My first PC gaming memory was Civilization 1. It came in that massive box, which just had a crap ton of floopy disks and a manual.
Everything, Cities and Units, were just squares which moved around, and railroads were OP as all kinds of hell, and you could Stack of Doom everything. I didn't remember the finer points, but I liked building a lot of cities and researching stuff; if it ever said "Hey, there, Mr. Republic, would you like a Monarchy?" I'd just click yes to get rid of the pop-up in the way of the cities and science.
Then I moved onto Civ 2, disliked Civ 3, but Civ 5 got me hooked, which has sinced moved to Europa Universalis 4.