Coincidentally, I just picked this up recently and I've been enjoying it a lot. Started and quit about 10 different games before I got the hang of city development and how to actually fight with any level of success. Messed around with the different map types too.

I have a nice game on noble now and just managed to wipe out another civ for the first time. Playing on epic speed, standard map size, pangea. How much harder are the other levels? And what map size/speed etc do you like best?