Do you remember your first ever CiV game?

[notadummy]

settler difficulty, played as ghandi
spent 60 turns trying to take out seoul because I didn't know that you had to use a melee unit to capture a city lol =.=
then puzzled at the screen figuring out how my crossbows that I just upgraded to riflemen were melee units
was 1 turn away from finishing utopia project, but then captured monty's capitol and won haha
good times, good times

[Esperr]

I played as Greece on prince with a 4 player map. I won on turn 95. This was when I realized they were going to get patched to hell and back.

[blackcatatonic]

My first CiV game was Chieftain, England, Continents. I hadn't played CIV in ages so thought I would be too rusty to go straight for Prince. Yeah... not so much. In the end I set myself up for all the victory conditions and won them one after the other by doing the 'one more turn' thing. Think I went straight to Prince after that.

One specific thing I remember is that Ramkhamhaeng was my neighbour and he was useless... never built more than 3 cities. I conquered him before he got to his elephants and I remember thinking, 'wow, Siam is useless, I'll be sure never to worry about him AT ALL in my games...'

Heh...

[gps]

Yes, it's not that long ago. Got Civ V some weeks ago when the GOTY was 5,75 at Amazon.de. Started with default setting and got Polynesia as random starting Civ. Settled three or four cities. Admired the great optics, scratched my head about Montys crazy but neverending "Let's be friends, let's make RA!" / "Surprise, it's me again. Guess what, this time it's a backstabber DOW, I guess you could've never anticipated that ingenious strategy of mine!" cycle. However his attacking forces each time were easily shattered by my base defending force. Can't say much about the other AI, because I ignored them and so did they. Even after 20 years of playing Civ games I did not really have a clue what I was supposed to do in this version of the franchise. Expansion? Don't do it, the AI will hate you! Making friends? Don't do it, the other AI will hate you! Going to war? Don't do it... Attacking city states? Don't do it... Trying to win? Don't... Don't... Don't... It all felt pretty pointless, abstract and surreal. But it did not really matter either. In the back of my head I had something about bribing city states beeing a good strategy in this one to win. So I focused on commerce and science, bought all the city states and beelined for the UN. Won a rather easy (maybe due to the low level) but underwhelming and immensly unsatisfying Diplomatic Victory...

[Louis8k8]

First game was China on Pangea against 3 civs on the 2nd difficulty. Played a long-ass game and got a domination victory. Then I kept playing and was sad I can't load up my space ship parts because I've already won the game. That game took like 20 hours.

[Andulias]

Originally Posted by gps

Expansion? Don't do it, the AI will hate you! Making friends? Don't do it, the other AI will hate you! Going to war? Don't do it... Attacking city states? Don't do it... Trying to win? Don't... Don't... Don't... It all felt pretty pointless, abstract and surreal.

And that's why I will never, ever go back to vanilla. Ever. Just because of that right there. Thank God it's not like this after G+K

[kaltorak]

Actually I don't, but I still remember my first civ1 game. It was with rome. I had no idea about resources, I just built the city in a place that looked like a good defense spot, protected by water and mountains.
When later I found london, it was size 11 and I was like wooooooooooooooow, size 11, how the hell...

[Putmalk]

Just imagine for a second what Civilization V was when it first released.

- No espionage
- No religion
- No Stone Works
- No Wonders of the Ancient Worlds
- No Spain
- No beaker overflow
- Liberty Great Person in a policy
- Piety was the Happiness policy tree
- No Denoucement/Friendship

In fact Civilization V when it first released is completely different than what it is now. Have you ever seen a game change so much during its first 2 year release cycle?

[Andulias]

Originally Posted by Putmalk

Just imagine for a second what Civilization V was when it first released.

- No espionage
- No religion
- No Stone Works
- No Wonders of the Ancient Worlds
- No Spain
- No beaker overflow
- Liberty Great Person in a policy
- Piety was the Happiness policy tree
- No Denoucement/Friendship

In fact Civilization V when it first released is completely different than what it is now. Have you ever seen a game change so much during its first 2 year release cycle?

Civilization 4 had already 2 expansions under its belt two years after release., Civ III followed a similar route. Master of Magic had a pretty big patch overhaul back in the day. EVE Online from 2004 looked puny compared to EVE Online from 2006. Both The Witcher 1 and 2 were longer and vastly improved only an year after they came out.

So yeah, I have seen quite a few. And while it's commendable that Firaxis put out so many patches, it also shows how broken CiV essentially was (and in many regards still is). Entire systems were overhauled, design decisions were overwritten, features that the developers proudly displayed before launch were quietly shelved... CiV was essentially a gigantic beautiful ship filled with holes and sinking rapidly. And yes, they did patch it up, it stopped sinking and now sails proudly, but those patches aren't that pretty to look at. Whether it's the unnecessary complexity of having both local and global happiness (which just shows how bad that system is), the constant overhauls of the RAs (why did they get rid of tech trading in the first place?!), the mess that is the diplomacy system even now, with denouncements for no apparent reason, getting labelled a warmonger just for the sake of it, modifiers conflicting with one-another (we hate you for breaking a DOF with the civ that we asked you to attack) etc, etc, etc... It's almost as bad as Civ III really. And while Civ III turned out good eventually, did we really need to go through this again...

At this point I would like a couple of more patches and after that, well, Civ VI. Take all you have learned from the mess you created, and this time do it right. Get a lead designer that has some experience and doesn't get ahead of himself, set goals that are actually achievable within a reasonable time-frame (which was CiV's biggest mistake), and focus on immersing us in the game, making us believe we are leading an actual civilization. You have the engine, you have the experience with hexes and the 1UPT AI, a CIVI would be much easier to develop than CiV.

Oh, and don't ignore the community like last time. Did anyone from CFC work on V? Not to my knowledge

Anyways, if this expansion is any indication, they have in fact learned their lesson. The new lead has been in the video-gaming business for a decade and seems to come up with fresh ideas, CFC members did work on it, and they focused on adding meaningful layers of complexity that add deepness to the game all the while tweaking old systems, which is exactly what I wanted them to do.

[Doviello]

In my first civ V game i tried to build roads everywhere, i wanted to connect all resources damn it! Why was i losing so much money? I had no gold, was always on the red so i quit. Then i came to the forums to complain but decided to lurk for a while. Glad i did that

[The_J]

Originally Posted by Putmalk

[...]

Originally Posted by Andulias

[...]

Moderator Action: ...and now back to topic please.

[LDiCesare]

I remember a beautiful map thanks to hexes, a city-state system I immediately hated for being gamey (and also for more philosophical reasons), a pitiful AI, an interesting combat system, a lack of interesting terrain choices, and a totally unflexible government system that doesn't allow radical changes like the French revolution. I liked the use of terrain with 1upt, with some interesting mountain passes and cool unit placement.

[compwiz1202]

I only remember it was Babylon and I won science. I have always loved science in Civ since the beginning.

[theguy8882]

I played a game in civ 5 as Germany on a continents small map on king

I had never played a civ game prior to that game. I had assumed that prince and below were for babies and I went for king. I rememeber I was being to meticulous on where to make my cities, to the point where I waited too long and the songhai had closed me in. they declared war on me soon after founding their fourth city and they destroyed me easily.

I didn't play on king after that for awhile.

[DevilHell]

I bought CiV on December 2011 because it sounded great to me the idea of the game

My first CiV game and first Civilization, Age of Empires and whatswhoever, was Standard
Pace, Random leader, default map (Continents), Random size
It turned out to be a HUGE map, where I was Alexander
Although I didn't do the Tutorial, I was playing on Settler, to play slowly and check everything out because I didn't have an idea of what the game was about.
I remember that I founded Athens in place and found Settlers in ruins with my warrior and settled Sparta where the game suggested
I researched like an IA, filling columns without a specific order, and built no Unit, just every building I unlocked
I then started Wonder spamming with my capital, meanwhile Sparta took like 60 turns for every building
Ramsses was on my continent, it was a large continent but we were the oly ones in it
He beat me in EVERY wonder, so much that I just started spamming settlers and filling places in the continent, again, where the game suggested
I think I went Tradition and Liberty
I didn't know what roads were about, so I remember I built one road because the game suggested it, and then I saw it and it had no yield,and it cost one gpt, so I decided to not build them
After I went ICS and managed happiness by doing things I didn't know how or why to do but that worked, I decided to attack Ramsses in turn like 150, with companion cavalry or so x))
I was afraid of him because he had these aggresive dialogs hahaha x))) like arrogant dialogs, and he had his army (really little now I think about it)
But I struggled to take all his cities like in 50 turns or so x))
By that time I had discovered how to take my boats out of the clear water into the dark waters x) haha and so I sarted to meet everyone
I started ICS again on like one tile useless islands and I settled also in another continent
I remember being afraid because there were these red units I had never seen, just outside of my lonely city in the other continent, with two horses
Hahaha Oh my..
I then started going to war with every CS around, I remember I also didn't know you needed a mellee unit and therefore I thought like "wow this civilization might be the most powerful of all, might better make peace before they turn it down" Hahaha Ragusa bombarded by ships
In the end I started taking every other civilization slowly, with the same horsies that took ramsses, but this time on turn 300 or so
I annexed really dumbly and rush bought things because my happiness was 100 and my money was 1000 gpt or so
WITHOUT TRADE ROUTES, seriously, Settler is crazy x)) I cannot understand people struggling on chieftain
Anyway, Napoleon was the last one to fall, with a whole continent to himself, after nukes and so
And I also was trying to build the spaceship and couldn't
And there were like on turn 450 3 policies left to Utopia, most of all because of my dumb random annexing everything
It was fun

[Sam Kwon]

I remember I was France, and on my pangea map were genghis, catherine, oda, and bismark. I won through total domination

[The Little One]

Yeah, Rome on Archipelago at my friends house. Not sure what difficulty I was on but I never got very far with that game

[Civciv5]

I played as Ramkhamhaeng on Earth map (small,standard game pace).
I started in the Sahara desert and founded Sukhothai nearby the Niger river.
I also built some cities in Mauritania and Nigeria. I was the highest in score until Alexander began his conquests of Asia. Soon he was the highest in score. I conquered Venice and founded a city in Arabia. I nuked Cape Town,but I didn't know that it was allied with Alexander. So I declared war on Alexander too. He soon invaded and conquered most of my homeland. I quitted the game and never finished it.

[DemonMaster]

As a parenthesis I actually do remember my very first civ game, ever (Civ I that is). I was playing Egypt and I remember that I wondered, Island, Egypt is an island (I didn't know the map was random).

In CiV, I played Germany. I didn't change any settings and Germany was picked by random. I had Japan as my neighbour and I remember we had a very hilly border and that the war was very long. I was very surprised when I finally had killed all his units and took his closest city that in the peace treaty he gave me all his cities (except for his capital). Thank ... this weird peace treaties have been changed.

[Heerlo]

I remember my first Civ5 game, but, playing on settler, it was so easy that it's not even hardly worth mentioning.

It was on a Huge Terra map, playing as the USA.

Pretty soon I met Gandhi, and we became gamelong friends.I think I had a DOF with him for probably the rest of the game, and we also kept defensive pacts in place.

He got attacked and I got into war because of the defensive pact, and I was taking massive amounts of other civ's lands until they would agree to make peace with Gandhi.

Meanwhile, this being a Terra map, I was colonizing all over the place.And I was probably the most powerful civ in the world.Not that I was just that good or anything, but mostly just because of the difficulty.

And eventually, I won a Science Victory.For my next game, I completely skipped Cheiftan and went straight to Warlord.