I was fresh out of High School, it was late 1993, and my mother purchased a Packard Bell desktop computer. I picked up Civilization on the way out, as I had seen a review and I loved strategy games.

This was either a mistake, or one of the best casual decisions of my life.

Civilization puts you in charge of a culture (Roman, Egyptian, Zulu, Indian, American, a few others) or you can name your own. You start at the literal dawn of civilization, with a tech tree that starts with things like "The Wheel" and "Writing". You settle cities, and build them up, build military units and non-military units, spreading your culture across the globe.

You encounter other cultures, plus primitive tribes that may grant you small bonuses. You can interact with those other Civ's via trade, or warfare.

I have played every version of Civilization ever since, and it is still a go-to for me. The depth of what you can do, with multiple paths to go for a win condition, the personalities of the leaders, the now famous and intentional sudden reversal of Ghandi from a peace loving pacifist to a nuclear armed Warlord.... all of it changed the way I interact with games in genera, and set me on a path of 4X games that I am still on 30 years later.