What's the best Civilization game?

I've only ever played 1 and 5, so I'll go with 5.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have eleven other nations to conquer in this new game I'm playing...

Lol, I started playing a new game on Civ 5 last night, too. Playing as the US, trying to go for a cultural victory. Played for eight hours straight.

Civilization Revolution...

Joke, Civ V for me.

I've only played Civ 5, and it's pretty damn awesome.

Civilization 4 imo. One of the greatest games ever made.

I've only played II and V, and I prefer V.

From what I've read, most series veterans will say II, III or IV.

Civ V for me, started a campaign this morning. Was Beyond Earth that bad it didnt make the list?

Actually, post expansions, V is generally universally considered to be the best in the series.

Beyond Earth isn't bad, and I actually am pretty okay with it- but I just wanted to keep this to the main games, rather than putting Beyond Earth, then starting a slippery slope (why is BE there, but not Alpha Centauri? Things like that).

@charizard1605:

To this day, the one unit per tile is still divisive; with some swearing by the stacks of doom, while others pointing to how it broke the AI and made moving a large army tedious. Others also point to the little things, such as underwhelming Wonders screens and how previous games had more "personality." They all say IV and III were better, with the particularly nostalgic even propping for II.

Civ V with expansions

Civ IV if you don't have the Civ V expansions

Vanilla Civ V actually felt like a step backwards imo.

Its between II and IV for me,but in the end I´d say Civ IV was the one I enjoyed the most and by far the one I´ve put the most time into.

I only really played the first four in great length,Civ V I only played a bit when it was new I didnt liked it all that much,I know it gets way better with the expansions but I never got those. Also,the artstyle of Civ VI looks like ass.

Alpha Centauri is still king. >.>

Civ IV

The diplomacy had more features and the AI was much better than in Civ V. Which in my opinion are the two most important things to games such as these.

Civ IV was fun, but I've played Civ V a lot and enjoying it. I'm not great, but I was so close to winning but lost in the last few rounds to Carthage. Just bugs me that civilizations will moan about me being a warmonger against city states they don't even care about or civs they hate and yet they can go around willy-nilly and conquer people with few repercussions. At the moment prepping myself for an all-out total war as I know one is brewing. Diplomacy is dead with everyone that isn't Carthage, the second most powerful civ at the moment, but I do fear their military might. Churning out nuclear missiles to ready myself for total world domination, but my civ is at the point where if I add anything else my economy will literally die. I also don't have enough faith to keep spam buying great artists lol.

It's a lot of fun, though I'm sure I'm playing it wrong.

Yeah, Civ 5. I still lose half a day to that game sometimes.

Civ V + gods and Kings + Brave new world = the most addictive game known to humanity

I'd give the edge to Civ IV. It's the more refined game. I see Civ V as the more important game in the franchise in heavily iterating to move the franchise forward.

Each have their own strengths and weaknesses. Civ IV just had a greater handle on its content from its strong baseline and expansions that built upon it. Civ V was uneven, from its barebones launch, Gods & Kings I felt was an expansion lost sight of what Civ was as a stategy game, adding compulsive empire management busywork than enhancing and enriching the games' strategic layer.

Civ IV has the benefit of being able to play the excellent Fall From Heaven mod.

I've never really played Civilization, though the "going through history" aspect always seemed interesting, having an empire spawn for so many ages, but I'm not that fond of turn based strategy.

I will say the new one has a nice graphical style going on :D

Civ IV for sure,it was a complete package from day one. Civ V is also good but only with all the expansions and even then,not quite as good as Civ IV.

Does Alpha Centauri count? That is technically a Civilization game.

Otherwise, Civ 4. The modding scene for that game and heck, the general gameplay and pacing made it one of the best 4Xs I have ever played.

I... I never played a Civ game.

Civ on the Vita. What, thats not an option?

Fine, Civ 4 then.

Civ 1 - Aged really badly to the point of being unplayable

Civ 2 - Aged much better than Civ 1 and one I can go back to okay, but not my favorite.

Civ 3 - My favorite in the main series

Civ 4 and 5 - Never played

Civilization V, It simply does everything the way it should be; Probably if it wasn't that good I wouldn't be disappointed by Beyond Earth.

@ConanTheStoner said:

I... I never played a Civ game.

...

@ConanTheStoner said:

I... I never played a Civ game.

Don't be, Civ games are fucking crack. You lose a day to those games easily. We got jobs fam.

I only played Revolution so I can only say that by default, except there's no option.

Loved it though, wish they'd of made another.

Bro, I hear that, but the interest is still there. I've had buddies who were strictly console gamers, gave no fucks about PC gaming, that would still hop on a laptop for their Civ fix. Must be something to it.

Definitely won't be trying that shit any time soon though, because yeah jobs, and I'm stacked at the moment.

@ConanTheStoner: Don't listen to champ, your job, your girl, your life, none of it is as important as a game of Civ. Give it a go, I've seen people with no interest in PC or strategy game lose literal hundreds of hours to it.

I've only played Civilization V and Beyond Earth, but the formula in which 4X games like it are built on seems to me almost like sports games. They only improve with time and new technology, so long as that central formula is upheld (which in many sports games these days, they are, quite ironically, not, especially at the beginning of a new generation).

That said, I have no experience outside of the most recent outings, but aside from graphics, I couldn't imagine much difference. V is a massively feature-rich game.

@foxhound_fox: There is a fundamental difference in Civ V (and games after it) versus older games in the series- Civ V disallows unit stacking, and uses hexes instead of tiles, two things that significantly change how the game is played, outside of the smaller mechanical overhauls that you are referring to.

Yeah, there's some more stuff hidden beneath, but overall Civilization IV: Complete and Civilization V: Complete are quite different from each other. I guess it generally depends whether or not you prefer stacking. They're also the best games in the series, which is why the rest aren't worth mentioning.

Hmm.. i'll go with IV, just because of Baba Yetu.

Don't... Don't...

Gah. Now you've done it.

Baba yetu yetu uliye... (gets lost in the song)

I doubt a significant proportion of the voters have even played three out of the five games in the series, which makes the poll somewhat moot. I've played all of them (though not to the same extent, only spent something like a hundred hours on III and IV and much, much more on the others) and I still believe Civ II is the best one. It improved on every single aspect of its predecessor, and to this day still represents the biggest step forward for the series. I still love V, though. getting rid of the stack of death was a great decision.

I hope the AI will have been given lots of attention for Civ VI. Always felt that was Civilization's weakest point.

I've played three games- Civ 4 was my first one ever, but I really got into the games with Civ 5. Civ 5 with Brave New World and Gods and Kings is probably one of the best games I have ever played. I played Beyond Earth, and it definitely is not as great as the other two, but I still liked it.

Can't wait for Civ 6.