Welcome to (CIV), a web adaptation of the board game Advanced Civilization by Avalon Hill Games. Rewind back in time, thousands of years B.C. You find yourself in ancient Roman terrain, alone in a chaotic world without allies or money. It is up to you and your intelligent decision making to build.

Even though the basic formula remains the same, the devs have never rested on their laurels, always rejigging the visuals and mechanics between entries in bold and drastic ways. Sometimes it’s worked, and sometimes it hasn’t. But 25 years on from its inception and going stronger than ever, it’s fair to say that Civ has – to quote the original’s box – ‘built an empire to stand the test of time.’As you’re about to see, and then subsequently spit your cup of coffee all over your screen like a sitcom character, we’ve included the Call to Power games. We’ve also omitted Beyond Earth and Alpha Centauri, even though the former carries the Civ nomenclature and the latter carries the Meier name.Why? Because Civ games, to us, are about guiding a people from prehistory to the future, journeying through recognisable periods of human history and doing it on Earth. While CtP deviates from that formula slightly, it’s still very recgonisable as the classic Civ experience.

Beyond Earth and Alpha Centauri? Well, their names say it all.Which entries propelled Civ to glory, and which are best left in the past? Join us as we chart the series from its ancient era to the modern day, and rank each of the Civilization games from worst to best.

8 – Civilization: Call to PowerPurists will scoff at the inclusion of Activision’s ambitious yet shambolic stab at the great empire-builder, but it marked a blip in the history of the series that’s kind of fascinating.Call to Power arose out of legal tussles between Activision and Microprose over the board game origins of the ‘Civilization’ trademark. Made without Sid Meier, Jeff Briggs and co at the helm, it was Activision’s first stab at the Civ franchise, which perhaps explains why they seemingly crammed every idea into it that a single game could possibly hold.Featuring outlandish ideas like space warfare and underwater cities, as well as a whole wealth of sneaky units like lawyers, slavers, televangelists with televisions for heads and, errr, steampunky blimps that beamed advertising onto enemy Civs, Call to Power was nothing if not ambitious. It was marred by a poor interface and bad implementation however, with all the extra content making the game feel bloated and unfocused, with the late-game feeling like a hellish rabble of conflicting ideas that, frankly, was a bit grim to be a part of.Let’s just call it ‘Franken-civ’ and move on 7 – Civilization IICiv 2 probably deserves an apology for being put in line right next to the black sheep of the family, because it really is a far superior game.