Although Civ (1) was surely one of my favorite games in the early 90s, i am not so sure it was that clearly the game of that year. It was very popular, and quite novel in that it included so many different aspects of strategy, but on other areas it was rather poor: its graphics were primitive next to other strategy games of the period, or a couple of years earlier. Animation-wise it was not innovative at all (in fact it was quite crude, even in the main animated scenes, like in the civil disorder, the capture of a city, and the diplomacy with other leaders).
Still an obviously very important game, just noting that it was not seen by all as the best game of 1991 at the time.
It will probably win here though