Civ 1 - the sweet memories

[Solver]

Aye, just needed to post something here .

I wonder if people got some sweet memories to post from the old Civ 1 days. I actually still have Civ 1, so maybe the days aren't that old .

In any case, my sweetest memory has to be the first victory on Prince - the time when I finally started to actually understand the game.

[MrWhereItsAt]

When was an old Chieftain game where I built cities almost literally covering the planet - incluing all of the Sahara, Australia and Greenland. There was one city left - Rome, in Italy. I built up to about 270 million people in 2048, then nuked Rome 15 times at once, entered with a Mech Inf and found... an advanced tribe!

[Jac de Molay]

Wandering into radio shack looking for a game for my super-cool 286 laptop and finding this inconspicuous, benign-looking gamebox calling out my name. Ended up spending that entire weekend hunched over that tiny VGA screen. The rest is history
Dave

[Father Beast]

For me, I think it would besometime after I got it, and was running civ on my 486/25, and trying to figure out why I liked the game! it was frustrating as all heck compared to about everything else I'd played up till then. But there was something...

[Solver]

What? Did anyone actually like the game? I though that everyone hated it at the start and only then got in it.

[Jac de Molay]

The first day I was completely mystified, and equally intimidated by the size of the manual. (Settlers? What do these settler guys do? But after that it seemed to "click" suddenly, and been off and running ever since.

DAve

[Solver]

Yeah Dave, same feeling here. When I started my first game, I was wondering what is that smiley face on blue background. I was pretty impressed when I met Alexander, my first leader. And I was even more impressed when his Legion came and conquered me.

I remember choosing Revolution early on. A few moments later, I saw a box saying Pick New Government, and only saw Despotism as an option. I thought it might have some philosophical sense .

[MrWhereItsAt]

Ooh! Ooh! Thinking I was complete and utter sad case when I realized I could do the document check without consulting anything.

/me says "Yep, I know EXACTLY what the requirements for Communism are...

[Solver]

Civ 1 is still the only Civ game for which I knew EVERYTHING by hear, all units, techs, such and such.

[JohnT]

Naw, I loved and understood the game from the get-go. Sucked at it for quite a while (I was too peaceful), but I played and played and played from the second I got it.

My favorite game was after I totally figured it out and was able to send rockets to AC by 1500ad consistantly on Prince. I was easily the dominant civilization tech-wise, size-wise, population-wise, etc. Had a bunch of totally built-up cities, with no SDI, nukes, a huge freakin' army, etc. I then allowed for my capital to get taken by one of the minor civilizations and voila! Instant war with a army and a civilization equal in size and power to my own.

I won, of course, but it was hard. Enjoyed myself for the rest of the endgame though, which was rare by that time. But God! The amount of micro-managing it took to set that up was pretty immense.

[Locutus]

One of my favourite strategies was to sit tight on England for a couple of thousand years and let one of the AIs conquer (almost) the entire globe and then declare war on that civ. That was pretty hard to do as well, especially early on when you can't afford to loose any cities (because you only have 2 or 3) but the AI is constantly pounding you with dozens and dozens of units

[Solver]

Heh Locutus, wish I have thought of that idea . But it must have been very boring of a wait.

[Locutus]

Well, a little but it's worth the wait. You still have to research the entire tech-tree and build as many units as possible. Every once in a while one of the AIs will drop by and start attacking you with batteships and cruisers while you're still busy researching Gunpowder (Yes, I did know how to exploit that Battleship vs Phalanx problem, whole strategy doesn't work without it )

[asleepathewheel]

This may be a bit immature, but hey I was in 7th grade at the time, but my friend and I enjoyed editing the intro text, along with the other dialogues to be quite perverted. Sadly I can't recall what it said, though at this point I'm sure I would be thoroughly embarrased by juvenile humor.

As for the game, my friend and i would stay up all night alterating turns on what was probably a 386 machine. ah dos civ. great times.

[aaglo]

It's nice to find 'the ancient wisdom of electronics' from a goodie hut