I RECENTLY ADMITTED TO MY wife that I'm battling an addiction. The terrible irony of it is that she was the one who put me in temptation's path. Ever since she introduced me to Sid Meier, I've been hooked on Civilization, a computer game he created in 1991.

Civilization is what's known as a "God" game--one in which the player runs the affairs of men. Now in its third incarnation, it's among the most popular computer games in the world. Here's how it works.

The player selects a civilization to rule over, out of 16 possibilities including Greek, Persian, Roman, Aztec, Iroquois, French, and even American. If you pick Persian civilization, your name is Xerxes; Roman, you're Caesar; American, you're Lincoln. The game begins around 4000 b.c. and can go as far as 2050. The objective is to cultivate your fledgling culture, play to its strengths (for example, the Babylonians are religious, the Zulus are expansionist), and take over the world from neighboring rivals--played by the computer--either by cultural invasion or military conquest.

My wife, far from being a Civ fanatic, is a gentle player who prefers cultural victory, in which foreign cities defect to you without a shot being fired. But two writer friends of mine see domination as the only way. One in particular is so ruthless that if an occupied city's inhabitants are rioting, he'll choose to starve them. "Either that or just raze the city," he advises. There are other ways to win as well, such as prevail in a

Over the course of the centuries, each civilization evolves according to your choices. You might choose to trade the alphabet for knowledge of masonry, say, or have your scientists study astronomy rather than metallurgy. Eventually each civilization can produce a distinctive "special unit" giving it a slight edge, such as the Egyptian war chariot or the Greek hoplite or the samurai or the F-15. Each civilization also competes to build the various wonders of the world, often with interesting results, as when the Chinese build the Pyramids and the Egyptians build the Great Wall. You can mastermind the Hanging Gardens, or the Colossus of Rhodes, or even the Pentagon. The possibilities are endless.

Now doesn't reading all this make you want to play the game and just geek-out? I try to convince myself and others that there's nothing wrong with this--with being a Civ fanatic. I've tried holding forth on the game's sociopolitical implications. The response is inevitably, "And how old are you?" Besides that, who am I trying to fool? Certainly not my better half.

Try telling your wife in a nonchalant manner while she's making dinner, "Honey, I think I'll just go play a little bit on the computer." It's shameful and humiliating. This is what led me ultimately to conceal my game time from her. Sometimes I'd tell her I'd just been on the computer for five minutes when in fact it was closer to five hours (after which I'd suddenly realize our clothes were still at the cleaners). Other times I'd say I was just tidying things up in the den, which now resembles the last scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark. No kidding, there are two American Airline vouchers somewhere beneath the piles of books and papers. But I simply don't have time to find them. Right now, as Joan of Arc, I am contemplating sending my knights to attack the English in order to seize their precious saltpeter mines so I can start recruiting musketeers. But in the back of my mind I'm beginning to feel like the comic book guy from The Simpsons--the one who wears the T-shirt that says "Dungeon Master."