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]

...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).

[Raleigh]

I loved Empire Deluxe.

[Barnacle Bill]

Empire did not resemble Risk at all. Risk has an area movement system and a combat resolution system quite different from Empire.

Sid Meier's Civilization bore no resemblence to the original board game "Civilization" (which AH acquired but was not the original publisher). That game (which I own) has area movement like Risk and essentially uses your population as military units (and isn't really about combat at all), and involves a lot of playing/trading cards.

Sid Meier's Civilization bears a huge resemblence to Empire. Given the odd way Empire modelled air units, which Civ used EXACTLY, Sid obviously copied Empire. In fact, Sid Meier's Civilization is basically Empire plus a bunch of new features. Empire units worked exactly like the following Civ units: Rifleman, Armor, Fighter, Bomber, Transport, Battleship, Carrier, Cruiser, Destroyer and Submarine. All cities were created already at start (no settlers), with each player having 1 city at start and the rest "neutral" (as if Barbarian-controlled in Civ2 except they did not produce any units). Like Civ, you start with a blacked-out map except right around your starting city. Cities had an inherent defense equal to an "Army" (what Empire called the basic unit, which was the same functionally as the Civ2 Rifleman). All cities produced units at the same rate, but different units took different numbers of turns to produce (roughly proportional to their Civ shield cost). There was nothing to produce except units - no gold, no buildings/wonders, no terrain improvements, no diplomacy (all players at war with each other all the time), no research, no worrying about population in cities (happiness, growth, food, etc...), no science. Everything Empire DID have worked just like Civ1, though. Later versions of Empire added a few more features, as did certain pre-Civ Empire clones (one of those that I remember had something like the Civ3 strategic resources, one had combat system enhancements similar to Civ2, etc...).

[Herder]

Wow, now I think I see why you are called Barnacle Bill

Actually, I prefer turn based games. Command HQ was a good game though. You could launch Satellites to reveal a portion of the other players map and you could move your satellites but if you moved them too much they would run out of fuel and crash.

I mean come on, here we are playing Civilization, the THIRD iteration of the series, and satellites aren't even modeled in the game.

[gamma]

I remember playing StratCon (Strategic Conquest) on Mac IIs. These were the Macs with the huge (at the time) color screens. Lots of fun. I suspect it was simply the Mac port of Empire. It had MP, by the way.

Also worthy of mention was xconq, for Unix/XWindows. Undoubtedly came after Empire, but this one was set up on a hex grid. I was playing both of these around 1989-92.

Finally, I wonder if anyone happened to play Anacreon on the IBM PC. This looks like the nearest ancestor to Starlords/MOO...

[xane]

and satellites aren't even modeled in the game

Doesn't the Apollo Program work like Civ2, and let you see the whole map ? Besides, you can group satellites with Espionage

[OnePresent]

Back when the earth was still cooling Mattel came out with Utopia for their Intellivision consol. Any of you kids around then?

Intellivision, the thinking man's Atari 2600.

Here comes the male nurse...mustn't get caught using the rest home's computer.

[CubsFan915]

Originally posted by xane


Doesn't the Apollo Program work like Civ2, and let you see the whole map ? Besides, you can group satellites with Espionage

Not any more...

[Slax]

Games that were somewhat similar also include M.U.L.E. and Seven Cities of Gold (although mostly exploration) for the Commodore 64.

[dconner]

Originally posted by gamma
Finally, I wonder if anyone happened to play Anacreon on the IBM PC. This looks like the nearest ancestor to Starlords/MOO...

Never heard of that one, but I did play several space conquest MOO predecessors.

GALAXY was from Avalon Hill, for the Atari 800 (and others, I think.) It was playable by one to a bunch of players (at least 8, I think) and involved the conquest of star systems "A" through "Z."

IMPERIUM GALACTUM (by SSI? for the IBM PC, circa 1988?) was similar (and moving closer toward MOO.) It had planets with different population potential, and star systems with two or more planets (potentially owned by two players.)