With many different entries in the Civilization series, I have noticed something. I noticed that, even though the franchise keeps adding and improving, it does not make the older games outdated. Yes, the older games may not look as nice, or have good AI, but they are still viable gaming experiences.
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I'd say Civ4 is my favorite but it may just be that it was my first series. Worth mentioning if you've never heard of it is FreeCiv. An open source version complete with its own modding that's a bit more extensive than official releases.
I would argue each game has got more accessible with each iteration with the tradeoff being an "incomplete" game until all the DLCs are released. (Things like religion being absent in Civ5's launch)
Oh yeah, every game feels more and more accessible, but that might be a good thing. Really because you end up learning each part at a time. I didn't know about the open source civ type game.
http://www.freeciv.org/
Part of the reason it's so great is the android port.
Yeah that's fair, there is probably an overwhelming amount of features for new players. Personally I play it casually so I just experimented with each thing slightly until I got the hang of it. Against AIs it's fine to ignore things I'd say; when I started playing with friends though they started explaining the more complicated things like science bombing, why to go for cultural victories, etc.