NOTE: This is The Column, a regular feature on Apolyton where anyone can write about anything to do with Civilization or the gaming industry as a whole. If you feel like writing, please visit the article submission page.

PREVIOUS ARTICLES

#140 A JOURNEY OF 1000 MILES BEGINS WITH A SINGLE STEP Heardie familiarizes us to a new "Civ"-inspired game entitled Guns, Germs and Steel: Tools of Conquest. #139 YOUR CITIES AND YOU Our first "celebrity" column, Activision's St. Swithin, talks about -- what else? -- CTPII. #138 TURN-BASED STRATEGY: THE THINKING PERSON'S GAME Father Beast returns to voice his opinion on the calibre of the turn-based strategist. #137 IS TURN-BASED STRATEGY IN DANGER? Tim Bromige examines the playing field of the turn-based strategy genre today. #136 THE MEANING OF THE POST COUNT AT APOLYTON FORUMS Xuenay takes aim at the Apolyton administration for their handling of forum post count situations. COLUMN ARCHIVE

There are times when I start to wonder just what happened to my youth, and where my life is going. Usually those moments occur when I'm attempting to straighten out the kinks in my back and unclench my right hand from the crab-like pincer it has fused into following a 10-hour session of Civ 2. It's a sad indictment of modern life that in most marriages a third party becomes intimately involved at some point, and in my case that third party would appear to be Sid Meier. What has brought me to this state?

My first experience of computer games was back in 1982, when I became clinically obsessed with a game called "Tyrant of Athens" on the Dragon 32. In about 30K of loving, lo-fi strategy lay the key to paradise, and I wrestled with it for weeks. Though the game was monstrously primitive, the imagination kicked in, and suddenly I bestrode the world like a colossus. Though I was too young to realise it, this was the start of my downfall.....

Compelling as it was, "Tyrant of Athens" failed to compel me after a heady dose of puberty left me convinced that true fulfilment lay in the direction of other pursuits. Preferably ones involving breasts at some point. I didn't touch a computer for over 10 years. However, one day I found myself at the home of a man called "Chug" (name changed to protect the guilty), and the conversation had lulled owing to the fact that Chug was on the point of passing out. I myself had slumped to the floor and was resting on a pile of PC magazines, which I started idly flicking through until I came across a review of a new game called "Civ 2".

By the time I had finished the article, I had broken into a cold sweat. I had to have it. All those memories, locked safely away for years, came pouring forth like a 'Nam flashback. Within a week I had forked out over £1,000 on a PC and a copy of Civ 2.

Civ 2 is my mistress. What keeps bringing me back to it? Like most Civ addicts, I suspect that I'm a closet megalomaniac and control freak. With other PC games I'm always left feeling that I'm still just a cog in the machine (even if it is a cog wielding a BFG), whereas with Civ I'm the whole sodding industry. The second big attraction is the historical settings that allow detailed recreation of great events. SMAC, good game though it was, just couldn't provide this. However, the freeform nature of the game allows limitless possibilities, and if I wish to recreate the War of the Roses on a world shaped like a buffalo copulating with a Volkswagen then nothing's going to stop me.

Naturally, the game brings out the very worst in me. If real-life world leaders behaved in the same way as your average Civ player, their names would live in infamy as the most genocidal nutters ever to stride on this planet. I'm a cuddly bunny of a man, but dropped into a game of Civ I'm a Machiavellian back-stabbing lunatic, slinging nukes around with gay abandon. The lack of overt violence such as the torrents of offal slung about in games like "Quake" has kept the Tipper Gores of the world fooled, but Civ 2 can be decidedly nasty. That's just another reason why it's such good fun, of course...

It's over four years on, and I'm still playing the game. One day Civ 3 may come out, and if it proves to be the advance that I hope it will be I will be happier than a man with two willies. Until then, I'm locking myself away with my obsession and making the world a better place.

Now if you'll excuse me, I seem to owe the Babylonians a damned good kicking. Come to Daddy....

---------
About the author: "Lazarus & The Gimp is indeed the spawn of Satan, though his role is largely ceremonial".

Comment on this article!

The opinions expressed on this page do not necessarily reflect those of Apolyton CS or GameStats. They are just the personal opinions of the writer.