The easy question out of the way, play Civ 5, if you want to step back into a Civ game. It is a good modern update to a classic that just get better with each expansion. It does have its quirks, but I'd say it is a good place to get back into the series. Or Civ 4, if you want to hear Spock talk to you for hours and hours. Which I can totally do...

As for the Skyrim question, yeah I played on PC. I had a recently upgraded PC at the time so it made sense to play Skyrim on Ultra and have some fun on the PC.

On the subject of time invested, I didn't hate the game by any means. I did enjoy the exploration. But after 40 hours of it all that started to wear pretty thin for me since none of the rest of the game really grabbed me. Combat was more of a chore for me. It got boring after all that time, so all I had left was crafting and doing side quests. And since the design for companions was broken that killed the ability to enjoy that aspect as well. So it just sort of left me in a dead end where I stopped finding something that entertained me in the game.

But it kept me for 40 hours so it was not a wasted time or effort. I tried it because people spoke highly of the series and the studio. So like what I did with Dragon Age and Bioware, I gave their games a try to see if they were for me. Haven't really felt a desire after Skyrim to play another one of their games. Fallout being post-apocalyptic doesn't really help it's case though. I'm a fantasy setting lover by nature, which is why I was more interested in the Elder Scrolls series than Fallout. So I'm not really feeling the urge to try it out. They're good games, just not ones for me.

As for Bioware and choice. That's a completely different topic which I could go on for a really long time. The short of it is that Dragon Age showed me the sort of games they make and I disagree with their design philosophy.