Point of Order: Civilization did not father in 4x games

[Herder]

The game that started this genre was Empire, by Mark Baldwin.

It was a rather crude graphical game but contained most of the basic elements of the Civ game.

I just wanted to point this out because I see a lot of people refer to Civ as the first of the Genre and Empire clearly has that title. Damn good game too.

[Oldenbarnevelt]

I don't now how many cases you're referring to, but you can count me out.
I called Civ "the mother of all 4X games" in the abbreviations thread, never implying that it was the first such game (just as Saddam Husein's "mother of all wars" wasn't the first war in world history).

[cassembler]

What about Command HQ??? HELLO!!! PONG!!!

All games have influenced all games.

[John-SJ]

Now how could we have forgotten the eXploration, eXpansion, eXploitation, and eXtermination aspects of Pong? Of course Pong had a TREMENDOUS impact on Empire and Civ, and all of TBS strategy gaming as a genre!

John-SJ

[sachmo71]

Originally posted by cassembler
What about Command HQ??? HELLO!!! PONG!!!

All games have influenced all games.

Ahhhh...Command HQ. That game more than any other affected my dreams. Little blue and red figures marching across a green landscape...those were the days.

[DarkCloud]

Empire was based on Risk... okay

Civ was vaguely inspired by empire- but since it actually sold- (empire was shareware) and it inspired a myriad of other games- Civ can be called the father of 4x games... much like WarCraft rather than Dune is the father of all RTS'

[Herder]

Dune *is* the father of all RTS games. The reason these games didn't sell is because most people didn't have computers.

Actually, a strange ancestor of RTS games is populous.

And Command HQ was a very good game for the time. If you could look past the graphics the gameplay was good and solid. The national oil reserve is a good idea. I think an oil reserve that decreases as your units move and increases as you capture more oil sources would be great to a game like this. You could stockpile and trade oil. Would add a lot to the late game.

[Tyrion]

Actually...

...I would say Herzog Zwei (http://www.classicgaming.com/rotw/herzog.shtml) is the father of all RTS games. The original Dune was more of an adventure game, and Dune 2 came out 2 years after Herzog Zwei.

[TheSettler]

Well wolfinstein 3d was out before doom but you don't hear anybody mentioning that one either do you . . . .

[Jason]

Yeah you do. Everyone knows about Wolfenstein 3D.

Achtung!

I was playing Wolfenstein when my friend phoned me and told me about this kickass game he'd gotten where you got to be a civilization, and found cities, research technologies... Civ 1. Those were the days.

[cassembler]

posted by the "John-SJ"meister
Of course Pong had a TREMENDOUS impact on Empire and Civ, and all of TBS strategy gaming as a genre!

Gotsta defend the pong...

eXploration

HELLO!? you explore with your ball and find the goal.

eXpansion

HELLO!? you expand your ball into the goal.

eXploitation

HELLO!? you exploit you opponent by beating him in the head ond stealing his cookies for psychological advantage.

eXtermination

HELLO!? you

eh...
*gasp*

cough... cough...

can't...

go...

on...

[cassembler]

No seriously, the best thing about HQ was the hi-fi sound effects.

No, really.

[cassembler]

Real quick, by the same HQ token, how likely do y'all think someone will put out a real-time Civ-esque game based on a real-time system like Command HQ's???

THAT would be cool.

[xane]

I've been in IT for around 18 years, I remember playing Empire back in the mid-eighties on UNIX and VAX platforms, as "real-time" concepts did not really apply to such machines you could say that Empire was the graddaddy of both 4X and RTS.

We also had "Adventure", with its maze of twisty little passages all alike, and "Trek", both date back to the 60s, and I remember playing them in school on a small computer with a teletype console.

Then there was "Conquest", originally developed on a PDP and VAX under UNIX, which was a true RTS game, based again on Star Trek, although there was no AI apart from the "Doomsday Machine".

Finally there was "Dungeon Hack", or "Rogue", which was on UNIX machines before the PC.

Whilst most of these games were considered "free", in fact they normally came from software libraries that were subscription based, so some element of payment was made somewhere.

[Barchan]

Well, Sid Meier's Civilization bore more than a passing resemblance to Avalon Hill's board game of the same name. In fact, Avalon Hill and Microprose (then Activision) had a long-running trademark infringement suit going. It was, like 90% of all commercial litigation, eventually settled.

Ah, Empire. I remember it well from my Amiga days. I thought it was just the coolest thing that you could name your ships. Although high-tech at the time, the graphics just wouldn't cut it by today's standards. That's the first 4X game I can remember playing. Most of the early games seemed to be either pure action (which, sorry to say fellas, Pong was) or RPG-puzzle types (a la Adventure and the legendary Zork series).