Boy does this game bring back memories

Well first of all, I'm actually only 14 years old. When I think back, I think I've been playing CivIII since I was about 8 years old. I know that's pretty young, but I believe it was about then, and that's like almost half of my life. It might have been even earlier because I remember reading the entire 200+ page manual for fun cover to cover when I was eight. I still remember my first game of building a warrior, attacking an enemy city close by, dying, doing that a couple times and losing a few turns later. When I started playing I never built settlers and built spearman and archers and attacked at random. Eventually I got better though. Now, with so much more stuff to do and other games I play, I don't play CivIII as much. But, whenever I go back to it after a while and start a new game, it gives me a good feeling. I remember the tower in the intro. All the sounds, all the art, all the gameplay coming back to me. The anxiety of getting my city raised and the joy of conquering everyone. I just thought I might share this with you and might ask, do any of you ever feel the same way? How old were you when you first played this game and the series? What effect does your first Civ game have on you?

I recall seeing Sid and a friend working on the game at "Origins I" in Baltimore in the early 70's.

My first Civ game was Civ 3 Conquests. I bought it in 2006, at the tender age of 37.

when i was 12 or so, i found a free trial on some AOl game thing, and i liked it. Bought conquests afterwards.

when i started, i didnt know how to do war, so i just made units and kinda did horsehockey.

I had watched a friend play Civ 1 on his computer not long after it first came out. So, about 2004, when I saw "Civilization" in the bargain bin, I grabbed it.

Turned out to be Civ II, not Civ I, but I loved it. The intro movie, the wonder movies, and especially those advisors. "I diasgree sire!" By far the best $10 I have ever spent.

And the side effect was, it got me hooked on the whole Civ franchise. I'm shopping for a new laptop, and one of the main criteria is ... it has to be capable of playing Civ V.

I am not sure as I do not recall when civ 1 came out. I would guess around 1996, so I would have been 50. I wrote my first game in 1964 for a Univac machine. I was in the Navy at the time.

I first started with CivIII Vanilla in about 2002, when I was 42. Never played I or II. I'm sure part of the reason I still like CivIII and keep coming back to it is nostalgia.

Picked up C3C in '04, been playing ever since, more or less. First game was as Aztecs on the Marla Singer Earth map, at Warlord. Getting to pull a Columbus-in-reverse on Europe was what sealed the addiction, I think.

Picked up IV complete a few months ago, thought it was fun but a little too arcade-y to hold my interest in the same way, if that makes any sense. (Religion and Corporations both seemed like mechanics with fantastic possibilities that were implemented in fairly dry ways) Would've needed to try II before III to fully appreciate it, I think. And I can't see trying V until it's a finished product.

Guess I got in contact with CIV III in 2006 not sure... But I remember that when I was like 21 (right now im 31) A friend of mine gave me a copy of CIV he said it was like a previus age of empires version I tried the thing.. it surprised me the size of the folder only 6 mb then when I saw the short intro that says in the begining (or something like that), the music I got hooked to the thing even when I thougt mmmm if this is an earlier version of age of empires it is an ugly one I still remember when ur civ was destroyed the msj saying that centuries after the archeologist found some ruins and bla bla bla...

the game actually gave that feeling of starting in the ancient era and then tanks, airplanes... it was so cool

Right now I keep a copy of CIV 1 in my ipod so I can plug it to any computer when bored and kill some time remembering those times when I sneaked out of my room at late night once my mother was sleeping just to play the game...

Every time I run the thing I remember those nights presing the keys trying not to make too much sound since my mother has a really nice ear sense even with the computer in the living room she caught me several times

dark_pretender said:

Guess I got in contact with CIV III in 2006 not sure... But I remember that when I was like 21 (right now im 31) A friend of mine gave me a copy of CIV he said it was like a previus age of empires version I tried the thing.. it surprised me the size of the folder only 6 mb then when I saw the short intro that says in the begining (or something like that), the music I got hooked to the thing even when I thougt mmmm if this is an earlier version of age of empires it is an ugly one I still remember when ur civ was destroyed the msj saying that centuries after the archeologist found some ruins and bla bla bla...

the game actually gave that feeling of starting in the ancient era and then tanks, airplanes... it was so cool

Right now I keep a copy of CIV 1 in my ipod so I can plug it to any computer when bored and kill some time remembering those times when I sneaked out of my room at late night once my mother was sleeping just to play the game...

Every time I run the thing I remember those nights presing the keys trying not to make too much sound since my mother has a really nice ear sense even with the computer in the living room she caught me several times

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lol if i tried that, my dad would leap over like a panther, he wakes up if i turn in my bed and he's down the hall

in fact the reason why my computer was in the living room was because my mother was able to listen to me when I was wake up in the computer... she opened the door of my room several times just to say "again are up on that ....ing thing?" one day once she got tired of my computer adiction she said... ok u have two choices son... I can gift ur computer to some1 so u can sleep at night... or we can place it in the living room so u can keep it and stay away from it at night

Sadly for her she had to caught me again... now Im kinda cured from that addiction and I live alone

Aabraxan said:

My first Civ game was Civ 3 Conquests. I bought it in 2006, at the tender age of 37.

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Aww, was it love at first Civ?

I've got Civ I and II but they were relaxation games. I never got past Chieftian. I probably would have done the same with CivIII (PTW) except for CivFanatics. Civ III, with the civ traits and UUs, really made the game different from I and II and much better.

My Civ playing days go back to 1984/85 when I was introduced to the game Civilization by Avalon Hill. AH made a lot of adult level strategy games, but most were war games and had a lot of rules and each game needed a good bit of explaining before playing. In this game, no dice were needed, conflict was easy to manage. The first turns went fast (have babies, count 'em up, move your people around, move you nation indicator on the turn record chart) but as you built cities you gained trade items and as you gained more of a set the entire set became more valuable and if you had enough you could buy a new technology (Pottery, Astronomy, Medicine).

The game started out simple and easy and added complexity as the game progressed. Cities were rarely conquered and you were always trying to build a city or acquire a new tech.

But it was a long game. We played it once with 5 people familiar with the game and it took 8 hours.

Advanced Civ came out but we didn't get it until sometime in the late 90s. That added some new techs, created a point system for shorter games and made the trading between the nations easier, simplier and more deadly.

We played Advanced Civ with some friends, two total newbies and their parents, who were somewhat acquainted with the game, on Friday after Thanksgiving. We started at 2pm and finished at 4am and one of the newbies won as Egypt.

Today, our face to face gaming is Settlers of Catan or Ticket to Ride or Carcassonne. Civ III is my strategy game of choice, but when that is too much a strain, then some Hidden Object games are a nice change of pace.

Oops!
Back to the opening post, at 14 I was playing Risk, with wooden pieces. It was about the only easily accessible strategy game you could get, except for Chess and Stratego, which I never liked. This was back in '71, when computers were rare and 8-tracks were still popular. I may have had a copy of Dogfight by then, a board game about WWI biplanes, but I'm not sure.

I got Civ 1 when I still had my amiga 500, a really great gaming rig. I had played empire, a simple war simulation where you would take cities and then produce military to expand and take over the world.

That was in the early 90s. I bought a pc after that and got such games as sid maier's railroads. I do recall working during the semester break just to be able to pay a pc.

In 1997, while on holidays in Singapore, I bought civ 2 and read the whole manual before returning home to be able to play that game.

I never played with much tactics etc. I always tried the world map, took over the world and had real fun.

In 2001, I do remember that civ 3 came out while I was in Brisbane for 6 weeks. Bought the game and played it a lot on the company laptop in the hotel at night. It was the first time that I heard of civfanatics. Plenty of people complained about the bugs etc. I really did enjoy the new concepts of culture and UU's.

In late 2003, after having played other games, I got my copy of conquests and that's when my love for civ started again. I got more serious following the SGs here at civfanatics. A lot of great games were played and finally in late 2004, I joined in the fun. I have never regretted that decision and C3C remains the best part of the whole series to me.

Civ 4 isn't bad but simply can't capture my attention for too long.

GamezRule said:

Aww, was it love at first Civ?

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Pretty much. I'd been playing MOO2 for a number of years, and had been looking for something else to play. I had tried a couple of other games, but nothing else caught my attention like C3C.

I love these treads, makes one realize that Civ is for all ages and seems to be well loved by its' aficianodos still. The other games mentioned are like old sweethearts, long since gone. But Civ sticks with you.

Oh, MOO2 stuck with me, too. I reinstalled it last week, and Princess Bloodthirsty has been bugging me to crank up a game with her . . .

There is alot to like in MOO2, but theres fewer strategies, IMHO. Loved it for awhile, but it never stuck for me.

There are fewer strategies, but it's a much older game, too. Anyway, I've played the hell out of it over the years & still get justonemoreturnsyndrome from it.

Civ3 vanilla was the first Civ game I played, and then I moved unto Conquests.
I started playing a few months prior to my join date and just started back up again due to all the blizzards.