Looking at them now, they where more simplistic than today's games.
But at the time, they where cutting new ground, in game types, play capability, and sometimes graphics.
A theme about all these games are multi-player, RTS games. I may do a different post for FPS and other multi-player games. Most of the god games (populous, Dungeon Keeper) were NOT good multi-player games...but I tried to play them. :)
M.U.L.E. - 1983
Populous - 1989
PowerMonger - 1990
Spaceward Ho! - 1990
Magic Carpet - 1994
Warcraft II - 1995
Command And Conquer - 1995
Dungeon Keeper 1997
Age of Empires - 1997
Populous 3 - 1999 - Revolutionary scale, last great god game.
StarCraft - 2000
WarCraft 3 - 2002, WC3 and WC2 listed, since WC3 introduced heros, revolutionizing RTS