My mom bought civ 1 on a whim at a Microcenter when it was a new game, and subsequently a large part of my childhood was her playing civ 1. She skipped 2 and 3 mostly, but 4 and 5 have both sucked down thousands of hours for her. Civ and like popcap stuff are basically all she plays.
She did blow through both MoO 1/2 and MoM back in the day as well. 4X just seems to be sorta her thing.