Has everyone here played Civ2 first?

[sboog]

Well, Ned, where do you think I could find the original Civ1 (for the PC)? Sounds like a good idea to play it first to get the basic game concept going.

sboog

[DilithiumDad]

I'm probably the only one, but I entered from the SciFi side rather than the Civ side. The previous game that my son and I were playing was Deadlock II by Accolade. This was a game with 7 different factions representing different species, bonus resource locations, more complex resource management (resources were gloabal across your empire, but you paid tranportation costs; resources included iron, steel, endurium, triderium, wood, energy, and food and could be exchanged with human or AI players) complex diplomacy (tech share, map share, commerce, non-aggression and victory pacts --all independent). Plus, instead of static portraits, the leaders had animated lip-synced clips and assortment of choice witticisms (great for on-line mmuliplayer!).
Unfortunate, the game as originally shipped was unplayable because of its weak AI. They fixed the problem in a patch, but the game died because of bad press.
If you do find it in the bargain bin, grab it, but don't bother playing it without the patch!

[Ned]

sboog, Now than is a very good question. The Original Civ was published by Microprose. I went to their cite. Nothing. Firaxis, who publishes SMAC, has no mention of it.

Maybe someone on this board knows where to buy it.

Worse comes to worse, I have a copy. It come on two floppies. I could probably e-mail it to you if we could find out who to pay for the privilege.

[Ned]

sboog, Just for a lark, I just installed CIV on my new Pentium IV. It installed just fine. I played as the Romans at the highest difficulty. It took only 20 turns before a barbarian army landed and took Rome. My empire ended, alas! Ned

[Ned]

Sboog, As you can see, many of us started with earlier version of the "game." The concepts of how one plays among all these CIV games is similar, but each has new "improvements" that make the game more complicated, but at the same time easier to win. If I had a polite suggestion, why don't you see if you can find the original CIV game. It is the least complicated, but teaches you basic strategy. Then you can move up to CIV and finally SMAC and SMACX. Once you have mastered SMACX, though, there is no going back. Ned

[Lefty Scaevola]

I played the original civiliztion (cardboard) back in the 70s & 80s.

[Iskandar Reza]

quote: Originally posted by Lefty Scaevola on 04-16-2001 12:24 PM I played the original civiliztion (cardboard) back in the 70s & 80s.

I played that once, before I had a pc good enough to play anything other than solitaire or minesweeper.

It was intensely slow and difficult to keep track. Getting from bronze to iron age was so slowwwww

[Locus]

I played Civ II regularly for two years before playing SMAC/X. SMAC/X is a lot more complex than Civ II. While you have an intuitive understanding of technology to help you through Civ II, that knowledge is lacking in SMAC/X. I still play SMAC/X a lot and rarely play Civ II. The reason why is that you just have a lot more freedom in SMAC/X than in Civ II. I actually like Civ II better than SMAC/X but don't play it as much because Civ II is so limited compared to SMAC/X. If you are having a hard time with Civ II, I recommend you don't play SMAC/X until you get better at Civ II. The learning curve in SMAC/X is steep!!! Also, in Civ II, you can survive a long time and stay in the game (until your enemies get artillary anyway) but in SMAC/X, you might find yourself conquered in less than 100 turns if you don't know what you're doing. I guess I am trying to tell you to be patient with Civ II (my favorite game of all time). If you find Civ II frustrating, I can GUARANTEE you that SMAC/X will be ten times more frustrating. If Civ III turns out to be little more than Civ II with the expanded diplomacy, etc of SMAC/X, I will still have a new favorite game. (According to Firaxis, Civ III will be a lot more than Civ II with SMAC/X gameplay advancements.) IMO, the historical aspect of Civ III is more exciting than colonizing Chiron. It is just more thrilling to take possession of the "Pyramids" versus the "Pholus Mutagen".

------------------
Brother Locus of the Peacekeepers

[johndmuller]

I started on the Board game version too. It was good IIRC, but took a while to play and I seem to remember that it was easy enough to become an also ran, leading to a lack of enthusiasm among half the players in any particular game. On the other hand, there not being an AI, all your opponents were more interesting and much less predictable and (at least some of the time) followed rational strategies. The face to face aspects of in-person gaming also add something else. I don't really remember the rules much, but I don't think it was very similar to Civ except in general ideas; they do both have that cool sense of (re?)experiencing history in the 1st person that SMAC/X doesn't really give you.

Ned, good point about how difficult original Civ1 was. I got fixated on playing England and I don't think I ever won at a difficult level what with the slow start in particular as well as some of the AI's seeming advantages like building spaceships quicker faster better at the end. I just played a bit recently and it looked like was headed for 2nd place again, being stuck in a Central American standoff while the Mongols conquor all the Old World. Still entertaining though, but I found myself missing some of the enhancements (forgot some of the Civ1 fine points too).

All that being said, I think I would have enjoyed SMAC/X just as much if I had never played Civ; probably more even, because it would have all been totally new - the places where the Civ engine shows through as a little forced take a teeny bit away from the SMAC/X experience.

[Googlie]

I was a latecomer to the Civ genre in that I never played Civ, but started with CivII.

And I'll never forget that first game (sure, it was settler, but we all have to start somewhere)

The sense of accomplishment from nursing that first loinclothed settler through to a railway ribboned empire defended by carriers and aegis cruisers...the clumsy attempts to placate disgruntled citizens...the rush to beat the other civs to the wonders...and then the space race ... every base involved in building part of it - picking up the manual when a civ launched a partially built ship that had 17 years to go, then turning up production full blast to get the 39/16/3 that could make the trip in 5.7 years, and overtaking the competitor, and then seeing the end movie just as dawn was breaking.

And it just got better (in spite of the frustrations - waiting the five minutes while the Syrians nudged their 109 cruisers and destroyers around my boxed-in submarine - every turn for ten turns until I wriggled free) - and harder as I gravitated to Emperor difficulty and OCC games.

But always the sense of hating to hit the save button - just one more turn - oh, it's dawn again.

Never had that with smac or smax.

Rush to Ascent - heck, in MP if you can't do Voice and Ascent in two turns you've lost. Never a problem in hitting the savegame button. Great stretches of boredom at times, and never the satisfaction you get as in Civ if you save your starting map and then compare it to the finished one, to see what industrial development can do to scrubland and marshes.

Sure, the AI is better, the workshop is neat, as is the buiuldqueue feature (but forget the Base Governors and autoformers), and I am a science fiction fan, but I don't play much smac/x singleplay anymore. But I do crank up CivII about once every couple of weeks and have a marathon.

Here's waiting (and hoping0 for Civ III

Googlie

[DilithiumDad]

In an earlier post here I mentioned Deadlock (1996)and Deadlock II (1998). The original Deadlock had a more playable demo, which you can download from this link:
http://gamespot.com/gamespot/filters...197068,00.html

Do yourselves a favor. Download the free demo and play the game. Now tell me if you think SMAC would be improved if they grafted on the military model and resource management from this game series.

There are 7 species which correspond with eerie similarity to the original 7 SMAC factions. Here is a key for the SMAC player:

Green faction = Gaians = Uva Mosk
Insectoid faction = Hive = Ch'Chit
Research faction = University = Maug
Money and commerce faction = Morgan = Humans
Military faction = Spartans = Tarth
Mind control faction = Believers = Relu
High morale (easy drone control) faction easy for beginners = PK's = Cyth

There is an 8th faction (The Skirineen) that runs the Black Market, but you can't play as them.

[monolith94]

It would be great if Firaxis would offer up the original Civ 1 for free download, its a game that deserves to be played! And since I see no method for procuring it. . .

Damn, I wonder were I put those floppy disks it was on! I've got the urge to reinstall it!

[Alinestra Covelia]

I first played Civ in 1993, and it was to be the beginning of an obsession. I played and played until I could beat the game on Emperor without changing governments from Despotism.

Civ2 then arrived in 1996, and the game itself was everything that you'd need an update to be. However, the real killer that Civ2's makers put in was a scenario editor, so that you could alter the game in ways to recreate history... or rewrite one of your own. I'd say it's purely because of this little feature that Civ2 is still a worldwide hobby today.

SMAC takes Civ2 and makes it deeper and more complex in every single feature, with the exception of trade (which is heavily simplified). I would seriously recommend playing Civ2 and getting to know it before trying to play SMAC. The two games are a natural progression and starting on SMAC before Civ2 means that Civ2 will seem hopelessly simple when you finally get round to playing it - a real shame!

[Ned]

MarkG, Since Civ1 seems to be no longer available for purchase, could you inquire of Microprose or Firaxis whether they would allow a Civilization site such as this one to post the game for download? Ned

[Misotu]

Civ was a great game. Many, many happy days spent on that obsession. I agree with Allie though that CivII was everything you'd want an update to be, I was very satisfied with the improvements. They weren't dramatic, but they were very pleasing. I haven't played Civ at all since CivII came out.

Mind you, haven't played CivII since SMAC arrived ...