Question: What was your 1st CIII game like?

[Asmodean]

My first game, I played the Iroqouis on regent, and i totally ruled. I remember thinking how awesome the game was, untill later in the game, when the speed issue set in. That is still the main reason why I don't play Civ3 as much as I would like. My next game was the English on Monarch, and I got stomped.

Asmodean

[pedrojedi]

My first Civ1 game was played with the romans, or chinese... I only played on the EARTH map, and thought that to build a empire, I had to build 1 city at a time, to maximum improvement level possible. I played a lot of games being like a Cingapura civ. Eventually, I learned about the blessing of more cities, so I started build some... 5. Heheh, the cities had memorable names like Egou (pronounced "E -go"), South Egou, North Egou, East Egou, West Egou, Far Egou, Egou Beach, Egou Fortress...

My first Civ3 game was played with the Romans, and, like many others, I used Civ2 tactics and started at chieftain. I lost the first games, mainly because I quitted (why this AI keeps making cities so close to mine? Why so many cities? Why does he keep his cities so close to each other?), and thought that a good location for the FP was a few cities away. And I thought that building soon temples, cathedrals and colosseums was a waste of money. I lost lots of production and games because of this, and had suffered many culture flips. One of the most memorable moments of joy was the first time that I managed to culture flip a city.

Anyway, the games that I did not quit, I was utterly destroyed.

[Rasbelin]

My very first Civ III game was err... a complete disaster. As I wasn't yet into Civ III and the changes for a longtime Civ II player like me were quite major, I had to get back to the basics with the game. The first game did, as I now recall it, end within a few hours as I was wacked badly by barbarians. My first proper game was as the Persians and it was a quite good success. However Rasbepolis, my capital, was badly located and the growth was thus poor. Haven't played much Civ III since Dec 2001.

[Tassadar500]

My first game was quite surprising. At that point I never really played Civ 2 that much but I liked it so I went to buy Civ 3. I didn't want to try the easiest level so I played a game at regent. I made war with everyone and suprisingly enough I made it to the industrial age. I was playing my favourite civilization the Persians. And I had two enemies left. The Romans and the Germans were left. I lost because I didn't know how to Railroad and I fell behind in technology when they discovered tanks and MA.

[ceroomaster]

...scary?
...a shock to the system?

There was NO WAY that I would adapt my Civ2 tactics. They are right; I'm sticking by them. But that didn't win me any games, so I slowly learned to change my ways...

Edit for bad spelling

[Ljube]

I remember wondering in my first game why a size two city won't build a settler. When my city grew to three and built the settler finally, I realised the sad truth: Settlers were costing 2 populations now.

I also remember my excitement when I got my first great leader (yes guys, it was in my first game playing Romans, and yes guys, I am a warmonger). I got two more in my first game and destroyed Greeks and some other civ (I remembered Greeks because of their hoplites!!!! ). But then I got stuck, cause while they existed, they pumped me with techs and money, and when they were gone I couldn't research anything on my own. So I quit the game when the others started to develop strange advanced techs and build wonders I didn’t have prerequisite for.

Ah yes, I didn't know at that time great leaders can be used to rush wonders, so I used them for armies exclusively.

I can’t remember the difficulty level but it was either Monarch or Emperor. I moved to Deity soon after.

[dexters]

My first Civ 3 game was the tutorial. I played Japan or Rome and when my city went into riot, it was the first time I saw the smoke effect and I thought it was just typical effects and the city was burning incense. How stupid of me.

I had several early false starts and they were all a blur to me. I remember a relatively early game where I played a 2 civ map (special settings) and basically owned one continent but due to my inexperience (in warlord no less) was behind the tech and in every aspect vis-a-vis the AI. Back then, I had no clue about the importance of things like luxuries and other tricks of the game so that game helped me feel out Civ 3.

I think my next game was chieftain on large and continents but with only 8 civs instead of the standard 12. This was the pre-patch Civ 3 and I recently revisted the game to discover how different the AI was back then. Because of the tremendous amount of space to explore and relatively few civs, the AI actually didn't REX very well and clumped its civ in a compact area, leave large swaths of the continent unclaimed, and this was well into the modern age. I don't think that would ever happen post patches, and especially not in PTW.

Needless to say, I experienced one of my first shocks in that game when it came to warfare. I was used to the Civ II humpty dumpty AI tactics which involved send small numbers of outdated units to attack me, and usually do nothing but sit around and be picked off by my army and then my diplo armies of doom would start buying off their cities with impunity.

I discovered that in Civ3, not only is this strategy unviable, the diplomacy had a sense of grandeur and importance. It had big words like Trade Embargo, and I knew I was onto something neat. The wars themselves, as I noted in a very early post, were something to behold. They were much more of an event than in previous Civ games. Once war is declared, enemy units poured out like water.

Consider again this was in the early days when cheap exploits to beat AI rushes wasnt't widely known. I remember when I went to war with the Aztecs, streams of JUNGLE WARRIORS just kept pouring out, and while they were outmatched by my artys and riflemen, I had to chase them around, and their pre patched retreat ability made many of them nearly indistructible. I was awed really by the numbers and difficulty in which I faced fighting a relatively backwards civilization. I only got hold of the situation, and subdued the Aztecs by building a series of forts on the border backed up by riflemen with 2 artys. The artys bombard the incoming units and my riflemen picked them off. If only I knew how effective cavalry was... I won that game on space race.

But those are my early game experiences. There are a few other bad starts that isn't worth talking about. But that's pretty much my early game experiences.

[Jon Miller]

I remember my first (two) games of Civ1

I didn't know how to change governments or anything and got beat in the tech race

don't remember many other games

Jon Miller

[Solomwi]

I forgot one aspect of my first game: In my eagerness to experience every new aspect of the game, I got really frustrated when I couldn't colonize the cows next to my first city. So I skimmed the manual entry, and picked up on one aspect I had been overlooking, that colonies were for resources outside your borders. Okay, let's go colonize that wheat over there then...