Xanik999, if you aren't trying to be trollish, then we'll give you a chance. I have a low tolerance for that kind of behavior because I've seen a lot of it at other boards and it just doesn't produce anything but anger.
I think Civ has a lot of benefits over the later games.
1. Nostalgia is strong with me (I'm 30 and this was one of my all-time favorite games long before they started making sequels, so I have a lot of experience playing it).
2. The other games like to change units, techs, costs, wonder benefits, etc, etc, to the point that I get confused trying to plan a long game and make the best decisions. I know the Civ 1 civilopedia inside and out so I don't need to look things up. When I play the others, much of what I know is wrong, so I waste a lot of time and resources.
3. The music and sounds were pretty good. And for usability, the DOS version worked better than the Windows versions WinCIV and CivNET.
4. The entire game and all the save games fits on the smallest USB drive, so I can take the game everywhere and play it on any computer.
5. I know the copy protection questions by heart (see #2). With the later games I have to carry around my original disks because of the copy protection. Ain't no way I'm risking my originals!
6. The game is much easier, while still being challenging. I never played Civ 2, but I've played every other version and the difficulty increases with each version so they can keep the masters happy at the cost of average and weak players (okay, I admit I've forgotten a lot and I never was a master). I also play Civ 3 (see below) and what is Chieftan in that game is comparable to Prince in the original.
7. The game is much faster to play. I can play through an entire game in a few hours on the lower difficulties. Even on Chieftain in the other Civs, it usually takes me a number of days equal to the hours I'd spend on the original Civ. I don't have that kind of time to waste on games any more. I can play for an hour or two every other night, not 16 hours straight, and I still want to experience more games, not just one super-long one!
I played Civ, WinCiv, CivNET, Civ3, and Civ4. I also tried FreeCiv but I couldn't get it configured and running. So far the only ones I found playable at all were Civ and Civ3. Civ3 looks and sounds great, but it is a much harder game and it takes much much longer to play. With the original Civ you could easily win on the low difficulties without ever leaving Despotism. In Civ3, you stand no hope without shifting to Monarchy. Civ3 adds a lot of complexity that I don't always want to cope with, like Culture, rebelling cities (culture flips), many more techs = a lot harder to reach modern units, need to secure natural resources that aren't visible until you need them for a unit, corruption is so high that cities halfway across your continent are totally unproductive and even courthouses won't diminish that like they do in the original game, the barbarians are a lot more numerous and ruthless even on the lower settings, and the list goes on and on. I like the Civ3 trade system and the Civ3 science advisor a lot, but in the end I'm sacrificing a fast, easy to start game for a very involved, long lasting game.
So, sure the original has very blocky graphics that seems primitive compared to the recent ones, but it offers a lot more in game playability that I'm looking for.
Im interested in why anyone still plays this game. I tried it by downloading a rom and it just pales in comparison to civ 3 or 4. Ive been playing this series since civ 2 and i cant imagine what anyone sees in the original game anymore... Please enlighten me
