The box boasts about giving a portion of the game's sale price to charity and says the player will be asked to choose a charity during install. I wasn't asked. How do you choose a charity for 2K to give money to? It'd be sad to miss the opportunity.

Finished my first game. 6.2 hours according to steam. Diplomatic victory because I got bored with how easy it was and that was quicker to grab than spaceship or cultural victories.

There were a pair of interesting little wars sparked by one AI attacking city states I had under my sphere of influence. The first was somewhat hard going (in an easy kind of way) because it happened very early on and, true to my froggy ways, I hadn't built up much of an army. I had to scramble units to send a decent force over, and didn't have much of a tech edge. I saved the place with a nick of time - the health bar was on its last shred of red and another turn would have seen the place conquered. The second was fun in a different way. I had industrial era units and the AI had late classical ones. Can you say shooting fish in a barrel? 4 units crushed an army far larger and razed his second city. That sort of thing's fun to do every once in a while. The third time someone declared war on one of my city states I simply gave them a single unit of mine since it wasn’t worth the bother of getting personally involved. Mobile infantry versus swordsmen and archers; the city state cleaned up without getting scratched.

Time to begin the climb up the difficulties until I find one which suits. It's a civ tradition of mine; I start at the bottom and work my way up even though I know most of the early levels will be way too easy. Why do I do this? Why? Cakewalks aren't much fun. Yet every single time I play one of these games I do it. Suppose it must have something to do with wanting to watch how the AI improves with each step.