Sid Meier's Civilization 3

With Sid Meier busily crafting Civilization IV, it's the perfect time to get re-acquainted with his previous empire-building epic. For those of you unfamiliar with the whole Civ shebang, it's basically a massive, turn-based resource management/strategy game, where you have to build cities, manage buildings and research technologies to expand your influence across the globe.

As your civilization evolves, you become more powerful as a military force and can start bullying people about -although this incarnation also allows you to play the diplomat seeking world peace. Graphically the game is now looking a bit 20th century, but there's so much here in terms of gameplay - including 16 different civs such as Aztecs and Greeks with unique units - that it'll probably take you a thousand years to finish.