I played very little, but I did finish a few games. I tried a special game with a tiny map and 18 civilizations. That way, each civilization mostly has room for one city and that’s about it. I went for culture at first but then steamrolled through the other civs one my borders reached their towns. I finished the game with 3 vasals under my control, which never happened in any of my previous games.
I’ve also been watching some gameplay videos of Civilization V, and I have to say, I can’t wait until it gets released. This should be happening in a little over a month. It basically keeps all the great stuff about this one, and greatly improves on all of the flaws.