Civ Rev... say it with me... Civ Rev... mmmm

If you're anything like me... and hey, you've come this far... then you may have blown the last 25 years or so playing some iteration of the game Civilization.  The latest crackesque addiction is Civilization Revolution, which is the game ported for the iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, etc.  I suppose it's likely on Android too, but I don't know the first thing about Androids or give two craps about them, so... yeah.

Some tips for playing Civ Rev, and beating it...

• If you're going for victory by way of domination (aka marching in and taking over all other countries), then work to get feudalism as soon as possible.  There's a handful of pre-requisite technologies before you can get feudalism... Monarchy, Horseback Riding, Ceremonial Burial and Writing are among them.  The thing is once your culture figures out feudalism you can start cracking out knights.  Knights have an attack strength of 4.  Put three knights together in an army and you've got at least 12 strength off the bat.  Have your knight army get some experience knocking over Barbarian villages to become a veteran, fight till you can get them the power of infiltration, do any number of things and that knight army now has a power easily in the 30s.  You have to go waaay into the game before you get the kind of defenses to regularly stop an invading force of that power, and since the computer players are less inclined to be thinking purely militarily you can really get at it.  Till they start sending their own knights after yours.  Knights ain't much for defense, sadly..
• If you're playing the Attack of the Huns scenario, try playing as the Mongols.  One of the quirks of the Mongols is every time they invade a Barbarian village, the Barbarians decide to join up with you.  You'll have a huge map of cities in no time.
• Know how much science you need.  You only really need to discover everything  if you're trying to win a scientific victory and get your spaceship built.  If you're on the route to economic victory you only need to go so far as to figure out banking.  If you're militarily inclined, you don't need more than infantry and artillery, and honestly can probably stop at Tank and still get by..  If you're going for a cultural victory (which ain't easy), the only thing you need is to be able to build cathedrals, which you get once you discover religion.  After you have all the science you need, you can probably just go into each city and change the allocation of resource from science/research to MONEY makin'.
• Whenever possible, make sure you found your city in a place that has both resources (stone tools icon) and food (green apples icon).  Both are required, because otherwise a city can't produce anything or grow in population at all.
• If you're playing the Beta Centauri scenario, make sure you switch all your cities over to producing cash instead of science.  This scenario has you (and everyone else) already having all the attainable technologies, so you just lay into building your treasury instead and it's a fairly clear path to economic victory.
• Try to hem in civilizations early so they can't expand.  If there's a chokepoint on land -- say, a narrow passage that's the only way out, look to plunk down some settlers there.  They'll have to declare war on you just to get past (and then, of course, stock up and be ready in case that does happen!)
• Go find those Wonders of the World or whatever they're called.  Do it quickly while they're still out there.  Send out a little galley and see if you can find'em on another island, and once you have navigation you can start sending bigger ships into deeper waters.  The prizes they give you --- a bunch of Great People, a pile of money, etc., are all great boosts.
• Sometimes when you have a Great Person come into one of your cities, the option will be to instantly complete whatever you're working on.  The other option will be something like "Let me think about that."   Click on this option, then go into the control for that same city and change what you're working on to one of the Wonders... whichever one looks best for whatever paves your road to victory.  Then select that Great Person AGAIN and tell him to instantly finish building THAT.

There are probably some other tips I could pass along, but that's ranty enough for now....