How did you first find Civ1 and how did you learn to play it?

[Gramphos]

Earlier today someone made me remember my first civ experience what so ever: my first game of civ, and the games following it until I had learnt the game.

I don't remember what year it was any more, but I hadn't started to learn English yet and niether had my big brother nor my friend.

Setp 1 - Moving units
We were at my friends place playing with his Amiga. He decided to show us a game he couldn't make out (since the manual was in English and the keyboard arrows didn't seem to work with it). That game was Civilization. After we had clicked through the setup with default settings we got to this point were we couldn't do a thing:
In front of us were this flashing wagon in the middle of all that black. Everything was black except from one line around the wagon.
We tried for almost 10 minutes to get the game to do something, but it didn't respond to the keyboard arrows, and clicking in the area next to or on the wagon gave no result. Then we noticed that when we moved the mouse over the edge of the wagon the pointer shifted to a direction arrow and we could move the wagon.

So off we went exploring and finding the black area to become smaller and smaller until...
...we met some red icons of another type then our wagon, and they killed us. And so ended the first game of Civ we played.

Killed by "the evil red" (aka Barbarians) who come to hunt us through our learning games.

Next step: Found your first city will be posted tomorrow. (I'm to tired to write that one down now and make sure it gets right)

[GePap]

I first played Civ in school. We had a computer class, but most of it was simpyl spent playing old computer games like Oregon trail and Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego. The teachers in charge trusted me and my friedn, so one day they gave us access to a much more advanced game, civ (this would be in 1993-94) and the teacher taught me the basics. I can;t really remember how I learned everything else (its not like the game had a steep learning curve), and since I only ever played it in school for short periods at a time (by the time my family got a computer, civ2 was out, so i never owned civ) I am sure I was never more than a mediocre player at it.

[vovan]

I guess my experience with civ is kind of like that of Gramphos here.

I don't remember how old I was when I got the game (which probably means around like six or seven), and I didn't understand most of the stuff that was written on the screen either, as I had never learned english before. But I did learn gwbasic then, because before I got the game, I didn't have anything to do, and my parents bought me a book on basic. Now that I think back about it, I am actually surprised, because I know it was a children's book - it had like little cartoonish pictures in it and everything. Yet it was about basic... I don't know, still has me stumped as to who would ever want to teach five-year-old kids basic. But any way, the point of it is: I knew what the words if and then meant, as I figured it out by what they did in basic. That's where my knowledge of english pretty much ended.

So, when I got the game, my parents did explain to me that I was like the ruler of this tribe and that this thing on the screen was a settler and that I had to press b to build a city. At that, they left me. Soon enough, I had swarms of warriors all over the place. I didn't know I could fortify them or skip turns, and so I had to move every single one of them to end a turn. And then I had already explored the whole island I was on, and it was soooo tedious to move all those warriors around in circles around the city just to waste their movement, that I was about to quit, when I hit the mouse with my elbow. (That's because I was moving the warriors with the keyboard, and didn't think the mouse could be used for anything in particular.) So, I hit the left mouse button with my elbow... And lo and behold! A whole new host of opportunities opened up, as I saw the city screen! I can't describe the delight I felt when I told the city to stop producing the warriors already!

Ah... The good ol' days.

* sniff, sniff *

[Gramphos]

Setp 2 - Founding a city
The second games started like the first one by moving the settler around exploring. I remember that we got to a river and then suddenly something happenmed that didn't happen in the first game:
A popup telling us something about the letter b showed up, so we pressed it. An voila a city.
The city gave a warriors and, just like vovansim we had no idea on how to get the units to stay in the city, and the game ended like the first one. After we had killed some evil red units our units were all out of town when they come and destroyed us.


In the next game we actually realized that you could turn on the keyboard controls for movement and it got a lot easier. However, we had to figure out that the units could be moved diagonal. We learnt how to switch production and found more settlers.

And then a day in another game, after beeing destroyed by the barbarians in many games we had figured out enough to start searching for these evil red. We spent some games trying to expolre and find where they come from until we realized the truth: That they just appeared from nowhere. During these travwels we had found other colored cities than ours. And we started to understand the complexibility of civ. And we actually learnt to fortify and move in all eight directions.

When my familiy got our first computer (I thik it was in 1993 (maybe 1992)) civ was one of the first games we got. And my gaming alone, and conquest to beat the AI at higher levels started. I become a civ addict. And that's where my 'discover civ' story ends.

[AeonOfTime]

Aeon meets Civ

Good Idea to start a thread for this, Gramphos

My story starts with my brand new amiga, that my parents bought me some 16 years back (gosh, it's been that long?):

I had had a Commodore 64 before, so I was already acquainted with computers, and had some time to get used to the winbench before my cousin came on holidays and told me to install Civilization.

He had just bought it, and we happily started the game. We already understood most of the english, and had no major problems finding the keys to move around and so, but like Gramphos, we didn't know how to play the game at all...

Our very first try, we built cities on nearly every square - I can't remember why, but the result was that the cities could not build much, and the barbarians crushed our cities every time they came.

Eventually we managed to build a few defenders, and even took back the cities the barbarians had taken, but then the evil french appeared - I think with musketmen, and that was the beginning of our downfall.

Somewhat disgusted, we saved the game and started a new one. We had already learned that cities should be built with more space left inbetween, and soon we had our first success stories (wonders!!!).

Later, when my cousin's holidays were over, I re-loaded our first game, and managed to crush the french with my new-found knowledge - joy!

That time definitely started my Civilization addiction, and with this fantastic evolution I've been able to follow from up close to the current civ3, that addiction is far from burning out!

Aeon Of Time

[Galvatron]

Some friends recommended the game and I bought it. At first I build a city and produced militas till the end. I even was able to conquer some cities (jup the newly build ones) but in the end I've to fight against tanks and planes. My civ was destroyed within minutes. After that I realized that one should build more than one city
Than I began to build up the difficulty level but I never matched the last one (can't remember the name, think it's Emperor). I'm still trying today I will fire up a party and make a big thread here when I should achieve it one day

[Qilue]

I guess I was kind of luckier than others here. I got Civ1 in a pack called "The Meier Classic Collection" (Civilization, Colonization, Pirates and Railroad Tycoon)

The fiirt one I tried was Col and plaed it for hours. Then I tried Civ and my experience from Col made my first few games less tramautic. Although, an event occured during this time that still haunts me in Civ3.

In my first game, I was playing Russia and had a nice city going. Then the evil red guys turned up and destroyed all the improvements and killed all my settlers doing the improvements. Having only a single warrior, there was little I could do to stop this.

Since then, I only play Civ with seditentary barbs. In SMAC, I had no problems with abundant life and preferred that setting, but I can't cope with Civ's barbarians.

[Thirgaral]

I remember those "answer it right or loose your units"-questions...which made my first games a pure hell since I didn't understand a word english at that time...but eventually we learned to associate those small images with the correct answers....and after quite some playing, we learned what the questions acutally said...

[Bob_Smurf42]

I had an easier time than a lot of you here, since I could read all the words. I got mine a few years back from a friend who also had civ2. I didn't know what happened if you missed the quiz, so I didn't worry too much about it, and I didn't usually have any units by that point anyway. My first several games consisted of a variation of OCC(although I didn't know it at the time), playing as the Chinese, I would run away to Northern Asia, up by Alaska, and just sit there in my one city, building improvements and and occasionaly settlers to improve the land. It may sound strange, but I never used them to build new cities, I just added them to the old one. I had skimmed the manuel before playing, but obviously I didn't read any strategy or anything like that. I knew I could build new cities, I just didn't. I was always ahead in science b/c I got techs from huts, and most of my tax went towards science. That is, until around the industrial age, then I fell waaay behind b/c they had way more cities than I did.

[Chemical Ollie]

I aquired CIV1 in September 1994, after being home sick for three days, finally getting fed up with Pirates! There were two major events that help me remember it. First of all it was actually the day before the Estonia ferry sunk, or rather the same evening. A major topic when I went back to work the next morning. Then at my job, I had the first meeting with a very skilled and colorful business contact from Spain who died in cancer only a few years later.



Being familiar to strategy games starting with one city (Strategic Conquest), I sent out some units scouting. When they ran into some barbarians, I fortified them. Then I didn't know how to unfortify them, so they just sat there, using resources for support. I also didn't understand the city micro management, so It took forever to produce anything and I remained in OCC. After ages of space-clicking, some other tribe landed some cavallery on my island and the game was over.

[Bob_Smurf42]

Originally posted by Olaf HÃ¥rfagre
I fortified them. Then I didn't know how to unfortify them, so they just sat there, using resources for support

The same thing happened to me in my first few games.

Once, I booted in DOS just so I wouldn't have to deal w/Windows to play one game, but for some reason DOS thinks I don't(barely) have any EMS, so games sometimes get screwed over. This time, it said I couldn't save b/c not enough mem, so that sucked, and after lasting untill retirement and viewing the replay(something I miss in Civ2), the mouse disappeared. I could still click on things, but I couldn't see where I was clicking. I didn't know any keyboard shortcuts, so my cities kept cranking out dips and riflemen, or just accumulating shields. Eventually, my nieghbors took me over. That was a decent game, too...

[Chemical Ollie]

I played it on my Mac Powerbook 100, a very portable laptop back then. I played in the TV sofa, in bed, at the dinner table when my girlfriend was away, in the passenger seat of cars, at parties while drinking and discussing other things with friends, in airport lounges and hotel rooms and even in the lavatory taking a dump.

[Gilgamensch]

Good old Civ 1

IIRC I played it on my old and first 386-25 MHz PC...........
And no, at this time I was able to read English (speaking was a different story..........)

As with most games, I took the 'easy' way and first read the manual. So a lot of the problems mentioned here, I never went through.

BUT: I one of my first games, which I aborted and I thnk you will agree with me:

I was on my island, having something like 10 cities, so not doing bad, having some good science running (No I didn't know how to check for the comparision, or I didn't bother about), I send some ships around to find no land.

One of my ships happily reported back:
"Land, Land in sight"

So I was about to disembark my musketman(?), when I encountered a bomber....... or better to say, the bomber encountered me.............

that wasn't even the worth part....just two rounds later, my ships and units were nuked to hell.............THAT was frustrating.......Maybe, now you agree, that I gave up...........

I think my real first game, I was beaten by the space ship race.......

[Heresson]

Civ2 was already out, but available only with some other games which I already had, so I bought Civ1/Col
pack. And I liked it very much. I never played such complicated game before... It was my first strategy...
Ah.

[Sikander]

A friend of mine quit his job in Boston and came to live with me for the summer in Boulder. He brought Civ 1 and Railroad Tycoon among other games. We were old hands at wargames, and with the excellent information in the Civilopedia we never had the sorts of problems mentioned above wrt playing the game. When my friend left my true addiction to the game was evident. I tried all sorts of strategies, including the Super Science City. Within a few months I was playing only Emporer and King level games, though admitedly I usually played King unless playing on the Earth map.