God's and Kings seems pretty fun, but $30 is just a touch too much for me to consider at this point. I shall tell you a civ story though.
This is a tale of my first Civ 5 game. A game I started up on a slow sunday afternoon and then wondered why my stomach was aching a few turns later. At 2am. I finished it a few days later.
I picked france because culture seemed interesting and I wanted to indulge a Napoleon complex. Difficult was normal, i think they call it Prince. and it was random continents.
I spawned in a location that I initially was shocked to discover was remarkably terrible in all aspects. No rivers. No coasts nearby. Hell no forests or trees in sight. Rocks, rocks and more rocks.
Scouts/warriors found the coast, but being lazy I had already settled my first city into the barren landscape. Something like 30 turns passed before I discovered another civ. It turns out I had spawned very close to the northern reaches of that world and my 3 cities were all pretty much stuck there. Food supplies were low. Production/gold was decent enough. It turned out that the bulk of my civ existed within a peninsula that narrowed to 2 tiles, and hence would prove impossible for any AIs to ever cross. Eventually I managed to induce a war with someone who flung some units against my entrenched knights in a fort and then I blew his civ away in the counter-attack. I found the americans hiding behind a great wall of... america; I suppose you'd call it that. They never really bothered me much, so I left them and their 2 cities alone for much of the game. I followed my western coast down and discovered it basically was like the West coast North & South America in that it spanned the entire planet, It lacked any mountains though. I conquered two city states along it. And wiped out a civ who was bothering the Americans. I think it was persians. Meanwhile my reports began to mention word of the mighty Iroquois civ. Who had single-handedly wiped out every other civ on the world. By the time my navy found them on a separate supermassive continent they were wiping out the greeks last bastion.
Not much liking this turn of events, I immediately launched my navy and landing parties. It was roughly WWII era when my units left my eastern coast. Those who made it to the Iroquois mainland didn't put up much of a fight.
But he never bothered to try and wipe me out. Occassionally my navy would see him land a few units, my cities would defeat them and then he'd repeat it in 15 turns. I gradually developed nukes and put them on bombers. nuking the shit out of his continent, while I decided if I couldn't beat him with brute force I'd do it with science since I could push my cities that way. I think the americans got uppity about all my nuking of half the planet. So I conquered them and began the space race.
Although admittedly Hiawatha's decision to pursue Science seemed half hearted at best. I had 90% of the work done when he finished his first component. And thus I won my first match of Civ 5.
I learned much in that first game. Culture is downright impossible to pursue half-heartedly. Competing continents struggle greatly to successfully invade each other. The AI has no desire to provide a decent tactical opponent.
But it was fun, and blew through a Sunday like nobody's business. Yay Civ.