What made you fall in love with Civ?

I remember playing Civ III at 8 years old getting stomped by the cpu on the easiest difficulty over and over. For some reason I still loved the game and remember my dad buying me the complete edition of Civ IV later on for my birthday. My dad and myself would stay up on the weekends building the greatest civilizations of all time. I remember my first victory ever in Civ IV I was America, and in the end it was France and myself. When I finally nuked Paris and won the game we were so happy. I continued to play Civ with my dad until he stopped playing one day. Well 18 years later and thousands of hours later I still love this franchise as much as I did when I was 8.