this post was submitted on 08 Sep 2026
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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.

Look only after voting: Poll results1 day later at 2026-09-09 07:29 (German Local Time)


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

  1. (1991) Civilization: MobyGames | GameFAQs | IGDB | Metacritic: - / -
  2. (1996) Civilization II: MobyGames | GameFAQs | IGDB | Metacritic: 94 / 8.6
  3. (2001) Civilization III: MobyGames | GameFAQs | IGDB |Metacritic: 90 / 8.4
  4. (2005) Civilization IV: MobyGames | GameFAQs | IGDB | Metacritic: 94 / 8.4
  5. (2010) Civilization V: MobyGames | GameFAQs | IGDB | Metacritic: 90 / 8.1
  6. (2016) Civilization VI: MobyGames | GameFAQs | IGDB | Metacritic: 88 / 7.3
  7. (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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[–] Hakuso@scribe.disroot.org 8 points 1 week ago (1 children)

One vote per IP.

Only took two exit node refreshes to be able to answer XD

[–] thingsiplay@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Hmm. You only need to vote once, so one vote per IP should be not a problem. I don't understand what the problem is. Last time I did a Poll, I excluded by accident the VPN users and nobody mentioned an issue by IP. Don't tell me I fucked it up again. :D

[–] Hakuso@scribe.disroot.org 5 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Nope,I run through a permanent VPN, so it can say "You already did this" when I did not. An exit refresh works, just need to get an IP nobldy else used.

[–] thingsiplay@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 week ago

Ah, I see. I have this issue sometimes when I use VPN to access YouTube with third party apps. I saw there was a separate option to allow one vote per IP. I could change that to vote per browser session, but don't know if this works well or has other quirks too. I'm sorry for this.

[–] QuadratureSurfer@piefed.social 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Same, I prefer to use a VPN everywhere. It would be nice to get away from straw polls and use polls directly from the Fediverse. PieFed and Mastodon allow for polls like this, but Lemmy still doesn't support it just yet: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/787

[–] thingsiplay@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 week ago

Native support for Polls would be amazing!

[–] PowerCrazy@lemmy.ml 8 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (3 children)

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.

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[–] Vivacho@lemmy.zip 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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!

[–] Anchorxiety@reddthat.com 3 points 1 week ago

I loved that game too! The simplicity was what made it so good.

[–] ScoopMcPoops@lemmy.world 7 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Civ VII having 0 votes over 12 hours into the poll is hilarious to me.

[–] thingsiplay@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Every person can vote for 2 titles. Civ VII is not even the second favorite for any of the voter. :D

[–] Jolteon@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 week ago

Also relevant is the user ratings of each of the games in your post (ignoring the "critic" ratings).

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[–] Hakuso@scribe.disroot.org 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

4 & 5 are pretty close, in my book, but 4 has a GOG release and 5 is still a cracked Steam copy rather than owned, so I pick the one they let me buy.

[–] thingsiplay@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Well you can vote for 2 games if you want. Do you avoid buying on Steam entirely? Unfortunately 1 and 2 are not available on Steam, but there are other ways to play them anyway.

[–] Hakuso@scribe.disroot.org 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I've had a few "updates" forced on me by Steam that broke games, so I only buy DRM-Free with offline installers, now. I own Civ4 from GOG, Civ5 IIRC is a Tenoke pack I torrented.

[–] thingsiplay@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Yes, that was one of the most terrible decisions of Steam to do forced updates. In old days it wasn't forced, but someday they changed it to. I can understand this for online games, because they need to stay in sync. But for offline games, it shouldn't be. Wish they differentiated that, its a really terrible thing. Probably the worst thing of Steam in my opinion.

[–] Coelacanth@feddit.nu 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I'm pretty sure you can rollback game versions on Steam too.

[–] thingsiplay@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Some games have alternative versions, not necessarily old ones. In Steam game properties > Game Versions & Betas some games offer Beta versions, others a Nighly (meaning newest possible) versions, and some have older fixed versions. Most games don't have it, and even if, you can't just use any version you want.

[–] Coelacanth@feddit.nu 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Can't you use Steam Depot to download older versions? It's been a minute since I futzed with it.

[–] thingsiplay@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

I don't know that. I thought that was for developers only. Edit: Found this relevant tool: https://github.com/SteamRE/DepotDownloader Note, I never tried this tool and have no experience. Ah yes, and the official documentation from Valve: https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/store/application/depots

[–] Coelacanth@feddit.nu 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I used Steam Depot to rollback RDR2 in order to make a mod work about 2 years ago. If nothing has changed it should still work, although it is admittedly more fussy than version rollback on GOG.

[–] thingsiplay@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Yes, this is not a real solution to me. Also the games will be auto updated, so the auto update of the client is still in the way. And this gets even worse for simple plug and play sessions as in Steam Deck handheld in example. I could not recommend this to non technical users. They would even have trouble finding the correct ID for the exact depot to download. This is way more complicated than it should be, and I say that as someone who likes to use the terminal.

[–] Coelacanth@feddit.nu 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

There are ways to get around the auto update, but those are also futzy. I agree that this is one of the few complaints about Steam that I have.

[–] almost1337@lemmy.zip 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

My favorites have been Civ 2 Test of Time, Alpha Centauri, and 5. I also played a lot of 4 Colonies, but I would rank it a tier lower.

[–] thingsiplay@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

For the non mainline games, I'm interested into Beyond Earth. I completely forgot Test of Time being a Remake of the original second game.

[–] almost1337@lemmy.zip 3 points 1 week ago

Beyond Earth is good, it just has a big predecessor to live up to.

[–] zod000@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 1 week ago

SMAC is the best Civ game followed by Civ IV. Civ III is the worst.

[–] jqubed@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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.

[–] thingsiplay@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 week ago

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.

[–] QuadratureSurfer@piefed.social 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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.

[–] Nefara@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

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

[–] PlzGibHugs@piefed.ca 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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.

[–] Dathknight@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 1 week ago

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.

[–] Screen_Shatter@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago (2 children)

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.

[–] Smug_Marmot@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 week ago

Same here. I enjoyed some civ games but beyond earth was my favorite!

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[–] SexMachineStalin@hexbear.net 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

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

[–] joelfromaus@aussie.zone 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Civilisation: Call To Power! Still the goat even if I found out 20 years later that it wasn’t a mainline Civ game and was made by someone else. The main games still haven’t reached the amount of content it had within future epochs.

Edit: changed from Call to Power 2 to the first one. Apparently the some of the future techs were removed in the second so it must have been the first one that I played.

[–] yxc999@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Please use a different site next time

[–] thingsiplay@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 week ago (2 children)

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?

[–] yxc999@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 week ago

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.

[–] Knitwear@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I got the same VPN message, how odd that they give you an option to turn it off and then ignore your request

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[–] HerbalGamer@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 week ago

They all just kinda felt the same to me.

[–] Madzielle@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (3 children)

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.

[–] thingsiplay@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] rants_unnecessarily@piefed.social 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Alpha Centauri

By a light year

[–] warm@kbin.earth 2 points 1 week ago

4 and 5. They were simple enough, but had deep strategy, 6 added too much, also the art style is worse.

[–] MintyFresh@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

In retrospect civ games were just primers for factorio. The factory must grow.

[–] ryathal@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

V is the best that I've played. 2 is a solid choice since it's the foundation more so than the original. 6 is a garbled mess of systems that don't work well together, and attempts to steal mechanics from other games but poorly done.

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