Civilization Revolution 2 has a single goal: rule the world. How you set about achieving this easier-said-than-done task is open to interpretation. You could decide to control Gandhi in his march to military domination, or guide Bismarck to a religious victory, rewriting history with a selection of taps.

Though Revolution 2 is based on previous Civilization games, there are added nuances to this new version. Fortunately, a tutorial walks you through the basic controls, showing you the way around the menu and movement options. 

While the tutorial outlines the basics, learning the game’s full range of involving social doctrines, sciences, and tech-trees is left you to you. An entire encyclopedia is on hand to help with this, along with text pop-ups which dog you at every step of the early game.

After selecting a culture, your first task is deciding where to build your capital. The surrounding landscape dictates the cities strengths, with fertile land allowing faster population growth, and rocky areas providing materials for production. From there it is all about expansion, as you build more cities and extend your influence to cover the small world map. 

As you grow you encounter other empires. You can either forge friendly relations with these new nations, or take the more direct route to domination by obliterating them from existence.

The decisions you make are influenced by your current situation. If you possess strong culture, simply existing near a nation may be enough to swallow it up in a sea of McDonald's and blue jeans. On the other hand, if you have a vast military, then a direct approach may be the way to go - providing you are not limited to pikemen while you opponent has managed to develop stealth fighters.

This freedom of choice provides satisfying and devastating moments. When we lost a key city to the Romans we were inspired with a lust for vengeance we rarely experience in strategy games - though this did make watching our little knights smashing Rome’s warriors in the next battle all the more rewarding.

Whether you perceive Civilization Revolution 2 as an update of the original, or a stripped back, sped-up version of the PC series, there is no denying that it provides a deep but digestible strategy experience. The few niggles we have - issues locating options in the menu and trouble selecting units on the small screen - are an extension of this ambition, but do nothing to tarnish the engrossing world domination fun.