DaveMage said:
Is conquering the world still a viable option for winning?
There's two types of conquering wins... Conquering (take every city) and Domination (take 60% of the land mass). Obviously, you can't "conquer" unless the domination victory type is turned off for that game, but that's doable.
The other ways to win are:
1) The Space Race (much harder in this version, supposedly... more components, each of which require more work to be done).
2) Diplomacy (Get enough votes in the UN to win). You must first become Secretary General, and then put this to a vote. Obviously, it's unlikely for others to vote for you, since they don't necessarily want you to win. (There are a variety of other things you can put to a vote as Secretary General as well...)
3) Cultural Win. Reach a cultural threshold in a single city, and another threshold for the whole civilization to dominate in culture.
4) Timed Win. After too many turns (540 in a normal game, I believe) the maximum score is computed and a winner is chosen.
As to whether conquest is viable: Yes, it's definitely viable. Most of the beta testers seem to favor conquest according to the polls I've seen. The space race is harder, so that's become a bit less of an easy way out. The cultural victory has become considerably more viable as well with the addition of "Great People" as one of the core mechanics of the game
(the Great Artist is referred to as a "culture bomb" due to his ability to quickly expand your nation's borders from a high influx of culture).
Why combat is cooler:
Bombardment units play a bigger role in this game. They can cause collateral damage to units in a stack or reduce city defenses (i.e. make defending units get less of a defense bonus in a city).
Civ4 also removed the capability to switch production on the fly... That means if someone declares war on you, you can't just switch everybody to producing defense units (well you can, but you'll have to produce them from scratch...). So you have to be much more strategic about your defense.
Mixed stacks are used much more as well due to the way the unit promotion system works. Having a single unit with a medic promotion can be a big boon to a stack. But you might also want some units who are specialists at attacking cities or cavalry...
Railroads are no longer infinite movement. Only 10...
You can pillage villages, towns, hamlets, and cottages (these are like "suburb" improvements to a city) for *money*. So now you can do damage to their improvements and gain some cash at the same time.