I’ve owned the game since release, but I haven’t been able to really lose myself in it because of school. I set the difficulty level at the one right below Noble. Pretty freakin’ easy. I did lose a game on Noble earlier in the year, though. I feel like I’ve already learned so much just from that one game, but I know there are still thousands of small things to figure out.
One criticism, however: There are too many units. I played on epic length to remedy this, but when I would build up my armies in preparation for an attack, my units were still all obsolete by D Day (or I guess that should be Y Year in Civ).
One question: How do I set rally points? Couldn’t find that in the manual anywhere.
One easter egg: You all probably know this already, but I got a good laugh from the logo the game uses when you’re “building” the internet.
In case you haven’t seen it, it’s Al Gore. 
My first major victory consisted of getting the damn thing to install and run properly. Nasty.
Good game, although I’m disappointed they kept on with the Civ3 combat method which means a dozen frigates will eventually dispose of your battleship. I guess it’s a conscious decision to make combat less appealing, although it doesn’t seem to stop the AI piling into my territory with huge stacks of cannon fodder…
Given enough of them? Of course. After all, a fishing boat was able to critically disable the USS Cole.
So you’re saying I can take out battleships with my work boats, so long as the BS is fortified, right?
Work boats, settlers, workers, missionaries, spies, scouts and explorers can’t attack.
Scouts have strength 1 and explorers have 4, so they do have a slim chance of defending themselves, though.
And I think CivIV has a lot fewer units than Civ3. During peacetime I usually just have one modern defender per city.
So ten sail frigates armed with 32-pounders would have been able to sink the Bismarck? Kinda makes you wonder why the British bothered building battleships and aircraft carriers at all then.
Although this does seem to offer the Pentagon some intriguing choices. I wonder how many hundred Sopwith Camels you could build for the price of a single F-22?