When it comes to games, few franchises are as well refined and downright revolutionary as the Civilization series was. For the first time, gamers will be able to experience the entire legacy of the franchise, thanks to a recently announced compilation pack for the PC.

Take-Two (having bought the Civilization licence itself in 2004, and eventually buying out Firaxis, the development company owned by the godfather of the series itself, Sid Meier, in 2005), officially announced yesterday the future release of a rather stylish looking boxset encompassing almost the entire history of Civilization.

The boxset will contain the following: Civilization, Civilization II, Civilization II: Fantastic Worlds, Civilization II: Conflicts in Civilization, Civilization II: Test of Time, Civilization III, Civilization III: Play the World, Civilization III: Conquests, and Civilization IV.

The two games set to not appear on the compilation are Civilization IV: Warlords, due to the simple fact that it wasonly recently released, and the generally disliked Civilization: Call to Power, a seperately produced title, and one often disliked by Civ fans.

Most compilation would settle for just the games, but much more is planned for the box-set, including a card game based on the franchise (with well over 250 cards), a well sized 96 page books about the series, and a "Making of Civilization IV" DVD. A very generous collection of content, I'm sure many will agree.

It's not going to come cheap though - the "Civilization Chronicles", as the compilation will be officially called, is set to retail at $69. No exact release date is available yet, but expect it some time in October of this year!