7. Sid Meier's Civilization (1991). 20 Best Classic PC Strategy Games

Civilization had the support of the most powerful graphics engine of all time – imagination.

The 1990s were a time of extremely dynamic technological changes for the entire video game industry and the resulting fantastic visions of developers. The computing power of hardware, increasing almost overnight, and – more importantly – its increasing availability certainly stimulated the imagination of programmers. At one point, one of them came up with the idea to create a simulation of the entire human history.

Sid Meier's first Civilization is without a doubt an ambitious project. This 4X turn-based game enabled us to guide the fate of entire civilizations over a period of more than six thousand years. It must be admitted that the idea behind the title inspired not only the creators themselves, but also the gamers, which, combined with the great execution, was a factor in the success of this groundbreaking game.

THE ENDLESS END OF THE WORLD

Let it be evidenced just how immersive the first parts of Civilization were by the fact that some time ago an information surfaced on the web, about a player known as "lycerius", who continued a game in the second installment for over... ten years. The game, which he began in the Stone Age, has already advanced to the year 3995 when his post on Reddit was published and presented a very bleak vision of the world. The entire planet was divided into three states: Celtic communists and Scandinavian and American religious zealots. These empires fought a constant war with each other that kept them in a devastating stalemate for over a thousand years.

Let us not kid ourselves, everyone who reached for Civilization at the time wondered what it would be like if he was the one who influenced the fate of humanity. The desire to write their own alternate history prompted hundreds of players to play the game, and they were later stuck in it for long hours, due to the highly contagious "one more turn" syndrome. The game sucked in like a swamp and, for its time, offered unprecedented depth of gameplay. Managing one's own people required operating in many fields, such as politics, economy, and technological development. Each of these aspects required attention and careful planning, on a scale greater than in any other game available at the time.

Today we have access to much more advanced strategies that sometimes reflect the realities of historical epochs at the level of scientific publications. Even so, the vision featured in Civilization is still alive and driving one of the most important strategy game series for nearly thirty years.