Hard. I've never been great at these managerial turn based strategy games and this one is no different. Balancing morale, technological advancement, military, economy, etc. is a full bag and really hard, but exciting. The game is kind of unpolished in not really explaining what does what, what the shields mean, the arrows, the diamonds, the coins, the game just kind of leaves you to figure it out and through deduction you'll figure most of it out eventually but at the beginning it's frustrating. The same goes for about all of the buildings and advancements, the game doesn't really tell you what they do in the moment, you have to go to the civpedia in the corner for that, which would've been nice, but I would've preferred if they just could've told me in the building diagram like most newer games. The combat is horrible though, a phalanx beats a battleship? yeah right. Great game, though I imagine the newer ones are better. I seem to recall that someone was playing Colonization a little while back, didn't really like that one.