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#127 THE "REAL" CIVILIZATION II Christantine The Great is appalled with what he saw as MicroPROSE milking off of the success of CivII. #126 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ADDICTION Kent Wang divulges in his receipe on the elements needed for a truly addictive gaming experience. #125 CIV TO CIVII: LESSONS OF THE PAST FOR CIVIII Father Beast examines three key points that he feels are a must for inclusion in Civilization III. #124 CIVILIZATION III Tim Bromige gets right to his point: what was wrong in CivII can be fixed in CivIII. #123 TPOD & ROACSG: THE PHYSICS OF SUGGESTION In the third and final installment of this article, TheLimey evaluates Firaxis' and Activision's response to Civer input-suggestions on upcoming titles. COLUMN ARCHIVE

Long ago, before anyone had computers in their homes, I was 13 and my stepfather had made a game. It was doubtless plagiarized from other stuff he'd played, but I found it fascinating. This game didn't have a name, but my stepfather, my older brother, and I played it for weeks on end. The board was tile squares (we couldn't afford hex paper), and each of us had our home country on an island with 4 cities, with a sprawling continent in the middle we went to colonize.

Units were produced with money (generated by cities), Basic Resource Points (BRP’s or burps, generated by certain squares) and time. You would spend the money and BRP’s, then your unit would be put on the calendar for delivery in X turns. For a lot of money and a few BRP’s, you could also do research, for a possibility of a breakthrough. There wasn’t a technology tree, exactly, more of a technology ladder. Before the game ended, we had bombers and continent crossing missles when we started with phalanxes and galleys.

In exploration and colonization, we dealt with cranky natives, who might either help us or fight us. We founded new settlements, which we upgraded from forts, to ports, and finally full fledged cities. We laid road and rail, both to move resources to our cities, and to move units with speed.

But my stepfather went away, and the game died. War games which simulated various battles just didn’t have the appeal, and we went our different ways. We mostly forgot the game which had taken so much of our time and interest. I missed that game.

The coming of computer games brought back a little interest. A text based game called "King" gave me lots of fun with its management of land, grain, and people. Santa Paravia on the Commodore was a good updating of King. It had some graphics, and added money, taxes (with citizens getting irate), and buildings. Still, something was missing.

I bought Civilization for $10 in mid-1997, having heard good things about it from gamer mags, whenever they talk about "Classics". My computer time is limited, so I often read the manual when I can't be at the computer. The Civ manual (in PDF form) was printed out on a friends computer (since my nine pin dot matrix wasn’t good enough). I three hole punched the printout and bound it, and was often found reading it in bed at night when my wife was on the computer playing cribbage.

When I started playing Civilization, I quickly realized what was missing from King and Santa Paravia: the ability to expand and build new cities. And after a few games I remembered that old tabletop game. Seeing Civilization, I knew it was my first true love come home. My grandma sent me $10 for my birthday in 1998, and I bought Civilization II at Kmart for $12, splurging a couple dollars of my own money. Some things threw me at first, such as the settler looked like what I thought the warriors should look like, and the isometric map messed up my directions for a while. But I learned and found a wonderful rich and full game, and my true love only gets better as she grows.

Soon all other games fell by the wayside, and my wife and kids always know when I’ve been on the computer because the civ2 CD is in the drive. My older son started bugging me to play some of my other old favorites. The internet came to us in mid-1999, and I soon discovered Apolyton. I spent a lot of time trolling the strategy, hints and tips sections, and I discovered there are some really good Civ players out there. I learned tricks I never knew existed, and I couldn’t wait to get offline and try them out on my beloved civ. It was in February 2000 that I finally registered for the Apolyton forums, mostly to participate in the Civ3 discussions. This is a great crowd, and we all love Civ.

I bought the Fantastic Worlds add-on for $4 off the cheap rack, and soon I could tell my son I was playing Master Of Orion, meaning the Master Of Orion Jr., scenario. He was not impressed. I installed the Alpha Centauri demo, and even picked up Civnet cheap somewhere. I love all things Civ, and I’ll probably even pick up CTP cheap at some point, despite the problems I've heard about it.

A kind of Civilization was the first game I loved, and I will probably be here for it, in all its forms, for a long, long time to come.

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About the author (self-quote): "Play all kinds of civ, even civ like games such as MOO2, but not very good at any of them".

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