This is not a port of a pc version but an entirely new version built directly for consoles. I picked it up last night (had to call several different stores because they were sold out).
I played for a while last night and it's a blast! I can not compare it to any recent civ games, and can not really compare it to civ 1 because it has been SOOOOO long since I have played that one.
I have found it to be very easy and intuitive to control with the 360 controller and have found that their is sufficient depth in the game to allow for some pretty good strategy-style gameplay. I think the americans and the chinese are kicking my butt (looks like americans are going for a war victory and chinese are going for a technology victory.) I am playing on the middle dificulty (out of 5 available), and am using the greeks. I will mention that I am accustomed to playing games on the console and not on a pc, so for someone who is the other way around the controls may not seem as smooth. For anyone who regularly plays console games the controller works very well.
The online multiplayer is suppose to be pretty cool but haven't tried it out yet. Two people on my friends list were in a 4 person online game and I asked them what it was like but got no response (having to much fun perhaps?)
They have a "game of the week feature", and every sunday they post a new single player scenario with the same map, starting point, ect. Xbox live peeps can compete for top ranking/score on this game of the week... kinda neat.
I spent some time researching the techs needed for mathematics, (alphabet, pottery, masonry) so that I could build some catapults. Problems is, by the time I drove my catapults down to wipeout the neighboring Zulu village, they had rifle men that were pretty tough!
The games can go fairly quick in comparison with PC civs from what I read, but IMO the overall experience is an "A".
