Addiction of severe type was what you were going to get, if started playing Civilization II.
Me also, like all Civ2 players, I forgot too about physical needs, food, water, and sleep. Imagine to have gathered at your nation's frontiers, all your powerful military forces and be ready to attack simultaneously at all your hated rival's cities, in a "Blitzkrieg" type of attack. Who cares then about insignificant little things as food???
Or, on the contrary, when your cunning neighbour suddenly broke the peace treaty and attacked you, or planted a spy in your capital city. Wouldn't you militarily punish him, or if the odds were against you, wouldn't you at least take some measures against him? Is it a time now to go to the bathroom? NO WAY. Revenge comes first! It's scientifically tested (by me lol) that when playing CIV2 you can't be distracted by absolutely nothing.
I would say that Civilization's philosophy was very close to the role playing game genre. Not in the sense of Japanese RPG conventions (Hit points, magic points, upgrading the character, etc.) but in the sense that with your actions, you were taking the role of the leader of a nation, and you were actually writing the history of your country, and of the whole world.
Besides the poor graphics, that didn't reduce at the slightest the overall gaming pleasure, the only real negative point of this game, was its "monstrous" loading times. The problem usually occurred, when having picked a large world map, especially at the second half of the 20th century, and much worse, when there was a war somewhere in the map. I'm talking about an average 10 minutes waiting time for each turn, before all CPU actions were concluded!
For better or worse, they just don't make games like this anymore. Today's Civilization, and strategy games in general, are more "soft", more "casual gamer" friendly (yes, "Civilization Revolution", to the likes of you I'm refferring to). I still play now and then this game, and still feel the same enthusiasm everytime I start a new round. I wouldn't be so sure though, that someone who hasn't played CIV2 so far, could appreciate it now as a game. For the majority of today's gamers, Civilization 2 stands more like a museum piece, than a playable game.