*cough* the american civlization *cough*
You're making yourself look really bad with your incessant, ignorant trolling.
It's comments like this that, when made by Americans, generate animosity due to the arrogance involved. Apparently, you are painfully ignorant about at least one, and probably many countries throughout the world.
Or, if you aren't just blathering ignorance, how about you give us an off-hand list of civilizations (in civ IV or otherwise) that:
1. Have lasted >230 years
2. Carried a land area comparable to the United States for the vast majority of that time.
3. Had trade influencing essentially the entire word
You can, if you try (which I doubt you'll actually look carefully for the sake of this), find many civs that fit the criteria and have been around for longer. Areas like Babylonia have been around since the BCs...but look carefully ---> how many years did a particular government (either monarchy line, republic, etc) reign before collapse? Even England was a pure monarchy near enough to the time the United States gained independence!
So now how do you draw the line, btw? If you're just using the land, USA gets to lump ALL of north american history, not just colonial on.
If you're using a stable government form, USA is already contending for one of the longer-running versions in history (though it is spiraling down).
Civs like portugal were off and on, but for example Portugal broke from spain ~1640 after being unified for quite some time. Do you count its existence and influence before that? If you do, you also count native american AND the varied histories of the populace coming into the United States. You can't pretend it away in one instance and acknowledge it in another. Some other notes for our mr. troll:
- Zulu, a prominent and repeated presence in Civ, is rarely questioned for inclusion in the game. Shaka came to power in 1816...notice that this is LATER than the USA start...and with LESS staying power and global dominance...but let's pick on the US for personal/emotional reasons!
- Mali lasted 370 years, but its trade influence was smaller
- Inca, as an empire, lasted less than 200 years. Note that Inca is one of the cheesiest/most powerful civs in the game.
- Aztec prominence was not materially longer than that of USA
- The Mongols pulled the single most impressive campaign in history (breaking the "land war in asia" rule, crossing successfully through basically all of Russia, etc), spanning a tremendous amount of territory with excellent tactics and communication. They didn't last that long though.
- Russia in its current form hasn't been around any longer than the USA, although they got an earlier start. Government hasn't been nearly so stable.
- Note that this is definitely not an authority, but it still puts things in perspective to a degree:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_empires#Measurement_details ----> The 11th largest nation by landmass ever that has lasted 100's of years probably merits consideration in a game that has 30+ civilizations...
- Netherlands came around in the 1500's but dropped off via conquest before returning in the early 1800's.
None of that is to say that these civs do not have factors that merit their inclusion, but that the United States compares favorably in one or several historical metrics (duration, size, government stability, world trade influence, etc) with each of these empires and more should at least be enough to blow holes in your trolling ignorance about a single fast food franchise.
Of course, a substantial part of the target demographic needs to be considered also

.