Civ 1 - the sweet memories

[War4ever]

the good old days, when i could affoard to waste a weeks time playing nonstop.....sigh, now i am resopnsible haha

[Alice]

I remember my brother used to play it, and one day out of curiosity I asked him to explain the basics to me. I became instantly addicted, while my brother got bored after some time and stopped playing it

[War4ever]

it takes a certain type of brain to like these games they are not for everyone

[Adacore]

I don't remember the first time i played civ - i remember being intimidated by the very thick manual. Civ was the first proper computer game i'd ever owned (other than the edu-game stuff my parents kept buying me). I think it was the first CD i ever had as well...

What i do remember well, is the day when Civ II game out. I got it on my way to school, and spent the entire day reading the manual and looking over the *MASSIVE* (compared to Civ) tech tree. A momentous day indeed.

[Yanghead]

Civ 1 , man those were the days. Played it for many many months years possibly. Used to play prince level games with my roomate. He would get one city, I would get the next, always renamed them. The units were supported by the cities then so you would know who "owned" what unit. Lots of fun. Got very good at that game. After a while started to set goals about how to play or restrictions on what I was allowed to do. Like play on King, random map and never build a wonder, never, like not even try. Really changed the game. Finally the ultimate test: Conquer the world (earth map) before the birth of christ!(1AD). On Emperor. Had to come up with a whole new strategy for that one let me tell you. You think cataput rushes were awsome. Try a setler rush. You had to play as the romans, who for some reason were 50% more likely to start with 2 sttlers, then you had to march strait at the other starting areas and take their capitols before the grew to a size2 or produced a unit. One civ down 13 to go. You could get france, germany and maybee babylon this way. After that you almost always had to build a coastal city. Oh yeah if you had no cities and your settler went into a goody hut you would get either a tech or a free unit. Oh man long post. Loved that game.

[NeOmega]

Originally posted by 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.

I remember a few .... me and my friend made the title screen say CIVILISATAN.. but we did that. The flying battleships were pretty cool too.

[LulThyme]

My first game of civ:
I was at my cousin's house, who was finishing a game, of course there was only one city left, and he had discovered almost everything, he was showing me the fold-out tech tree, which had me fascinated (I was 10), was in 1993 or so , the game was relatively new.
Then he started a new game, was building phalanx when he had to leave, so he offered me to continue the game. I started moving the phalanx around, which was very fun. Then I noticed I had two phalanx, then more and more phalanx, and started feeling like god. And the number on my phalanx-making square was growing too. Man how can a 10 years old feel any more powerful? The black Terra Incognita was receding, and I had already found huts which made appear cryptic messages. Then one of them made appear red units, which killed my First "The Proud" Legion of Phalanx.
Of course all other objectives (read moving phalanxes around to finish exploring the peninsulas of my island) were forgotten to demand vengeance. Just after the exilirating victory against the red masses (which claimed a few more phalanxes which were the only units I thought existed) my cousin came back and I had to quit.
Of course he gave me the game.
So My first real game. There was a problem of compatibilty with my mouse, so I could only use the keyboard. So many options are not obvious with the keyboard. So all I did was move my units around, and tried to find empty or almost undefended cities to be able to support and build more militias and if I was lucky, I coudl capture a city that was producing legions so I could have them too. These cities were my prized possessions. I eventually learned to sleep and fortify units but that was just because when they were far they became boring to move around, not for the actual bonus.
ONce upon a time, I hit the key for change while in city screen, and a new range of possibilities upon before my eyes, I almost cried (I had played about 10-15 hours without ever changing production) while I built my first ever city improvement (a temple) and settler..
Like all it took me a long time to get to love those weird units that looked like faces, and that couldnt attack, and werent that good at defending against horsemen but still took a long while to build and made that number on my city go down again....
I could say so much...
The first discovery screen, the first time I met Napolean, how beautiful his blue units seemed compared to my orange ones...
Much later, the first time I won a late war, the first time a faction (half a civ ) offered to join me if I took a certain city (that happened very rarely afterward)...
Its sort of sad that the AI sucked so much...
Even at 11 when I had played a bit, I had to restrict myself in many ways stated here (stick to a few cities etc) to have any fun even at Emperor...
There is one thing I want to mention, I played Civ 1 hot seat (not civ net , the original one ) and played maybe the first civ democracy game.
Let me explain.
I was the only one in my group of friends to have CIV , so they always came over and we sorta played together. (This may sound extremely geeky now, but we often played single player games in groups in those days)
Then one day we couldnt resolve a dispute beetween what to do in the game.
So we decided since this is my computer, I get the first city, but first thing I do is build a Settler, and found a new city which we called Steven City.
And then all units build by a certain person's city and his, and if he builds settlers, he controls the cities built, and etc...
We voted for golbal decisions such as research and tax rate.
That game didnt last very long actually, it was a lot of trouble , we killed maybe 2 or 3 civs then didnt get back to it, but it was a lot of fun.
edit : wow just read 2 posts above, seems we werent the only one playing diplomatic civ

[RGBVideo]

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.

I did that too (altough the texts weren't exactly pervert), at 2nd grade.

[Heresson]

My first game was nice, but I managed to win about easily.
I didn't learn the game at all, however. My second game was much different; at this time, I managed to distinct terrains and I didn't want to put them on desert, so I didn't place new cities at the start. I acted as a Mongol Horde and eventually destroyed all civs on my continent, even the cultural and mighty Chineese. Their Nanking became by third (sic!) city. Only then I placed some more cities, including one on adjactent continent. It turned out to be a continent of mighty Indians. In the powergraph later it was shown they were many many times stronger than me. But I fought against them on a little penisula. Mycenae was destyroyed and rebuilt, destroyed and rebuilt... Eventually I deicded to attack their cities by fleet. And so i did. It made me enough strong (or tired them enough) to take all that little penisula and to cover it with cities to produce armies against them.
Then they invaded my from the second side of the world.
They took almost all of my cities, including the capital, Nunuleks - but I managed to take them back.
The greatest fights now were to capture a city connecting two parts of their empire, the main part and a giant penisula. I managed to take this grand penisula only when I researched nukes...
And when I realised I don't have to move my units only up/down and right/left only.
Later it was easy.
But the most touching moment was when my destroyer or whatever was attacked by mighty Zulu navy consisting of a sail...

BY THE WAY
In my new computer, there are no / or \ cursors...
I'm sure You can change it somehow, but how?

[Morrissey]

Aww look at this thread, the reason I registered.
Anyway, I remember Civ1, I had it for the Amiga and spent many a Sunday playing all day long. I could never be bothered to save games either, so if I didn't complete the game that day, it never got completed. Ah, so many unfinished games. How different it is now with Civ3 and a good computer. Now I save games but still never finish them .
I also remember the game sorta crashing sometimes when it was loading up so all of the squares inside the city radius produced 999 food, shields and commerce. The AI didn't get this bonus though. Those games were brilliant, it took 1 turn to build a wonder and you had no choice but to build loads of units. By 1AD, I had discovered 'Future Advance 43' or something.
I also had Civ2 for the playstation, attempting to recreate the fun I had with Civ1 (due to no more Amiga), but it just wasn't the same. I like Civ3 though, getting back into it, although I'm not as good at it... yet. Not enough empty afternoons yet.

[Jacques Rougeau]

Ah yes, the good old Civ I.

Remember the tiny, little units, the cities and the nice landscape.

Hmm I think of the good old days when I always build one city and was happy with it (didn't know how to build more) and after some exploring found sooo many foreign cities and wondered how they did that.

You will be amazed how many techs you could research with only one city on Chieftain-level

[conmcb25]

I never played CIV I, why would you if you have CIV 2?

[NeOmega]

Hers one...

I remember sitting back and just watching the rivers sparkle and the waves wash ashore the continents.

I also used kept reloading a game just to watch the rivers flash when I dropped a couple of nukes.

[Morrissey]

My version being on the Amiga, it might be different for PCs, but one thing I do remember and forgot to put in my other post is the music! I was always Germany back then simply because their music kicked ass! You only heard it when you discovered an advance or built a wonder, but it was well worth the wait!

[capone]

my 1st time was with an AMiGA.500
it was my 1st 4-disk-game
i did start it
and when i saw the game screen first i thought "what-the-h*** is THiS?"