There are few games that are easy to play yet hard to master, although that phrase is thrown around a lot.
Civilization: Revolution does a reasonable job of hitting the easy-to-play mark, especially with its simplified controls and console playability, and, like other games in the
Civilization series, it provides a deep, rich gaming experience that allows for a variety of strategies to be used to achieve your choice of four win conditions.
While Civilization: Revolution provides five different levels of difficulty, I found that the difficulty levels ramped up pretty quickly. Chieftain is pretty easy, while Warlord (the second easiest difficulty level) is much more challenging. As of this writing, I have managed to win once on King difficulty (the third difficulty level) and have not had any success against Emperor or Deity (the hardest difficulty level).
If you play the game in the Chieftain difficulty level, it starts you in Tutorial mode by default. If you're new to the game, this can be quite helpful. If you're familiar with the gameplay, you can turn this feature off easily from inside your game.
Another aspect that greatly affects the difficulty level of the game is the world leader you choose to play as. Each world leader has their own specific advantages, so study the differences carefully, and choose based on the type of victory you hope to achieve; if you want to attempt a economic victory, you may want to choose a world leader with advantages in building or gold, whereas if you want to try for a cultural victory, you may want to choose a leader with advantages that increase production or reduce construction costs. Bear in mind that you should try out new strategies to see how things work. If you want to try something out that's radically different from what you've done before, it may be a good idea to try it out on an easier difficulty setting.
Finally, if you want to work on specific things, you may find an appropriate challenge in the included Scenarios mode. Here you'll find different scenarios that change some factors, such as what you start the game with, whether there are barbarians and how fierce they are, what win conditions are available - that sort of thing. This may allow you to work on your mid-game or end-game or try certain strategies out more quickly than playing a full game from the birth of a civilization.
