I bought a used copy and have tried playing it. Notice I said tried. It is real time based, although it does have an option to play it turn based. I found it mechanically dificult to play, especially at the higher levels. I spent a lot of time responding to pop-up message boxes notifying me that such and such an item had been completed and while you are dumping the next string of taskes into the research and build queues everything is still running. I never reached a point where I felt that I was planning anything, just responding to uncontrolable events. Trying to manuver units was probably my biggest hassle because of the way they set things up. It was very counter-intuitive to me, but then I am more of a command line interface person than I am a mouse competent one.
The concepts and intentions were very good, just poorly implemented for my city building preferences.
Ken
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