I still play Civ 1 every now and then. I just love the aesthetic of it. It doesn't feel dated to me gameplay wise at all. I attribute much of my knowledge of history as a kid from reading the Civilopedia.

From my perspective Civ III was the best of the series however. I always loved building massive empires and Civ III was great for that.

Special mention to Civ: Call To Power where you could build underwater and space cities in the super advanced age. That was fun! I wish there was more of that.

I wanted to see if anyone mentioned Call To Power. That Civ had great concepts, I liked the soft revolutions you could cause with lawyers and religion. Might have to fire it up again.

Fall from heaven mod was also an all time favorite. So much stuff.

Another nice thing in CtP was the videos you got of each tech when you finished researching it. Felt like a bigger accomplishment than today where you just get a historical quote.

I didn't have a computer that could play civ 1, so I had to go to a friendly family's house who kindly allowed me to come over and play because the dad was equally addicted to Civilization. Whole saturday afternoons would pass this way.