Do you remember your first ever CiV game?

When you first bought Civilization V back in September 2010, do you remember the first game you played?

I do - I started out as Rome on a continent with me and Songhai, on a Standard map on Prince difficulty.

To me, the policies and leader screens were very impressive, and the game was a fantastic change of pace from Civilization IV. I was very pleased and completely didn't notice the terrible AI combat and diplomacy.

Without difficulty I attacked a ton of civilizations, wiping them out or declaring war. I remember Ramkahaeng being another superpower, blowing up most of his continent with ease. It was a nice map...3 continents generated, with a healthy balance of land to war with. Alexander was fun to duel in the Medieval Era...but once again, the AI wasn't very good, so as soon as I learned minor tactics, they were very easy to kill.

I was an extreme warmonger, taking everyone I could meet, until eventually by the Renaissance everyone in the game declared war on me. Now, because I didn't know how bad the tactical AI was at this point...I thought the game was lost. Surely a mass declaration of war would mean my army had absolutely no chance of winning the game. And with that, I quit the game and started new.

Around that time, the Companion Cavalry rush* was discovered...and the rest is history. Balance issues exposed, horrendous AI and diplomacy, and the complaint cycle began.

* - four companion cavalry could trounce an entire continent...they obliterated cities.

Anywho, do you guys remember your first game ever of CiV? If so, describe it! What were your impressions? What happened shortly after? Did you enjoy it?

Well, I hadn't yet bought the game - I was playing on a friend's computer - but I decided to start as Washington on random map. The game was beautiful, the gameplay seemingly smooth, and I found every aspect of the game fascinating. I expanded for a while, before meeting Darius, who was somehow getting a much larger gpt rate than I and rated very highly in the demographics screen. Met several other civs, explored my continent I think the highlight of the game was finding out about natural wonders, then narrowly getting a settler into place so that I could buy the wonder tile that Darius had settled near but not yet obtained. Unfortunately I didn't play much after that, and then I got the main game about 1.5 years later. (The first game of that I don't recall, but I do know I played from 7pm-9am the next morning!)

My first game was with Greece, standard map, I think Continents. If I remember correctly I was sharing my continent with Cathy, Gandhi, Babylon and I think China, while Siam, Iriqois and several others were on another one.

I hadn't played a Civ game in a while, so I started on King, thinking I would most certainly get my ass kicked, and aiming for a Diplo VC - what better way to test out the new CS system after all?

And so, I expanded. Cathy became paranoid and we went to war several times simply because I built a city half a continent away from her, and I didn't even know where she was on the map. Gandhi allied with me and we beat her to a pulp, with him luckily taking her last city. From then on there were no more wars, just constant denouncements and insults, including several from my "friend", the "peaceful" Gandhi. The CSs looked like a feature that was barely tackled on, with the quests not having any impact at all, I still wasn't used to the SP trees, but I could see myself liking them, the tech tree was abysmal, the AI was abysmal, growth times were abysmal, production times were abysmal, RAs were abysmal... It all ended with me being allied to half of the city states and fighting with Siam over one CS that would change alliances every freaking turn. In the end he gave up, I got my majority, and won a Diplomatic Victory without ever having to resort to any actual diplomacy, A VC I loved in IV. The game cheerfully produced a silly-looking splash-screen instead of an actual victory video, which made my already underwhelming victory that much worse. I clicked around, looking for some replay function, for any way to see my empire grow throughout the game. I found nothing.

I didn't play CiV for about an year after that, in fact I didn't play or care about anything Civ related for quite some time. I didn't go to any forums to complain about it, I didn't write angry Metacritic reviews, I didn't even consider the game bad per se. I just stopped playing.

Yeah, and to date it's still probably my favourite playthrough. It was England/Immortal/Marathon/Small Continents with a Culture victory which I remember deciding on very early into the game. Rome was right next to me which made tense times towards the end as they were very close to pulling off a Domination Victory. I was actually fighting them around the globe trying to defend the various remaining capitals (there were only two left before I realized the danger - Catherine's and Washington's) and distinctly remember finishing Utopia just before Rome's invasion force landed on my shores.

The diplomacy was batshit crazy but that was a very, very fun game.

My first game was on prince with America on continents. early on i ran into Russia and was fooled by her being so nice. she soon DoW'd me and I ended up fighting several wars before being destroyed. the only other civ game i played was civilization revolution on my Ipod. I figured that since i could win every victory type with every civ on diety i would do fine. Civ5 game me a rude awakening. lesson learned don't trust pretty ladies that talk nice lol.

My first game was with all the Pre-GK DLC already. Played as Russia, Continents+.
I had Moscow surrounded by sea and mountains, with a 1-tile wide 6-tile-long landbridge to Japan and Songhai (Who got routed by Japan), and once I got through the passes past my mountain range, I found I shared the continent with Spain, Mongolia, Korea and India. Spain and Mongolia together crushed Korea, I took advantage of Spain attacking Korea by attacking their unguarded cities. Spain got taken over, as did Mongolia. Gandhi wasn't a threat so I turned my attention to Japan, who got crushed afterwards.
I then got in an intercontinental war, the other 2 continents had France and the Incans, with France having obliterated the latter, and Germany/Ottomans/Iroquis/America. While invading Germany, I ended up winning the Space Race...
Ended up playing the game on, going full domination. Was a fun game, probably one of my most amazing starting positions ever (Really, the way Moscow was positioned...)

hell yes i remember i play as the americans in civilization iv and i was just about to win then isabella declared war on me and denied me victory! after that i rage quit the game until civ v came out holmes.

my first game in civilization v i quit because i lost so badly.

i don't have the best memory but i recall it was ottomans (me) vs germany. I never had played any other games in civ universe, except CivRev. I didn't remember much from CivRev (it broke like a year before I got CiV) so I was just testing the whole game it was so good that it got me keep playing CiV and never have I regreted that decision

aceflamingo23 said:

hell yes i remember i play as the americans in civilization iv and i was just about to win then isabella declared war on me and denied me victory! after that i rage quit the game until civ v came out holmes.

my first game in civilization v i quit because i lost so badly.

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I was talking about civilization V exclusively. XD

That's interesting. The AI seems very effective when the player is completely new, and very terrible when the player has some semblance of the game's design.

I played Persia. Aside from scouting around and ooh-ahhing at the music, I didn't do much. I was rather mystified by Egypt offering a "Pact of Secrecy".

CivCube said:

I played Persia. Aside from scouting around and ooh-ahhing at the music, I didn't do much. I was rather mystified by Egypt offering a "Pact of Secrecy".

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I almost forgot those!

Did Pact of Secrecy and Pact of Cooperation do anything back then? I can't even remember!

Rome, pilliaging the land with my three Praets with +60% plainsraider promotions, capturing cities in one turn and one unit(with minimal damage). Actually got myself to -20 unhappiness... and then proceeded to train my home defenders on my unhappy civilians.

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and if you broke the pacts in any way the 'pacting' civ would get pissed. I suppose it was supposed to help keep that other civ in the dark via the silent treatment...

Putmalk said:

I almost forgot those!

Did Pact of Secrecy and Pact of Cooperation do anything back then? I can't even remember!

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Shafer tried to have these be reputation hits and boosts that would go on behind the scenes. The idea was to make Civ diplomacy feel like, well, Diplomacy. It didn't work.

For Civ 5: Ghandhi going for a Culture win. It was interesting to see how the UA fit my intended playing style. As I think about it, I take Gandhi when random selection offers him, but not when I am choosing because it feels too easy. I didn't think I did that kind of selection filtering, but I guess I do.

Overall first Civ game: (inevitable topic creep) I don't remember. I had found, after the fact, both Civ2 and Civilization Call to Power and not the Internet forums, so I was pretty confused. I'm not sure which game I actually played first, let alone who and what map, etc.

I sadly don't remember my first Civ V game, but I do remember my first Civ IV game.


The weird thing about it was that it was a huge continents map, but it was actually a pangaea, one single landmass with no civs. I even went and reloaded the save file on my old laptop on which I played it to make sure I wasn't crazy, and it said 'Continents' in the settings.

Kind of crazy to have one's first Civ game affected by such a severe bug. Also, one of my favorite changes from IV to V is that the AI can actually conquer other AIs. In Civ IV they'd get capitulation sure, but how often do you see that happen? I think I've actually seen the AI entirely wipe out another AI in IV like 2 or 3 times, and I've played that game a TON. The crazy thing is that the first time I saw it was Isabella wiping out Frederick on my first ever game of Civ. So two very rare anomalies in my first game of Civ IV or Civ in general.

First Civ V game was the demo version that I played to make sure I could run the game on my old computer. Played as Greece. By the end of the 100-turn demo I had conquered one civ and was closing in on the capital of another.

First Civ game ever: I used to play Civ I on the computers at the computer lab when my stepmother was in community college. I was probably 10-12. Don't remember any specific games, just the feeling of epic time that came from controlling a country all the way from settling your first city to controlling the world.

I remembered an unfinished game as England, where I was being horribly out teched, but still managed to get to the point of Giant Death Robots and atomic bombs. I remembered my first time using those death robots... it was alright. So were the atomic bombs.

I didn't figure out the mechanics until much later, and it was running quite slow on machine (pre-patch Feb 2011), so I never finished it.

First game is America on Continents with Arabia as only other civ on my continent. Went diplomatic victory. I enjoyed it very much. Even though Arabia backstab near the end.

I played a duel chieftain game as a random Civ, and I ended up with the Songhai. Across a mountain range to the west was Monty, surrounded by jungles and lakes, and I was in the middle of some nice plains, with a river. All of the city states spawned near me, so I was able to pick them up easily. For the first part of the game I focused on building up my infrastructure and maintaining my economy, happiness, and technological progress. In the middle ages, a city states on the border between the Aztecs and I was caught between our influence, which made Monty pretty angry.

Eventually, he attacked, and I rushed out longswordsmen and crossbowmen to attack him. I was being stupid and I didn't know that the Mandekalu Cavalry didn't have a disadvantage against cities, so I didn't build any of them. Eventually, my force stopped halfway through the conquest as Monty offered a peace treaty, and he would give me his last city (not counting Tenochtitlan) which gave me time to rebuild my forces. After the peace treaty ran out, I attacked him again, and he lost a few turns later.

Now, the funny thing, the next game I played was as the Aztecs, against the Songhai. Complete coincidence.

I always start my first civ game on Diety just to see how long i survive, then i drop to king and practice my way to emperor.

I don't like playing above emperor because the only extra difficulty is AI buffs x 10000, and i don't like the style of gameplay that is forced. I am more of a builder and i was angry to see no airports, terrifying building maintenance and ungrowing, ugly trade posts. Then, i was displeased again when they forced you to pick policies, which always left me choosing early things i didn't want while leaving me unable to get later things i did want.

I despised how shallow of a "turn based age of empires" the game had become, the only real challenge being to see if you can rush out 5 horsemen before the AI's pull out 2 spearmen. It was one of the dumbest downed ever games to disgrace a series. Over the patches, things improved - but a few annoyances remain such as being forced to pick policies when i don't want to, forced to promote my units when i don't want to, the game not remembering my advanced start settings even though i went into the XML and set my preferences to "1" it still does not checkmark them.

I was and still am, demotivated by a lack of advanced start. If it's cheating, then starting in any era but ancient era is cheating and why do i have the ability to appear on a medieval map with stupid settlers and units but no ability to spend points to buy cities, units, culture, science and faith? Why not regenerate map so i don't have to reroll starts? And all of these issues are addressed by "go download mod x" as though all the problems were subsidized on unpaid labor - hell, they even jacked update patches out of different mods!

I liked having variables such as happiness become global - and i also liked not having the unneeded "health" system - i liked being able to purchase things without having to wait until late game and having to be in a certain government. I liked the hex based tiles and 1upt - and i liked the city states from the first moment i saw them.

I always hate it when a "next version" of something "complete" comes out and is just a watered down, lite, all features missing, vanilla version - that expansions are released to make the games a "2.0" of prior expansions. You can look at history of civ games yourself, most of the games just regurgitate the SAME CONTENT - The same civ's, the same features, the same everything - over and over under "new systems".

I wanted to see a "New game" and not just a watered down lite version of a complete game. And because i didn't have the internet, i always had errors, especially the one where if you forget to exit/close steam before turning off computer (or even when it hibernates!) every option will attempt to connect you and "you aren't connected to steam!" message.

Then i would have to pack my computer up later in the week, unable to use objects i paid for, and go to someone elses house just to "connect to steam" so i can restart offline mode.

The mod browser from the "first game" was also strange feeling, and i like the steam workshop much better except in mod buddy you didn't have trolls posting hacks in every mod's thread.

The worst Vanilla insult was playing on Earth Map (always a must for me) and seeing how terribly done it was, i was angry. Especially to realize that WAS the map, so i loaded in world builder the "huge" earth map and sized down it's dimensions and realized the design team did just that.

The design team built a "huge earth map" then sized down it's dimensions while wearing a blindfold so they wouldn't have to see what it's smaller sizes looked like. This would allow them to release those maps without even knowing how awful they were. I still haven't found a satisfactory standard size earth map.

Now, to my first game with G+K - the game was made a lot better in many different ways but still no advanced start, regenerate map button and no ability to check the diplomatic situation when a leader "pops up" to ask me for something.