Civ 1 - Thirty years and still going strong

[Licentia]

I used to love Civ 1. I'm glad to see that many people still enjoy it.

That being said, the AI in Civ 1 is LoL bad, and cheats like sin to compensate. At the end of a game, I take a close up look at all the AI cities. I see that little development has been done, such as building roads, mines, and irrigation. Despite this, the AI somehow manages to have a strong economy, competing in the science race right to the end. Then their undeveloped cities produce space ship parts at high speed. They also get wonders for free (probably space ship parts too.)

I think I may never play it again. There is no challenge in it any more, especially realizing how much the AI has to cheat to compete.

 

[Proudhon55]

On the topic of playthroughs, are there any videos on YouTube (or elsewhere) that focus on discussion of in-game strategy? A quick search on YouTube returns a number of Civ1 videos, but none of them seem to really delve into strategy. I’m interested in watching a strong player explain the logic behind moves, etc.

 

[Blake00]

On the topic of the version of Civ 1 included in the Chronicles set, it's the 16 bit windows version. Whilst not playable out of the box, it's playable on Windows 10 using a program called WineVDM (which effectively replicates Windows XP's 16 bit support using WINE as a backend).

I play it using the setup suggested by Blake00, with Honza Havlicek's DOS tileset mod to restore the dos graphics and Blake00's own music mod to restore full length Roland music from the DOS game. You effectively end up with a high res DOS version.

If there's any interest I could throw together a quick tutorial on getting it going, it'd be nice to get a few more people playing for the anniversay!

Thanks! Glad to see someones enjoying my suggested way. Should have tagged me mate as I've only just seen all this now months later hahaha. Been a while since I visited the Civ1 forum as I've been so bogged down in my Civ2 scenario creation and rescue work, but I have unfinished Civ1 plans here from 2018 to finally sort out in the near future.

Which coincidentally includes a video where I talk about how to get Civ1 working on a VM in HD with Hozas dos graphics and my music mods. Although I am pretty brief and it's not step by step or anything, nor did I know about WineVDM so there's certainly space for you to make a video too mate!

Hopefully if all goes well I can release my Civ1 HD tour video in the next month or so as I'm on holidays and smashing through my Civ2 stuff (there's some cross content in the videos so I wanna get my Civ2 stuff sorted to finalise the civ1 stuff). Despite me keeping it private on youtube I actually released my Civ1 video back in 2018ish and some of you may have even seen it as I linked to it a couple of times on this forum however not long after release I changed my mind and decided to overhaul and improve it as I did not know about the Civ1 scenario scene here a few years back and thought it would be really cool to cover that barely known scene, plus the map editors that made them and also I decided to cover the console conversions too. So a much improved version of the Civ1 HD tour video plus some 'bonus episode' videos are almost ready to go! Since we've got this anniversary thing happening I'd better get a move on to finish it haha! Speaking of scenarios I also still need to release my 'How to play as Barbarians' tour video and scenario file I made years ago too! Need to get busy!!!

.

 

[Lord_Hill]

@Blake00 Honestly, I would never in a million years have even thought about trying the windows version if you hadn't have made those posts, so thanks . I enjoyed your series on playing as the barbarians as well, good stuff. As far as the topic goes, thinking about it a bit more, there are so many forum posts about getting the games to work, as well as videos like yours if you search a bit. Anyone who really wants to try such an old game will find a way, so no need for me to reinvent the wheel!

 

[Theov]

I used to love Civ 1. I'm glad to see that many people still enjoy it.

That being said, the AI in Civ 1 is LoL bad, and cheats like sin to compensate. At the end of a game, I take a close up look at all the AI cities. I see that little development has been done, such as building roads, mines, and irrigation. Despite this, the AI somehow manages to have a strong economy, competing in the science race right to the end. Then their undeveloped cities produce space ship parts at high speed. They also get wonders for free (probably space ship parts too.)

I think I may never play it again. There is no challenge in it any more, especially realizing how much the AI has to cheat to compete.

"No callenge"
What level do you play at and what maps?

 

[Blake00]

The J has mentioned to me that he and the staff are going to be posting some 30th celebration stuff on the main CFC news page over September so keep your eyes peeled there guys.

I've started some scenario preservation work too:
https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...-preservation-project-log-6-processed.672488/

Working to get my much improved version of the Civ1 HD Tour ready in time as well!

Oh and I've also put in a application to the admin forum for a scenarios folder to be added to the Civ1 downloads area, and also to rename the old barely used GOTM sub forum to a more accurate scenario creation forum. More details here:
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/civilization-1-downloads-and-forum-adjustments.672873/

.

 

[Licentia]

"No callenge"
What level do you play at and what maps?

King or Emperor, doesn't matter.

I usually played Earth map.

 

[raen]

Still play it on android while traveling

 

[Blake00]

My Civilization 1 how to play in HD with scenarios & mods tour video I mentioned above made over the last few years is finally released to the world in time for the anniversary celebrations.. more info here:
https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...ization-1-hd-tour-with-mods-scenarios.673292/

 

[The_J]

Still play it on android while traveling

I'll feature this on the main page and on Twitter in the coming days (thought to wait for this until blake's video is out). Just FYI

 

[Blake00]

Wow.. noticing a real increase of activity in this forum lately! Looks like all of the @The_J 's news posts and me posting my Civ1 videos across heaps of retro sites and groups has injected some life back into this place and got people thinking about revisiting Civ1 again. Is great to see!