This game is completely obsolete!
To call this game educational would be to call Pulp Fiction the most linear film script of the 20th century. This game is by no means educational, nor is it even really fictitious. It's a complete historical collage, as if someone took World Book Encyclopedia and stuck it in a blender only to retake it out and glue all the pages back together again. Nothing really makes sense, so that leaves to question: What was the purpose of this game? To entertain? Hardly. To call Civilization an entertaining experience one would have to not only be bored out of their skull, but also have an immense amount of time on their hands to learn the ropes. There is a tutorial included in the game, but it is so brief and at times to hard to follow, that one is better off just reading the manual, which is also painstakingly complex and needlessly talky.
In order to play this game, I had to resolve in my mind that I would take the time to learn it. Driven by the hope that it would all pay off in the end, I spent hours reading the boring manual and experiment with the game just to get a fill for what I was supposed to be doing. Unfortunately there was no pay off in the end. No story, no insight, no real depth, nothing to keep me coming back for more. It was all for nothing. Simply a disappointment, and nothing more. Sure we can argue that this game was the foundation or touchstone for strategy computer games to develop from and expand, and it was this argument alone that peaked my interest in the game in the first place. But when compared with what has come since then, there is nothing here to ever make you want to return. It is completely and utterly obsolete.