Your First Civ Memory (Stories to Warm Our Hearts)

[Christantine The Great]

I remember some of my first Civ II experience. There was a video rental store near my house that rented computer games, too. I saw Civilization II on the shelf and I rented it along with a game named Earthworm Jim. Since Earthworm Jim had a habit of yelling "boogers" I decided to try Civilization II. I started as the Romans and I found myself on a big field of black. I went to the Orders menu and I saw Build New City. I thought that would be a good idea so I clicked it. I pressed OK and I had me a city. Now what? I waited a few turns and then I saw this guy with a big shield. I clicked on the city and saw that I could change what to build. I decided that this was a boring game and started over. Soon I found myself playing this as much as I could and I kept renewing the rental for the CD. One day my parents returned the CD but for some reason I could still play it. It took me a long time to figure out the governments and I constantly chose Anarchy so I would be called a Mr.! i finally bought the Gold Edition so I could see the movies. I had used the rental game for a year until I got the Gold Edition. That was when I was 9 and I have been playing ever since.


[This message has been edited by Christantine The Great (edited July 18, 2000).]

[Father Beast]

I bought Civ1 in a dual package with Colonization (which I still haven't played) I took the pdf file to a friends house to print the manual (and almost had to buy them more ink), because my 9 pin dot matrix wasn't good enough. I stayed up at night, reading the manual and finally installed the game.
I played as the romans, with 3 civs, random world, chieftan. I slowly expanded and dealt with barbarians, pollution, governments and unrest. but met no enemies. it wsn't until I sent a battleship exploring that I discovered the french and babylonians fighting on a continent on the other side of the world. what the heck! launched my ship to AC while the other guys hadn't discovered flight.
it wasn't much of a challenge, but I learned how to play, and I came back for more.
Much more.

[tonic]

It was a pretty scary experience. My friend dumped his "old" Civ I on me after upgrading to Civ II. He said just learn by playing rather than read through the manual. So I did, stumbling along. Not long into the game I was advised that my coffers were getting low and my cost exceeded my income. Then earthquake destroyed my second city. The end came rather suddenly, when my warriors in my only city awoke to the rattle of armor and hoofs of cavalry. Didn't stand a chance even at Chieftain level. RIP.

[Comrade Dan]

I built two measily Mongol cities, attacked a Chinese city with a chariot, and lapsed into exploring for a few thousand years (until the Zulu's destroyed a trireme) until the English took my second city, it took me ages to get two cannon, and they failed to liberate the second city.

So I was wiped out by the English.

[Spider]

Great topic!

It's been 9 years, but I still remember the joy I got from this game when I first found it. I think I saw it advertised in PC Magazine, and I had to have it.

I used to take it to work and play on my lunch hour every day. Soon, I was putting in tons of "overtime", 12 hour days on Saturdays when no one else was around.

I let a few of the guys at work copy the game, and in no time, they were regaling me with their exploits. Others would walk by my desk, and they'd think we were nuts because we were always talking about world domination.

No game has ever given me the feeling I had when I first started playing Civ. I've searched and searched for a game that would recapture and rekindle the love affair I've had with computer games, but in 9 long years there has been nothing but dissappointment.

I guess true love only comes once in a lifetime.

[Hasdrubal]

I was intoduced to Civ I by a friend of mine. He set a game up for me, saying:"See that blinking thing? That's you, your unit. There are six more of those on the planet, now if you'll excuse me, I have to take a leak."
When he returned five minutes later, he looked at the screen, stared at me in utter disbelief, and mumbled: "Uh, you see, that unit, it's like, uh, a settler and you're supposed to found a city and stuff.."

I had been movin' that darn unit of mine all over the planet looking for those other units which I tought were meant to be roughed up a bit...

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Hasdrubal's Home.
Ceterum censeo Romam esse delendam.

[Lord Silvi]

I bought CIV I in my holidays in the USA.
I had no PC there and so I read the manual at least 5 times! I bought The Official Guide to ... CIV and read it several times.
I think Iam the first who read the manual before playing.
Back home I thought it was a good idea to play with almost no sleep. I mangaged to play CIV for around 70 hours with 4 hours of sleep.
What broke my back was not only sleeploss, but also the fact that I ate nearly nothing.

[Empress]

I remember being soo very frustrated about the unhappiness in CIV I. I played for days and days of frustration reading the manuel over and over again trying to figure out how in the world to make an "elvis". then one day I just started clicking all over the screen and lo and behold, and elivis appeared! From then on my game improved dramatically! In fact, so much so that my boyfriend at the time would get soo mad at me because when he would call me I would be like "uh huh... oh really?... that's nice..." and he would say Are you playing That game again??!!! And then oneday he played a game... and well, the rest is history

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Apolyton Empress
My first Web Page
Vacation Pics!

[phunny pharmer]

Never played civ1 (beats head against wall) never owned civ1 (beats head against wall some more).

For my birthday (three...four...five years back? I don't exactly remember), my mom brought me home a gift. It was a few months after we got our ***new*** computer, a Power Mac 7100/66. It had a whooping 12 MB of RAM and a gigantic 450 MB hard drive (Glances at machine in brother's room now and laughs). I looked at the box cover. Thought it looked cool. Opened the box cover. Thought it looked even cooler...until I saw a manual about the size of my history textbook.

I thought, are there people who write these things? Then I thought, are there people who read them? Since the answer to both questions is obviously 'yes' (well...at least I hope so, so I don't feel stupid), I busted out then and there. It was about eight o'clock. I didn't go to sleep that night, because I thought that the game would be interesting. And because the manual was so long.

Problems arose in the morning. Hmm...PC game does not work on the Macintosh. No...kicking the CD rom drive didn't help, nor did beating up the monitor. It wasn't their fault. But I was thirteen (or so) years old, and my computer experience was limited to the Apple 2GS and Apple LMs (or whatever the next generation of macs was). And, of course, if there was a problem, you contacted your computer teacher, and he made it work as you watched in awe of the computer-fixing god.

To make a long story short, I eventually found out that the game wasn't designed to run on macs. And, after purchasing a new machine, my dad wasn't about to shell out the money to get a machine that would run the game. My allowance wasn't enough to pay for a new machine (of course), but I was able to buy a program called Soft Windows. Although a problem arose when the machine did not have enough RAM to run the windows-on-Mac operating system, my dad did agree to buy more RAM. He saw how much I wanted to play the game.

The rest is history. The fact that I had to cheat and give myself four nuclear missiles and three mechanized infantry to defend my capital on the first game was not important, especially since I was playing on chieftain level. Nor was it important to know that I didn't ever negotiate with any other foreign civ until I got to prince level, even when I wasn't cheating. I bought all the X-packs I could (but never did get around to getting ToT), and had a great time with the nuclear exchange scenario from one of them. Oh, yes, there was multiplayer, and that was fun too. I was spending hours in front of the computer with civ.

SMAC eventually came along, but by that time my dad finally realized that three boys did not work well having only one household machine, and so we got another one. SMAC was no different that civilization (in the basic style, like movement, city windows, etc) and I was soon rocking computer players like crazy. Never did get around to playing much MP with SMAC (I was busy with schoolwork), and MP just seemed to fall through. Bought the X-pack for SMAC, though, and found that a lot of fun. Of course, after a while, watching computer players die horrible deaths got a little boring, and I have since moved on to Age of Empires and the Command and Conquer series. But I'll be all over civ3.

Overall, here is my approximate civ hour-log:
civ1: 0
civ2: in the hundreds (ie try 8)
SMAC: several hundred (ie try 6)

Civ3: possibly a five-digit number.

[Otso Vuorio]

I played Civ1 First time in summer 92. It was awesome, I got hooked during my first game (I was playing with Zulus). My best friend bought the game about two days after I got it. And after that we just played, played and played. I never forget that great feeling, when we started the game with my friend's brand new 286 at 9.00 am and ended 22.00 or something. Because we never read the manuals, and always learned by playing, we had funny ideas about all the buildings in game. We thought that barracks was stable and with that in our city we would be able to build cavalry (We were only 9 years old and didn't speak very good english), we also thought that if you build Hanging garden, all of our troops are dispanded!!! etc.

[Laertes]

My first game was as the Celts, and the Carthaginians will always have a special place in my heart as enemy of choice. Somehow, fighting with them summed up the whole joy and magic of the game.

My first games were on a colleagues laptop. The first time I had my own copy I rolled out of bed at 8 on a Saturday morning, and thought "I'll just play for half an hour before breakfast, shower and getting on with the day. The next time I looked at my wayc is was 1:30 pm! Hooked? - I think so.

[Biddles]

My dad actually brought the game home from a friend at his work. We both got hooked on it. Luckily this was during summer holidays, so I would play it all day and when he came home from work he would kick me off and play it all night. When I would wake up the next morning I would tell him to get off the computer and go to work, so I would play it all day.....
Man that old 486 took a beating that summer. Dad still has that computer 'cept the CD-ROM is buggered, two monitors have blown up and the keyboard barely responds.


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- Biddles

"Now that our life-support systems are utilising the new Windows 2027 OS, we don't have to worry about anythi......."
Mars Colonizer Mission

[Pondo]

When I first play CivI I thought it was a "Empire" kind of game, so I made Military Units, pushed scienes towards military advances, was disappointed and (insert head-shaking here) stayed with Empire. Then after a couple of years, I visited a friend who had the CIVII manuel lying in his livingroom. After reading about 5min reading, I mumbled an excuse, ran out of his flat, bought CIVII and the rest is history.Countless hours, blablabla, no sleep, blablabla and waging wars upon all those who are not willing to share their scientific progress and gold with me, which were sooner or later all.
And I will go on doing so until CIVIII is ready
Pondo

[DarkCloud]

My first Civ experience dates back to 1993 when I visited a friends house. They had the original Civ and I was hooked. Two months later I had the game. Two days after those months I beat it by conquering everyone.

Seeing everyone's progression was a great feature!

However I hated the Zulus, in my first game as the Americans the Zulus overran me. So I played as the Zulus in my next game and sent the Russians packing. In those days the Zulu were my favorite tribe along with the Romans.

My first Civ 2 experience was very strange. I got two boxes of it for my birthday, partially because I talked about the original civ so much. I ended up exchanging one for another game (which I do not remember)

I had great fun then in early 1997 I set it aside and played other games however in late 1997 I bought Fantastic Worlds and made scenarios units etc.. but became bored until in 1999 I found other peoples scenarios on the net.

In 2000 I found this forum!!!

-Long live Civ.
[This message has been edited by DarkCloud (edited August 11, 2000).]

[Civmew2]

I remember the entire thing quite vividly. It was years ago (I don't remeber how many)and I was at Kmart, wandering around the elctronics section, looking at the latest games when something in the discount rack. I was about nine then, I think, and was attracted to the game on sight. Since I was a strategic expert for my age, I loved the idea. So I got Grandpa to buy.
The first game I played as the Romans, and I was just choosing technologies. Then, when I built my first Legion, I sent it out to explore and mew the Zulus. I got peace, then noticed something: My Legion couldn't move! I didn't want to fight, so I spent half an hour figuring out how to disband. I then started over. I remember another game, where I had a gigantic army of Phalanx. I sent them up against the English, who easily took out the entire army.
I remember those times well. I still play the original once a year on the day I got it: Sep. 21