Strangely enough, I find the building stuff parts more interesting than the actual game. I spent 1 hour making my mayor's house (a big nasty spiky tower).
The tribal stage was really terrible but the civilization is better.
I think that the game has a lot of potential to become a franchise with individual more specific complex games such as Spore:Civilization.
How many cups of darkness have I drank over the years? Even I don't know...