Umm, what? We have nine different difficulty levels in Civ4. The upper tier levels are insanely difficult; even the best players in the world cannot consistently win on Deity without rigging the map settings in their favor. Take it from an expert: you do not know of what you speak on this point.  The rest of your analysis was quite good, however.

One other point... Firaxis has explicitly designed this game with a controller in mind. I've watched several preview videos, and there's nothing like a mouse pointer in evidence. I wouldn't go banking on mouse/keyboard support for 360/PS3.

 So basically what you're saying is; PS3 and 360 owners are stupid or at least too stupid to play games with immersive or deep content. That is the strangest analysis I've yet heard in here. There are plenty of users in here who own either a 360, PS3 or even both that are still very much into games with strategic elements or deep thinking, in fact; I'd say there's more of them looking at favourite games and game collection. Besides; even if there were only PC owners who also owned a Wii, there's no chance they'd rather play their strategy games on a Nintendo rather than their PC. The North & South (which is a great game!) days are long since gone and the PC gamer audience is rather specific and picky in their tastes.

I know there are different levels of difficulty, but what I mean is that a casual player won't come up and play the game on hard for the first time. I mean it's easy enough for them to play at a easy or normal level. And I know what I'm speaking about it's just I thought I didn't need to be over specific with details for people to understand what I meant.

I couldn't care less about this news myself.

I find civilization games immensely boring. I play each new one via friends who are into it hoping that the developer will someday turn the franchise into a game complete with real fun instead of a chore, and each time I am disappointed.

Onwards to next thread! *rides off into the sunset on a blue yoshi*