I first played Civ Revolutions and then Civ V, but I can't really wrap my brain on how to play the older ones, so I can't really instabuy this without asking a few questions first.

Is there a minimum of "hand holding" on how to play they game? Is the game complex enough to need some "hand holding"? Do you have an adviser?

I really want to play this, but I also want to make sure I can actually play it.

When you first play you'll get plenty of tutorial pop-ups to walk you through the basics. In addition, the basics are pretty easy to get a handle on, especially if you've played other entries in the Civ series- found cities, build units and buildings in those cities, use those units to explore, fight, improve terrain, and found new cities, research new technologies, and try to do all that better and faster than your opponents. Now, there's also lots and lots of additional complexity- social engineering options, the ability to design your own units, different approaches and tricks to terraforming, native life and eco-damage, and so on. However, it's important to note that at the easier difficulties you can still play the game and have a good chance of winning even without getting much into this additional complexity, meaning that you can get into playing the game without much trouble, then as you play slowly delve deeper into the options available to you at your leisure. In short, I'd describe it as falling into the category of easy to learn but difficult to master.

And there's also the Civiliopedia equivalent - Datalinks. Very informative.