Civ 4 is better than 3. :)

If it's at all possible that you haven't been convinced yet... I also would suggest going for 4. Just felt cleaner in general than 3.

I have bought and played both (3 and 4) when they came out on CD/DVD and - if you only can get one - would also suggest that you go for civ 4.

There are still mods like Orbis, Star Trek and Fall from Heaven which can expand your playing fun for some time after you are done with the basic game. Civ 4 was the last "great" civilization game for me, because Civ 5 was obviously more "simplified" for mass markets and also required (and still requires) steam which made it a no-buy for me.

Civ 4 is also great for local lan multiplayer games and it also allows you to play by e-mail sending turns back and forth as files from your save game directory (without mandatory third party servers or installing additional client software).

With Civ 4 you also get Colonization which is a nice game by itself...

I second this. Civ 2 was fun! Civ 3 was OK. I tried Civ 4 but never warmed up to it. For some reason Civ 4 felt quite boring and I dropped it after a while.

I enjoyed Civ III until II realised that the AI was a massive cheater - their cities would be totally barren of upgrades except for things like monuments. Instead of actually managing a city the the AI just cheats for resources.

Apologies for bringing this thread back from page 3 death, but just wanted to say thanks for all the replies - my wishlist is now one smaller!

Edit: Well, it was until I added XCom Enemy Unknown. Ah well, swings and roundabouts. :p

Can't blame you, Fireaxis is a great company.

Get both, they're both great games, Leonard Nimoy's captured voice alone is reason enough to pay for IV, but III was a wonderous title which I'll always look on more faovourably purely out of nostalgia. Civ III was, I believe, made by different people to Call to Power or Alpha Centauri, and it was missing a few of the more lovely touches of those games - Civ IV brought back the spoken dialogue of Alpha Centauri - but what it missed it made up for with a kind of pacific polish and epic'ness which I was totally taken with. It felt like you were engaging in history, not just a fun encouragement to rush up the ages. The sparsness of the feedback helped you fill in the blanks, as was the case with many of the great games from the late 90s/early 2000s, and I filled in those blanks with great warmth and heroism.

I tried playing the first Civilization game, and simply couldn't understand what I was supposed to do. Keep pumping out soldiers and explore as much as possible? Start as many new cities as fast as I could, as possible? Keep building and improving my temple or whatever it was?

It is all damn fuzzy, Maybe some day i will get it. I wonder if the later Civ games are easier to grasp, with good tutorials etc.?

Civ IV has a tutorial, but just following the tooltips you should be fine. You can also ignore several features or automate them (city governor, workers) and still survive (at least in the easiest difficulty levels). You will have plenty of time to master them later.

How about Civ 2, is that a good "starting point" if I want to try out older games in the series too?

That's a bit different from e.g. RTS games, where the earlier games in the series generally are simpler and easier to learn, with less options, less controls, less different kind of units etc. Think of e.g. Dune 2 or the first Warcraft game.

EDIT: Also if I learn how to play some later Civ games, does it kinda teach me to play the first game as well, making it all suddenly make sense to me (because I know how to play e.g. Civ 3 or 4)?

Civ II is a fair point to start, it's interface is presented in a manner which is quite pleasing to navigate. That, and your panel of advisors are a bunch of hammy actors, so that's good too.

As for playing later civ games to learn Civ I? No, not really. (That's just how arcane the game is.) But I would suggest maybe instead looking into Freeciv to test the waters.

Not sure why there should be a "definitive" version of anything, but nowadays I would prefer 4 over 3 because 3 suffers too much from the "corruption" concept.

What's the most expensive game in existence right now? It must be the absolute best ever!!