Civ 1 - the sweet memories

Solver · May 1, 2002, 06:11

Aye, just needed to post something here

.

I wonder if people got some sweet memories to post from the old Civ 1 days. I actually still have Civ 1, so maybe the days aren't that old

.

In any case, my sweetest memory has to be the first victory on Prince - the time when I finally started to actually understand the game.

MrWhereItsAt · May 1, 2002, 07:59

When was an old Chieftain game where I built cities almost literally covering the planet - incluing all of the Sahara, Australia and Greenland. There was one city left - Rome, in Italy. I built up to about 270 million people in 2048, then nuked Rome 15 times at once, entered with a Mech Inf and found... an advanced tribe!

Jac de Molay · May 1, 2002, 08:16

Wandering into radio shack looking for a game for my super-cool 286 laptop and finding this inconspicuous, benign-looking gamebox calling out my name. Ended up spending that entire weekend hunched over that tiny VGA screen. The rest is history

Dave

Father Beast · May 1, 2002, 08:22

For me, I think it would besometime after I got it, and was running civ on my 486/25, and trying to figure out why I liked the game! it was frustrating as all heck compared to about everything else I'd played up till then. But there was something...

Solver · May 1, 2002, 08:39

What? Did anyone actually like the game? I though that everyone hated it at the start and only then got in it.

Jac de Molay · May 1, 2002, 09:59

The first day I was completely mystified, and equally intimidated by the size of the manual. (Settlers? What do these settler guys do?

But after that it seemed to "click" suddenly, and been off and running ever since.

DAve

Solver · May 1, 2002, 10:10

Yeah Dave, same feeling here. When I started my first game, I was wondering what is that smiley face on blue background. I was pretty impressed when I met Alexander, my first leader. And I was even more impressed when his Legion came and conquered me.

I remember choosing Revolution early on. A few moments later, I saw a box saying Pick New Government, and only saw Despotism as an option. I thought it might have some philosophical sense

.

MrWhereItsAt · May 1, 2002, 10:11

Ooh! Ooh! Thinking I was complete and utter sad case when I realized I could do the document check without consulting anything.

/me says "Yep, I know EXACTLY what the requirements for Communism are...

Solver · May 1, 2002, 10:14

Civ 1 is still the only Civ game for which I knew EVERYTHING by hear, all units, techs, such and such.

JohnT · May 1, 2002, 11:16

Naw, I loved and understood the game from the get-go. Sucked at it for quite a while (I was too peaceful), but I played and played and played from the second I got it.

My favorite game was after I totally figured it out and was able to send rockets to AC by 1500ad consistantly on Prince. I was easily the dominant civilization tech-wise, size-wise, population-wise, etc. Had a bunch of totally built-up cities, with no SDI, nukes, a huge freakin' army, etc. I then allowed for my capital to get taken by one of the minor civilizations and voila! Instant war with a army and a civilization equal in size and power to my own.

I won, of course, but it was hard. Enjoyed myself for the rest of the endgame though, which was rare by that time. But God! The amount of micro-managing it took to set that up was pretty immense.

Locutus · May 1, 2002, 11:38

One of my favourite strategies was to sit tight on England for a couple of thousand years and let one of the AIs conquer (almost) the entire globe and then declare war on that civ. That was pretty hard to do as well, especially early on when you can't afford to loose any cities (because you only have 2 or 3) but the AI is constantly pounding you with dozens and dozens of units

Solver · May 1, 2002, 12:04

Heh Locutus, wish I have thought of that idea

. But it must have been very boring of a wait.

Locutus · May 1, 2002, 12:56

Well, a little but it's worth the wait. You still have to research the entire tech-tree and build as many units as possible. Every once in a while one of the AIs will drop by and start attacking you with batteships and cruisers while you're still busy researching Gunpowder

(Yes, I did know how to exploit that Battleship vs Phalanx problem, whole strategy doesn't work without it

)

asleepathewheel · May 1, 2002, 23:20

This may be a bit immature, but hey I was in 7th grade at the time, but my friend and I enjoyed editing the intro text, along with the other dialogues to be quite perverted. Sadly I can't recall what it said, though at this point I'm sure I would be thoroughly embarrased by juvenile humor.

As for the game, my friend and i would stay up all night alterating turns on what was probably a 386 machine. ah dos civ. great times.

aaglo · May 2, 2002, 05:55

It's nice to find 'the ancient wisdom of electronics' from a goodie hut

Juggler · May 2, 2002, 13:52

It took me about a year to finally figure out how to play Civ1 (I was very young you see

). Civ2 amazed me, but looking back I have to admit Civ1 is probably the best game ever.
After a couple of years I started playing prince and king difficulty setting new records in the hall of fame (until one day my damn brother cleared them)

Spaced Cowboy · May 2, 2002, 15:58

I remember seeing that little box, thinking this is Empire on Steriods. I'm pretty sure that Empire was some of Sid's inspiration for Civ1. I remember my roommate getting seriously pissed at me cuz I did not want to play TV sports football, but instead was glued to the screen civin'

R:PM

Jamski · May 2, 2002, 19:51

Yeah Civ1 wrecked my teenage years, Playing 10 hours a day for 3/4 years, and then on the shelf. Last year I was unemployed for nearly a year and I got back into things, with a new passion. I think my girlfriend nearly left me because I would get up in the morning, check the job listings and boot up civ and play until my eyes hurt. I was finishing 4/5 games a week (on emp, much easier than civ3 !) Crazy. I just got back to a normal life, and then... civ3.

But when I get pissed off with the changes, then its back to the good old days...

-Jam

notyoueither · May 2, 2002, 21:59

Was at a friends place. A bunch of people were goofing around with various computer games. Later most everybody had left. I was going to crash on the couch.

Before my friend went to bed he fired up Civ and said I should check it out. He spent about an hour helping me figure out what to do then he crashed.

I left his place 5 days later

Got Civ very shortly thereafter. Of course, I had to get a computer to go with it. After that I got more and more interested in computers. Today... Well, suffice to say that I am very happy with what computers have contributed to my life.

Tuberski · May 2, 2002, 22:09

I first played Civ when I was in the Navy. On an Amiga!
It was very slow, but when you are out to sea for six months it really passed the time!

aaglo · May 3, 2002, 01:43

My first civ experience goes way back... at a friends place. He was playing this when I payed a visit... and then I was sold. I watched in awe him playing this amazing game... I was hypnotized.

When I got this game, I had no spare time left in my 'calendar' (if I would had one

).

ixnay · May 3, 2002, 01:47

I was at a friends house...I remember he wouldn't play anyone but the russians, and would try to nuke everyone that he could...I forgot about it for a while but then when I heard about Civ2 coming out I remembered about it and got it...

Skanky Burns · May 3, 2002, 03:27

I remember when I first started playing. It was when I was mostly playing Pirates, and so that influenced my play style somewhat.

"Hey, those forts in Pirates had heaps of cannons, they were very well defended! Oh, look, a new city of mine. Better build me some cannons for defence!"

I soon realised that wasn't a good strategy when the AI smashed through my empire in a few turns and completely destroyed me. It didn't help that some of my armies were on sentry duty, and I didn't know how to wake them.

Another turning point for me was when I discovered that devoting settlers to improving the land wasn't actually a "waste of a potential city". This was shortly after I captured my first enemy city that had irrigation around it. For the time that I held it, it was my best city in the kingdom...

Thankfully, I did get better at playing it.

ravagon · May 3, 2002, 03:59

It was the changing government thing that got me at first. The first half-dozen games I played I didn't think to change over, hence remained in despotism for the whole game.

Couldn't understand how the babylonians managed to grow their cities to size 20+ when my top city was at about 10-12.

[This was a copied version so I didn't have the manual

]

Otherwise, exactly the same as Aaglo.

DrFell · May 3, 2002, 09:06

Quote:

Originally posted by Locutus
One of my favourite strategies was to sit tight on England for a couple of thousand years and let one of the AIs conquer (almost) the entire globe and then declare war on that civ. That was pretty hard to do as well, especially early on when you can't afford to loose any cities (because you only have 2 or 3) but the AI is constantly pounding you with dozens and dozens of units

I used to do the same thing! I used to try stealing techs from the AI too. I remember one game where the mongols took over all of Asia, and I was sailing my nuke loaded carriers (or subs, I can't remember if they could carry nukes in civ1) around trying to take the Mongol captial as they kept moving it from one side of the world to the other. It seemed like they were predicting where I was going to head for.

Another time as English I landed in Europe with a bunch of armours and eventually managed to capture most of Asia. That game looked good on the replay.

dunk · May 3, 2002, 13:38

I think the most enjoyable part of the game was watching the replay.

I would watch my blob eat all the other blobs. I would leave one enemy city on the map and then milk my score and launch the spaceship.

It was especially fun to watch the replay with someone else. My brother would say, "Oh, boy, here you go again," when my conquests started.

Subs could not carry anything in Civ I.

I recently bought Civ I again. It worked for a while, now it always crashes.

Jeje2 · May 4, 2002, 07:24

The good old days...

Well as anyone can guess this isn't he first, noe propably the last, time a thread with memories about civ is started.

I would now like to point to one old thread started by Yin26 almost two years ago in the Civ3-General forum. (Now in archive already

)

Check out the thread titleled Your First Civ Memory (Stories to Warm Our Hearts)

But, do keep on telling about your memories. It's jewels like this that makes the day a little bit better...

Flanker · May 5, 2002, 01:13

I was pretty young when I got Civ from a friend of mine. I wasn´t very good at English at that time either. I was pretty impressed with the intro though, and still today I really miss that "ta-da-da"-music, I wonder if it is still aviable somewhere? Then I started playing, I didn´t have a clue what to actually do, I popped out a bunch of militia after building the first city. I also wanted to build a settler, I thought it looked like some kind of cat, but I didn´t know how to do it. However, my friend learned me the very basics, and then I was really into it. After a while I didn´t think it was very hard to manage even on emperor level, however, I recall there where actually quite common with space races at that time.

I´ve also tried to survive with my only settler for as long as possible, I just hided in the Sibirian tundra and stood there until somewhere around the 20th century. Then a cruiser came by and I was quickly wiped out.
I also remember first time I saw the stats of the nuclear weapon. I didn´t quite understand what it was however, as I said, my English wasn´t that good. But I really wanted to research it. Must have been like the ppl in WW2, they didn´t quite understand what it was either...

Yes, I could go on for a long time telling old memories, but I´m gonna sleep a little more now.

Gatekeeper · May 5, 2002, 02:16

Everyone:

I clearly remember breaking several NES game carts because of the frustration Civ I produced in me. I must have forked out around $90 for replacement carts (yes, plural) before I finally buckled down and kept my temper under control.

I've matured since then, too.

Gatekeeper

Simon Darkshade · May 5, 2002, 05:02

My favourite memory of Civ1 was pulling off my first major schism, taking what was a pathetic two city, low tech civ in 1750 AD to dominance in the 1970s. So sweet.