Let's see if my little experience might be of some help. Though to decide the best, I would go and watch it on youtube for a few hours and decide that way. Quil18 and Arumba have them, and though I love the later, his let's play isn't as good.

1. You can automate a fair amount. You need to directly tell your cities what to build and when (They will have 5 major commodity buildings that you add to), and the routes you want your traders to go. The main portion is trading and most of that can be automated with a few micromanagement here and there.

2. The campaign *MIGHT* have some story decisions, I have only played the open game. Even so, based on everything I have seen, there is NO real story type decisions in the entire game. Overall, the game is rather basic, much like chess. Quick to learn, a long time to master.

3. Combat is... painful. I love games like Total War, and this is nothing like that. You build units (everyone has 1 type of archer, cav, swords, axe, spear and mounted archer and each region has a single unique of one of those types). You select your units and click on your opponent's units. From there, they fight, taking a long time to battle. Overall, I really dislike this combat system, it feels very... DOS like to me. Its not even up to CIV standards of combat where at least when you attack, you understand where the numbers come from. In this, it takes my 4k power army weeks to take out a 2k power enemy (which my army is considered "strong" against), with the decrease in their "power" score seemingly about the same at 2k as well as at 200 power.

Overall, my best advice is to simply go and watch a few YouTube videos. That game is fun, and cheaper than a lot of releases now a days, but it is also much simpler. I enjoy it, but tbh, not quite as much as I thought I would once I started to play. And I rather enjoyed watching the let's play, so keep that in mind. It actually shows a bit better than plays (but that proves those players are good at entertaining as well).