for 10+ years, also some MP games, but only PBEM which takes several months, most games never complete because some players just lose interest. I bought CivRev shortly after it came out, first I played maybe a dozen SP games and got bored of it due to the simplicity. But then I started playing MP online from about April, in 5 months I played about 500 MP games online, or about 20X the number of MP games I played in 10+ years from other civ games. And of course it is much more fun to play against other humans, less predictable, more challenging. So for this reason, it is absolutely worth the money in my opinion. So, buy it and start playing online! If you are buying the PS3 version, I hope to see you in a battle soon