Civ is bad for my life!

[James1]

Hello!

I've been playing Civ again now for a couple of months but I'm thinking of stopping playing it and throwing the disk away...not becuase I don't enjoy it but because its too addictive and enjoyable!

I've found I'm getting more and more addicted to it and don't think I've had an early night since I got the game! Its making me tired and I seem not to be motivated to other things anymore like sports and go out so much. If I had the choice of going to a party or having a ight in with Civ, I would probably honestly choose to play Civ which I now realise is pretty dumb

I know its a brilliant game - one of a kind hence the number of people who've played it so much for so long but I can't seem to limit myself to a reasonable amount of time when playing the game and I'm irritated when I something else comes up that means I can't play! Seems silly to me and I've never been in this kind of situation before - its the only game I've ever played...but its just a game!

What does anyone else think? Have you found ways of playing sensibly? I'm probably playing for around 10-15 hours a week and I've realised the VAST amount of other, fun, healthy, interesting, challenging things I could do with that time. Are there any solutions?

Don't get me wrong - the game is brilliant - but for me, I have just realised that it is only a game, and unlike football which I also play regularly, brings no benefits to my health and fitness. The 'one more turn' problem is a biggie!

I think tonight, I will be uninstall Civilization and throw it away...however, like that shot of the archaelogists digging up pieces of a fallen empire in the game, it will always remain in the annals of history for me!

 

[Whelkman]

I call this the "just one more turn" syndrome. 50 "just one more turns" later...

 

[RedKi-rr]

10-15 hours per week isn't so much. MMOPRG games is worse, when you could play up to 8-12 hours per day...

Once i tried to limit myself to 1 hour per day for games. I think it's near optimal, when you can enjoy a game and don't forget real life...

Now i play - sometimes 3-4 hours per day, sometimes don't play at all. But to push pause in civ is still hard for me. I play a game to the end (luckily they are short OCC games now).

Actually games (esp. like civ) can be useful. Things like planning or foreseeing are good. But if play spend tonns of time playing the game...it's just not worthwhile. Time is more valuable. It's better to be with you family, play football, do your work and so on. Game is fun, but life should include other things too.

So, you did right, if the game was bad for you, your life your health.

 

[Whelkman]

I probably get in 15-30 minutes of gaming on average daily these days. Sometimes I'll actually play that long but more likely I'll play for 2 hours one day then not again for a week. It takes me months to finish games these days. When I was younger I definitely had 10+ hour marathon sessions, often with Civ1.

 

[Theov]

One... more... turn...
- Set priorities.
Do the other things first. (shower, gym, cook, call mother/girlfriend, eat, friends, cleaning, admin, work, school, etc). THEN game. Have the mindset and tell yourself that it's bad to game when other things need to be done.
I feel that I enjoy gaming more when the other 'mandatory' things are done.
- set yourself to a time, 2 hours max. Or play until 1AM max. (waking up at 8 makes 7 hours of sleep... that's good.)

You can throw away the disc, but resistance is futile. You will buy or download it again.
Oh and now you have the civforums addiction too. Nice.

 

[ATC1983]

So true.

Like pornography.

 

[enneagon]

Yeah...
It's badly addictive!

Even now, when I dig it up after number of years recently, I had spent more than 20 hours in first week (but I intentionally found it to do exactly that in the first place), and lost some hours of other eventual activity's after... But after few games that was all over, and I started to look forward for moding it, as I remembered my old days, when I 'played good' with this game and hex editor; and as a result I found this exciting place!

But if we talk about the old days... I even bought my first PC solely to play Civ !!!
That was eons ago, but just less than 20 years, only shortly after the end of the world and fresh start over, and I even still had not graduated school jet.
So, I had some experience with Russian BK01 (I still wonder had these machines ever any reel purpose besides programming in ‘Vilnius BASIC’ for fun), then switched to Mac (there were some Laptops II sent from Denmark as humanitarian aid or so) and after two years of chairing the school newspaper I looked on a PC with some contempt - as something similar to the same BK; but guys had big fun with it, there was lot of stupid games, but this one… These boys had already hex edited it to the extent were 99 move amphibious Frigate exterminated annoying Mongols in one turn (before fell for Babylonian Militia ); I definitely wanted to try it!
The school newspaper died soon after…
Somehow I got insane amount of money (around double than dad’s monthly salary) to buy a fresh, custom built PC (i486 66MHz, 4Mb RAM on ASUS motherboard (still on love with them! btw. after some upgrades that PC outperformed even one IBM P120, and occasionally sees limited use still now! )). I had plenty of excuses to buy it, but I used it solely to play Civ, at least until installed Windows 95 more than a year after, and that year I spent to play Civ (or with Civ) literally non-stop! I finished school at some time between the turns, and Civ was at least partially responsible that I failed university entrance exams on the first attempt.
I never really ceased to play it, the versions changed sometimes, and a lot of other games are not ignored to, but the classic Civ1 gets back again and again. But now it is not interfering with the live to much.

OK, that’s my personal story of Civ madness…

I think, it’s better to find a way to control it, not cease and delete altogether (if you ever can do that). There plenty of things around as bad and possibly even lot more dangerous than Civ is; and if you learn to manage this addiction you’re lot more safe in future. Just put it into the same category as alcohol! It’s good when it’s good, but highly dangerous if not attended.
But that’s theory, you must decide for yourself.

 

[grenobles]

I guess i have a sort of a Civ Madness story as well...

Long time ago after playing CIV1 for billions (i'm exaggerating ofc, it was only millions) of hours and beaten it with pretty much every civilization and every possible start I remember once playing just a standard Earth map and stumbling upon the English civilization that had spawned in Australia after the Greeks had been killed early. For some reason I got obsessed with this and was determined to try a game starting from Australia.
I had heard you could edit the .sve file somehow to change the civilization you're controlling, so first it took me ages to figure out how to do this(no civ-editors or worldbuilders to make stuff easy then just ms-dos based edit.exe to change some numbers in a row). Even with my limited computer knowledge i somehow managed to figure that out and it was time to start trying to spawn at Australia.

I thought it was done the easiest by starting a new Earth map with 7 civilizations being the Romans and immediately moving my Settler(s) to destroy the defenseless French/Germans and/or the Greeks. Then save the game and edit it so i would be playing as one of the newly re-spawned Blue/Pink civilizations hoping they had spawned in Australia.
This simple little thing seriously took me hundreds of tries to get done and i probably spent a total of 15+ hours within a few days doing nothing but saving and editing before eventually succeeding to get the English spawn there.

The game itself was obviously awesome and i played it through many many times so i guess it was all worth the 15+ hours it took. I also did get some awesome saves stored for later because of all my failed attempts like starts from N/E Siberia and South America.

 

[spod]

i'm thinking of stopping playing it and throwing the disk away

Don't do it!!!

 

[Bussunda]

uau! tb sei o tao quanto é viciante esse civ 1
desde 91 jogando esse jogo
muda se os pcs
mas nao o jogo


jogabilidade is very good

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Google Translate - Portuguese to English
wow! tb tao know how addictive this is a civ
playing this game since 91
changes if the pcs
but not the game


gameplay is very good