Sid (and others) did much the same thing that F2P games do now; make the odds 'flexible' using accumulators, counters and other tricks. For example, the odds displayed may be 66% chance of victory, but over time, that number changes based on a number of fuzzy factors (number of consecutive victories/losses, time since last victory/loss etc...). He even had a random coin flip in there cause 'randomness is what makes games fun'. So even though it said 66%, there's something like a 1 out of 10 chance that you'll just lose, to spice things up. I mean really, how fun would it be if tanks always beat archers. :-)

In the pursuit of making a fun and interesting experience, it's not as bad as it sounds since it leads to a rewarding experience (though getting 2 hours of sleep because Civ is so addictive could be construed as negative). When providing questionable reward to the player and in a money grab via psychological manipulation, well, yeah, seems pretty exploitative and not so honorable.

What's most interesting to me is the wildly different perspectives that gamers on different platforms will tolerate. Zynga/Facebook gamers seemed to never care. Mobile gamers follow suit but some are a bit sensitive to this manipulation. Console gamers are familiar with these tactics since the horse armor days but have a red line (Destiny 2 just crossed). PC gamers have zero tolerance and will go up in arms as soon as their precious games are violated with F2P mechanics (though Ubisoft is doing pretty good here since they're doing it somewhat respectfully).