What brought you into civ?

[Swiss Pauli]

Played the Civ3 Mediterranian scenario on a friend's PC. Bought the Conquests game, but tired of it quite quickly (relatively speaking).

Hooked into the online communities when I got CIV and it's been downhill from there...

[Adagio]

I started with Civ 1 on the Amiga...

Unfortunately I used cheats back then (unlimited money), so I wasn't challenged, never got any good at it because of it

I have almost played all Civ (and Civ spin offs) games that has been made (Didn't play any of the XPs for Civ 2)

[Unimatrix11]

Civilization on a C64 ?! No way ! I dont wanna call anyone a liar, but before i get a link to some site where i can download it and test it on some emulator, i wont believe it. I remember buying a memory expansion for my Amiga500 in order to play Civ1 (which qualifies me as a "geezer" i guess) - and You know what ? I really miss those map-style graphics of the original - never really got to terms with the isometric 3D-ish style - not to talk about its hardware hunger...

[Blake]

I did play Civ1, but not that much. I also hacked it with a hex editor to get super units , hey I was a kid, my int was A LOT higher than wisdom back then .

I played Civ2 a fair bit, although in isolation of any community. I learned to beat the highest difficulties with ease, then quit playing.

SMAC was when I became involved in the community and I think I was probably one of the best SP'ers, possibly the best (although several notable players quit years before, or turned to MP exclusively).

Civ3 got a skip from me, I played it but only for long enough to realize that it wasn't worth playing.

So really I went straight from SMAC to CIV and decided to put my analytical skills gained from the tired old SMAC, to work with the fresh title of CIV. I think the rest is history .

[Vinnnch]

Civ1 for me too.
The specificity just was that I didn't have a computer. But had become a total addict playing on friends'. Have done incredible things juste to play sometimes :
- exchange car - PC for a few days
- enter neighboor's house to play while they were on holidays
- etc...

And, er, yes, all my friends had a "pirated" version of the game. So no trace of a guide explaining how to play. And what was incredible is that, even doing nearly nothing, I was already caught into the game.
- I remember the emotion when I learned that you could "fortify" units. I was not obliged anymore to press space for all of them every turn
- Even when I discovered that buildings were useful to something
- Or the nearo-orgasm I had when I discovered that settlers could irrigate, or mine, or... I could at last make the same nice symbols that AI civs were making...

[MoonWolf]

Originally posted by Vinnnch
- enter neighboor's house to play while they were on holidays

And we have a winner! Haha, well, hope they at least knew about it

Hmm, why isn't FreeCiv on the list?

[ayronis]

When I was a kid, I used to go to my uncle's house every November for Thanksgiving dinner. Since it was practically the only time during the year that I would see most of these people, I would be bored out of my mind. In the late 80's, to entertain me, my uncle started showing off his mounting collection of video games that he had started accumulating for his PC. I was a Nintendo addict back then so I was willing to play just about anything.

In 1991 he showed me Civ1 and from then on I stopped asking to see anything new. The next two years I was so excited about Thanksgiving dinner that I kept a countdown until I could play Civ again.

Years later I eventually acquired my own PC and I followed the development of the franchise through MoM, CivII, ToT, and in high school my friends and I would frequently play a hotseat game of Multiplayer Gold after school.

CivIII was a constant companion though my early years of Graduate School, especially when PBEM became a reality. CivIV picked up immediately afterwards.

There have been few constants in my life, and the obsession has been tidal at times, but few things have been as reliable and consistently enjoyable as Civ'ing.

[Drakan]

PS1 CivII.

[rah]

Civ I nintendo.
I remember the first game when i wasn't quite sure of the concept. Within the first few turns a chariot marched up and destoyed Rome. GAME OVER.
My skill level has increased a tad since then.

[quinalla]

Civ3 is when I really started. I am sure I saw someone play 1 & 2, but I never played them myself, don't know how I missed out since I enjoy these types of games a lot. Anyway, I liked Civ3 a lot, but got discouraged by the REX>* in that game. Civ4 is far superior and I dust it off every so often and I am of course playing like mad with the new expansion

[Jvstin]

Originally posted by MoonWolf

And we have a winner! Haha, well, hope they at least knew about it

Hmm, why isn't FreeCiv on the list?

That might be covered under "other", and I think its a probably unlikely first entry point into the Civ series.

[patcon]

I must be a real geezer. I first played Civilization as a board game in the mid 80's when I was in the USNavy in Orlando (yes, I know Orlando is land-locked) and we had a gaming group. First computer civ I played was Civ2 for the Mac.

[awckie]

CIV I...

I moved to San Francisco with some friends in the early 90s and one of the friends had CIV I. He gave me the discs and I've been addicted since.

I can still visualize the first CIV I and CIV II games I played. I remember being AMAZED at CIV II and in those days I was on CompuServe on GAME PUB B Forum where Brian Reynolds hung out. He would come in and get suggestions from all of us for the first patch. That made me feel cool - I'm such a dork!

I'm looking up at my bookshelf and sitting there are my boxes for CIVNet, Civ II, Civ II Fantastic Worlds, CIV III (and of course Colonization - which I LOVED)

I even have Rome on 640K a day in there

I'm 35 and addicted as ever... Oh... and I'm a girl....

[Nikolai]

Lots of delurkers in this thread.

[Shrapnel12]

I started with Civ 2. My favorite game was fighting a blitzkrieg style war against the Sioux on an Asian shaped continent (might have been an Earth Map). If I remember right, this was a quick war because you could use your enemy's roads and railroads, and he had railroads. My tanks rolled over his technologically inferior defenses. Considering there also was no war weariness and no city maintenance, few civs had a chance against a human player in Civ 2.