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 results
1 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.
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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
- (1991) Civilization: MobyGames | GameFAQs | IGDB | Metacritic: - / -
- (1996) Civilization II: MobyGames | GameFAQs | IGDB | Metacritic: 94 / 8.6
- (2001) Civilization III: MobyGames | GameFAQs | IGDB |Metacritic: 90 / 8.4
- (2005) Civilization IV: MobyGames | GameFAQs | IGDB | Metacritic: 94 / 8.4
- (2010) Civilization V: MobyGames | GameFAQs | IGDB | Metacritic: 90 / 8.1
- (2016) Civilization VI: MobyGames | GameFAQs | IGDB | Metacritic: 88 / 7.3
- (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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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.
I'm pretty sure you can rollback game versions on Steam too.
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.
Can't you use Steam Depot to download older versions? It's been a minute since I futzed with it.
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
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.
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.
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.