What brought you into civ?

[Chariot]

got ctp and smac both for christmas in 1999 and was hooked on turn-based games from then on. split the cost with my sister to get ctp2(she was also addicted to ctp) when it came out. she bought civ3 when it came out but didnt find it nearly as fun as the ctp series. i ended up playing it a lot and bought the expansions for it, which that got me into the base civ series.

(edit: killed a run-on sentence)

[Nugog]

Civ 4 for me.



Always wanted to play civ - some friends had it - finally got a pc at home - got Civ 4 immediatley - joined 'poly at about the same time - and now I have no life.....

[Sir Og]

CivI for me too. Of course no manual or strategy guide so it took years to discover every little feature of this great game. I remember my first game of course as well as several interesting games that I have played. I remember the game when I first discovered that it is better to switch to something other than despotism at some point in the game
I remember messing with savegame files to make myself 65k gold or messing with the .exe to make the pyramids cost 10 shields and make the militia with 20 attack and 20 moves
Those were the days...

[marioflag]

I was introduced to civilization by alpha centauri, which i was really addicted.
I can say that i'm truly addicted to civilization series only since civ4 though, because i didn't like so much civ3 and i always felt that it was a great step backward compared to AC, due to civ3 i didn't even imagined to be so much addicted to civ4.

[Will9]

It looks like I'm a rare breed here. Only 6 other people from Civ3 compared to 100+ from Civ1.

[Protra3211]

Civilization 2 was my first pc game.I enjoyed it so much I found like many that the hours could slip away without your notice.One more turn....Call to Power 2 was the next game.Had its flaws at first but thanks to many modders the game was given new life.Only now after all this time is it starting show its age.

[Joseph]

I went to Software Etc., at our local mall back in 91 or 92, and asked the sale person, what would be a good game to play. He asked what type of game I liked and I told him building type. He show me Civilization. I took it home and rest is history. My version was 3.5 DOS. I just look and I still have all 4 disks.

I had almost every game that Micro Prose made for my C-64, but do not remember seeing Civ for it.
However Sid made his RRT game for the C-64. I had it at one time.

[Robert]

I play the 'new' Civilization The Boardgame
I have a poul of friends (about 10) who like the game as well, so once in a while we play an entire saturday "Civilization The Boardgame", including our own house-rules, and many new pieces, bought from other games

The game tends to take 10-14 hours per saturday
And everytime we tweak our houserules more.
It's really fun to play!

I've never played the 'old' boardgame.
Apparantly they're busy on a new incarnation of the boardgame, now named: "Rise of a nation". Not much information about it has been revealed yet.

Maybe it's worth a thread on it's own.

[SilverGrowler]

Started playing with CIV IV

BUT

The first version I owned was CIV1 which was given to me free as compensation as a (486) computer I bought had multiple faults and went back to the manufacturer several times. I never even opened the box but gave it to my son to play a year or so later.....
Tried playing it on his PC but I got nowhere - he liked it though.

I also bought Alpha Centauri and its expansion pack not long after it came out, installed it played 10 turns or so twice but didnt work out what to do so uninstalled it.......

I bought CIV IV because it was cheap online with another game I wanted and as it was supposed to be easier to start with. It was. Liked it, played it a lot and bought the expansion packs.

[b etor]

oh, i'm not an addict. i started playing warlords.

[VeryBigSword]

I started with Playstation One CivII, about 3 years before getting my first PC.

Btw what is heretical about that, Dr MrWhereItsAt?

Is Apolyton upset that I had fallen under the sway of a heathen console?

On the PC I played Call to Power 1 initially and quite liked that with its public works system, rations/workday/wages slider and especially slavery Ended up playing it many times.

Played vanilla Civ3 next and pulled off a good win on Prince in my first and only game - I disliked the corruption system which really turned me off. And I didn't have rubber *anywhere* on my continent so had to snatch one city off the largest overseas opponent with a naval invasion in the modern era, and then hold onto it against his entire military/airforce.

I picked up Civ4 as part of SM Civ Chronicles package, and have really enjoyed it so far. I read Vels strategy guide before firing up my first patched vanilla game, and got a solid cultural victory on Noble after conquering my own continent. Then I stepped up to Prince, and learnt the value of religion and diplomacy - my Neighbours were large, REXing buddhist Isabella and settling adjacent to my borders Caesar (sharing her religion). I founded confucianism during CS slingshot and refused all requests and demands. Being constantly invaded and having no trading partners, I lagged in infrastructure/tech/wonders and abandoned it in disgust around 1450AD. Since then on Prince I've won 2 space races and a diplo with strong scores so I guess its time I tried Monarch or an Exp pack.

[Asmodeous]

Civ1 here as well.

I must say that the one thing I miss most about Civ2, honestly, was those ever-so-silly animated advisors. I REALLY wish they'd bring those back, even all 3D rendered cartoony guys.

Whenever I pop F9 and switch to the Demographics screen and see that my military is below the Rival Average, my first immediate thought that rings in my head is...

"GIVE ME MORE SOLDIERS, NOBLE LEADER, THAT THEY MAY SHEATH THEIR SWORDS IN THE BEATING HEARTS OF OUR ENEMIES!!!!!"

I can still hear it clearly. I also loved when your military was dominating the world and his window would be empty and when you clicked on him he'd wander through singing drunken Irish Fight Songs and let you know in a drunken drawl that everythin'''s fiiiiiiine, leader *hic*!


I miss those.

Me.

[LzPrst]

Civ1 of course. oh the days. my neighbour's father borrowed a few computers from his job as a school administrator. my friend's older brothers played civ1 and starcontrol 2, that was the games we had and we didnt really understand that much since it was in english but it was great fun.

of course, in those days we played 3 people on 1 civ, kinda like a democracy game where we each controlled one city and it's offshoots.

we always played the entire game in despotism and never built improvements. to us it was a war game and we did whatever we could to conquer the world. 100% science rate so we could keep up in tech and no improvements so that we didnt lose money. other governments had maintenance upkeep so they were worthless. our chariots, catapults, and eventually tanks and riflemen usually crushed all other civs and we grew huge and all was good.

unless some other civ had a large continent to themselves.... then their advanced republic or whatever would crush our musketeers with their tanks and bombers. it really was wondrous fun


and yeah, the civ2 advisors are sorely missed. they were icing on the cake. great fun.

[dowski]

Civ I.

The number of us who have "grown up" (or not ) with this game series is pretty astounding. I wasn't expecting to see such a big group of "geezers".

Let's see, Civ memories ...

I got into the game after playing it at a friend's house. Used to games like Mario/Zelda/etc, I was asking him how you "got" certain items on the map (gold, horses, etc). I don't know if he even got the game exactly, but I didn't care. Seeing that map get revealed and cities getting built - I was hooked.

I went out as soon as I could and convinced my parents to get me the game (it was '91-'92, IIRC). I still have the whole thing, but I think the 5-1/4" floppies are no good.

My first game, I was doing improvements outside of my city radius and connecting them with roads and stuff. Oops. I'm pretty sure I was playing as the Romans, and I know I was on a smallish isolated island. The Zulus wound up getting huge, despite the fact that I was playing on Chieftan, and dominated the game.

I remember when I first understood luxuries and was able to run the Republic government. All of a sudden, my cities were getting huge and I was moving up in levels.

Someone else mentioned the funny graphical glitches - the bands of pollution and forts that would "wrap" around the map.

Other highlights ... building "walls" of ships to blockade rival ships, even in peace time ... all units with > 1 MP getting "blitz" in Civ4 terms - parking a battleship next to a city and pummeling it until destroyed by a spearman ... good times.

Since then, I have owned every official Civ game, plus CTP and Colonization. When Civ II came out, a friend and I would stay up all night, swapping on and off from leader to advisor roles in playing the game.

Even now that I am married and have kids, I still find time for Civ. Got BTS for my birthday last month, and my 4 year old loves to watch everything that happens in the game.

Cool stuff. Thanks for all the posts - it was fun to read them.

dowski

[Adm.Naismith]

Originally posted by Saurus
I was looking for a pc-version of the Amiga-game called "Empire" - a simple war-strategy game witch I did not seem to find anywere. It was then a schoolmate recomended Civilization.

I played Empire first, too!
I started with Civ I, but I didn't red the manual and haven't a clue of different terrain, city placement and terrain use. A friend of mine is a better player, and help me to straight my silly tactics and win the game.
I bought Civilization 1 for my Commodore Amiga 1000, to play at home, and used a copy of Civ 1 for MS DOS to play at lunch break at work, with a collegue

I bought Civ II vanilla (probably the first game I installed on my first Windows 3.1 notebook), then Alpha Centauri Vanilla, Alpha Centauri Alien Crossfire Demo (it crashed my PC, so I never played the full version), then I discovered the world of Alpha Centauri Forum.
When the official forum was closed down (burned down by flames, to be correct) I switched to this large Apolyton Civ Forum starting with Alpha Centauri thread, then almost missing the original "The List" era (but writing a lot about the short essential and so on).

Civ III was bought, then Civ III Conquest.

I showed and teached Conquest to my two young children, so I raised the number of Civ players by two more (speak about settling! ).

I've bought Civ IV, then Warlords and now I'm wrestling with BTS bugs on a bugged Windows Vista with "not so stable" Nvidia drivers.

Originally posted by Saurus
(I never got Empire btw ... and I´m still not even sure wether there actually exists a PC version of that game or not)

Sure! I played it a lot. You can probably find it at some abandonware site, probably is resting is some floppy disk in my house, if not formatted.
I have no idea if it can still be played with some dos emulator.
If you like to speak about it please write a PM at me (may be I'll reply in a week, I'm not always browsing the site).