I found Civilization highly addictive because of the element of exploration and progress; it's so easy to be drawn into exploring and taming the landscape and creating and running an elaborate virtual empire, only to realise that it amounts to nothing when you switch the computer off (most commonly at 9am the following day). As such, I've banned it from my life.
Games like Civilization are to making things what masturbation is to sex.
Oh yes, I had to ban Civilization II from my life when it came out. Like Peter, I probably prefer first person style games more now, for the same reasons.
I've never managed to give a fuck about these sorts of games. They're just so boring, and take so much time to get anything happening. I guess similarly I stopped being interested in D&D shortly after discovering it. I like 3D first-person games, not because of the shoot'em'up aspect but because of the immersive interaction... I have a whole bunch of games waiting to be installed and played on my new mega-laptop, but I'm so busy reading books and watching DVDs (last Buffy season and second-last Angel at the moment, so I still have Angel S5 after most of these seasons still, eek) that it'll take me a while.
Graham, though, I think may not be so safe ;)