Edit: Fixed VPN users blocking: I don’t know why, it was blocking VPN users, even though I had set it to allow VPN users before Poll creation! Just checked it again and set it back to allow. My apologies.
The Poll: Allows for up to two title selections. I set option to “Anonymize voter data” and allow VPN users.
Your Tierlist: You can share an image by downloading your Tierlist. No account required.
Do you have a favorite in the series? Which one do you want try and what do you would avoid? Is there any alternative game series you prefer over Civilization?
Sid Meier’s Civilization Series: Wikipedia
- (1991) Civilization: MobyGames | GameFAQs | IGDB | Metacritic: - / -
- (1996) Civilization II: MobyGames | GameFAQs | IGDB | Metacritic: 94 / 8.6
- (2001) Civilization III: MobyGames | GameFAQs | IGDB |Metacritic: 90 / 8.4
- (2005) Civilization IV: MobyGames | GameFAQs | IGDB | Metacritic: 94 / 8.4
- (2010) Civilization V: MobyGames | GameFAQs | IGDB | Metacritic: 90 / 8.1
- (2016) Civilization VI: MobyGames | GameFAQs | IGDB | Metacritic: 88 / 7.3
- (2025) Civilization VII: MobyGames | GameFAQs | IGDB | Metacritic: 79 / 3.8
My story
I started with Civilization 1 on Super Nintendo. Amazing game, worked well with gamepad optimized port, but loading times were abysmal in late game. Won all matches by domination. Later played Civilization 2 on Playstation 1. Won all matches by domination too. This time loading times were even worse, to a point I stopped playing because of this. My next game in series was much later when Civilization 5 came out on PC, then later Civilization 6. Both great games. Its the first time I won by other means than domination and the loading times were not an issue anymore. Just purchased and downloaded Civilization 4, which I will try out after posting this.
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Alpha Centauri
By a light year
Civ VII having 0 votes over 12 hours into the poll is hilarious to me.
Every person can vote for 2 titles. Civ VII is not even the second favorite for any of the voter. :D
Also relevant is the user ratings of each of the games in your post (ignoring the “critic” ratings).
Civilization Revolution was my introduction to the series. I havnt played it since 2010, but I loved it.
Now I play civ 6, have hundreds of hours, all the essential mods, and I think Ill play this version til I am dead.
What are the essential mods for 6?
Haha (not laughing at you, just funny the way you said it). Back when there was only 1 and 2, I thought I play 2 until the rest of my life too. :D I’m currently exploring the rest of the franchise.
lol yeah This thread might have me try civ 5, so thanks for posting!
I’ve played a few of them, but I loved playing Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri (SMAC) the most. My favorite was playing as Gaia’s Stepdaughters since you could quickly get control of the planet’s “mind worms” which were units that would never go obsolete.
This was exactly my play too, mind locusts were crazy OP, especially with movement bonuses over Xenofungus. I usually played Zahkarov over Deirdre but the result was always the same, lol. A planet covered in Xenofungus and a massive mind worm/locust army. That game is so good, I was immensely disappointed in Beyond Earth. It couldn’t live up to the original unfortunately
SMAC is the best Civ game followed by Civ IV. Civ III is the worst.
4 and 5. They were simple enough, but had deep strategy, 6 added too much, also the art style is worse.
I may be in the minority, but Civilization Revolution on my iPad circa 2009 was my favorite thing ever. I liked that it wasn’t as complex as other installments and the mechanics were perfect for mobile device.
Then CivRev2 came around they stopped support for the first one. I hate CivRev2 because it shoehorned a 3d globe map and the mechanics got clunky. Just give me my first edition with bird’s eye view again!
I loved that game too! The simplicity was what made it so good.
In retrospect civ games were just primers for factorio. The factory must grow.
They all just kinda felt the same to me.
Please use a different site next time
I don’t know why that is. There is an option to allow VPN users. I made sure VPN user is allowed.
Do you know any site for polls, that work well?
I got the same VPN message, how odd that they give you an option to turn it off and then ignore your request
@[email protected] (Also tagging you here)
I checked the settings again and it was not allowing VPN users, wtf. I know for a fact that I set it to allow before submitting the Poll creation! So now, I set it back to allow, please check if it works.
Now it worked, thank you!
Good on you for enabling it! I don’t have enough experience to recommend a particular one, just search for “foss survey tool” or “foss survey maker” or something, then you at least know what’s going on under the hood instead of with Strawpoll blocking me even though you disabled this option.
I know four is a commonly referenced favourite, but I just couldn’t get into it. Beyond Earth on the other hand, was quite fun despite the hate, although didn’t have as much replayability or longevity.
Civ4 will always be on top.
A lot of it is nostalgia. It introduced me into the series, so I played a lot!
I even left my comfort zone and wrote after action reports and stories around running games in a forum.
The spinoff Colonization was strange, but fun too!
I am currently playing a play per mail game with a friend and I really miss this type of multiplayer in later titles.
I haven’t played all of them but I would say Civilization III is my favorite. It has the classic elements in their most polished form. My dark horse, though, is Civilization Revolution for the Nintendo DS. While Revolution on the other platforms was basically a simplified version of Civilization IV, the DS couldn’t handle that and got an even more simplified 2D version. In simplifying it they really made the 4X gameplay crisper and more focused. They should release a version of that for mobile phones.
I mainly play on PC nowadays (well emulation is a thing, but for Civ I don’t need emus). Currently trying out Civ4 and Civ3 is on my todo list. Hmm if 3 is like a polished version of its predecessors, then I think that’s it, I will never touch 1 or 2 again probably.
Civ4 is A-tier.
Civ4: Fall from Heaven 2, Rise of Erebus, Fall Further, Mod Mods transcends S-Tier.Alpha Centauri is a distant 2nd. But still good.
I just saw the main menu of Civ4 has a Mod entry. Is this a thing with all Civ games (never checked this before, currently don’t want to download all games to check). I’m not modding Steam games usually, so not really familiar how this works. Is the ingame Mod menu compatible with Steam Workshop? Or is this its own thing maybe, to be compatible outside of Steam. I never put any emphasis on mods for Civ games, because they already offer so much, plus the DLCs. I usually think of mods either to fix an issue or to expand content, and none of this was ever an issue for me for Civ games (I’m probably more of a casual Civ player).
Since civ4 predates the steam workshop, I’m not aware of any compatibility between the mod menu and steam workshop. The mod menu is for more “simple” mods that make XML changes, but don’t need dll support. The mod menu may also support python changes, but i’m not an expert. Most mods however use their own launchers where they are able to use their own dll’s, python and scripting. Changes the purpose of the civ4 executable to simply be the game engine with much of the mechanical logic opened up to the imagination.
Fundamentally you have a single tile map and mechanics that compute on each turn along with a combat engine for the units. But despite those limitations, the breadth of mods is vast and hasn’t been matched in any of the future installments. (Cynically I think it’s a publisher decision to lock modding behind compiled binaries so that DLC can be sold, but technically I may wrong on that.)
The original “Fall from Heaven: Age of Ice” mod is actually an official mod of Civ4: Beyond the Sword. You can play it in the scenarios and that will give you a taste of what the vast world of “Erebus” modding looks like.
Alpha Centauri definetely and it’s Alien Crossfire expansion
Foreman Domai, I love you man but please don’t finish building The Hunter-Seeker Algorithm before me
I haven’t played many civ games, I think I started with 4, but I’m apparently a weirdo because I got really into Beyond Earth. I like the scifi theme much more than the alternate history thing, and I enjoyed messing around with the affinities and the tech tree a lot.
Apparently this game got a lot of hate from people who loved alpha centauri. I never played it so… I dunno, I guess I should do that at some point. My problem now is Civ games take way more time than I can spare.
Same here. I enjoyed some civ games but beyond earth was my favorite!
