Sid Meier's Civilization V

It's like chess with nukes and a*ss holes. Civilization is a turn-based strategy game where the aim is to build up an empire up from nothing. The game aims to strike a balance between science, culture and napalm. It's a game where you can start as a civilization such as Rome, Egypt, Russia, or the United States, and raise them from a hunter-gatherer society into the best civilization in history. You can make Jewish Nazis, have Ghandi drop the A-bomb on you, and alter the future a lot. It’s a game in which essentially you're just trying to get enough uranium/oil as possible and nuke everything. Just like how the real world is right now. They forgot to give the US extra combat strength for attacking civs with oil in their possession, but besides that it's a great game. Civilization V teaches you so much history too. For example, Civ taught me that in 1980, Gandhi launched a nuclear war on Alexander the Great and his Greek empire, and in turn Alexander teamed up with Napoleon Bonaparte to destroy Gandhi's empire with a massive naval attack. Then, after winning, Napoleon focused on science and, in 2009, launched a space mission to Alpha Centauri. Despite learning all this though, for some reason, I got an F on my history test. Weird. So, have you ever wanted to create a city from scratch? Like imagine 50 people eventually setting up a camp in the woods, near a river. Another group with nothing but poorly crafted axes will go explore for other places and potential enemies that may threaten you. Over the years and decades it turns into a farmland and then a whole bunch of farmlands and then rough buildings, suddenly you begin to have a military ready and able to defend this city you've just created out of nothing. Eventually you meet other civilizations, similar to you. Some are stronger, some are weaker. You keep building and building and building and next thing you know, you have several cities and a good chunk of the map is covered by you. Your territory with an actual military backing you. It may be stronger or weaker than most other militaries in the world and you can actually make sure you are the top dog. Out of 50 people making up a farmland, you got several medieval like cities, with an army to defend it from anything and regularly taking out barbarians (NPC for the sole purpose to pillage you). Where once you had trouble with one barbarian camp now you're taking down three of them at a time just for practice. You have legitimate power to change nations. Do you want to be benevolent and loving to other nations, be diplomatic and form great relationships and be incredibly cultured, do you prefer to straight up kill everything you see because you see it as a threat to the existence of your empire, do you want to do a bit of both, or maybe you want nothing to do with anyone and would prefer to grow by yourself making as much bank as you possibly can. You can do all of that. In maybe 20 or 30 hours you'll go from one squad of axe wielding brutes defending a farm to an army of gunships taking out tanks to protect or acquire a continent. You'll go from considering the catapult as your most dangerous weapon to atleast 10 submarine nukes in the ocean ready to completely and utterly destroy anyone who pisses you off. You'll go from a simple farm to ruling a continent to ruling the world. Better get started. 9/10

Even years after its release, Civilization V remains the absolute gold standard of the 4X genre. While newer entries get bogged down in tedious district micromanagement and cartoony visuals, Civ 5 nails the perfect balance of deep grand strategy and accessible fun. It is the only game in the franchise where "playing tall" optimized empire of just 3 to 4 massive cities—is a perfectly viable and incredibly satisfying way to conquer the world. The move to a hexagonal grid and the "one unit per tile" rule turned combat into a brilliant, tactical game of chess where terrain actually matters. Throw in a stunning, mature aesthetic, a legendary orchestral soundtrack, and a flawless late-game Ideology system, and you have a masterpiece that simply refuses to age.

This is still the best Civilization game made to date - I would recommend this over both more recent editions.