Nesretnik
Chieftain
I'm new here, and one of the first things that caught my eye was the thread on Dack's TerraForm utility, to qualify for which I needed to make 5 posts. IIRC, somewhere (possibly in a different thread? I'm afraid I can't find the post in question) Dack suggests that one of them could be on the subject of 'Civilization and me', so here it is. (In fact, as you can see, I'm beyond the 5 posts now, but this text was almost finished before that happened, so I might as well post it.)
I'm in my late 50s now, so I was around at the very beginning of home computing. In 1971 I was in the first ever intake of students on a Computer Studies course in a British school. I wrote very primitive games to play on a terminal that had paper-tape input and printout, but no screen. In 1979 I worked as a computer programmer, writing programs in pencil on coding sheets that were then punched up on cards and fed into a mainframe. That was before I'd ever heard of floppy disks. My first home computer was a ZX spectrum with a 16KB operating sytem. (With Civ5 taking up a whopping 5GB of drive space, I wonder what kind of progress that is!)
I bought Civilization (for DOS) as soon as its first cheap edition came out, which I suppose must have been in the mid 1990's. When I first tried it out I was so captivated that I didn't leave the computer (except for hasty trips to the bathroom and kitchen) for 24 hours.
I bought my first laptop in 1996 specifically to play Civ on the train as I commuted to and from a new job in London. The Civ I had then is the same one I have now: version 474.03. I've lost the manual and floppy disks, so I'm really glad the game doesn't need to be installed, but can simply be copied from one computer to another.
I've struggled with successive versions of Windows (which I hate) to play this DOS-based Civ. Under XP it runs at variable speeds: sometimes hectically fast, but mostly painfully slowly. On my new laptop under Windows 7, I haven't got it to work at all. Anyway, that machine's got one of these silly wide screens. When my currently ageing laptop with its 4x3 screen dies, will I never again be able to enjoy my favourite games at the right aspect ratio?
Civ, like most games, has its frustrating features, but it's so good that I keep coming back to it. I've learned to live with techs not being offered (which turns out, as I've just learned from this forum, to be a genuine feature, and not a bug), with no railways in cities, with Knights and Diplomats that can't climb mountains, with micro-managing overflow (population growth and city improvements), etc.
It didn't occur to me that Civ could be modded beyond the content of its text files, but now this forum is opening up an unexpected range of possibilities. I've already got rid of that shocking pink, so my Greeks and English/British now sport that 'Roman' orange. And soon my settlers will be reclaiming tundra and desert...
My style of play is not competitive: I play for fun, not to prove anything to myself or anyone else. Losing isn't fun, so I never play at Emperor level. Occasionally I indulge myself at Prince level, but that's too easy, so I use house rules to limit my options and make it more challenging. I wish there were more levels between Prince and Emperor. Actually, I wish the level was more user-configurable (as in Patrician, another of my fave games): why must fewer happy citizens always be accompanied by more expensive techs, etc.?
And I hate starting on the wrong tile, so I save every new game asap, which is 3980BC. Only then do I found my first city, which produces nothing but 'scouts' to explore the surrounding terrain. When I've seen enough to decide on the optimum placement of cities in that area, I reload that 3980BC save and start for real.
I'm no fan of reality, so I never play Earth. I always use my own names for my tribe and its cities. Amongst other themes, I've used trees, rivers (yes, I'm a nature-lover) and old flames. But usually I name the tribe with a suffix (e.g. the Matics) and the cities (e.g. Dog, The, Charis) to form complete words on the 'Top 5 Cities' screen. Obsessive and trivial, but strangely comforting.
I'm definitely Civilized rather than Militaristic. Improving land, building cities and exploring the world is more fun than fighting battles. So the kind of game I enjoy most sees me alone on a continent, left at peace to develop it before engaging in military campaigns. I rarely finish a game: once domination has been established, the process of world conquest becomes tedious.
Years back, I got hold of Civ3 and was bitterly disappointed. Why all that hard work to make the game worse? I've never played it beyond the first few turns. As for Civ5, I bought it weeks ago and wasn't able to play it for weeks. To me, it looked like an issue with Steam (which I hate), but the Steam support washed its hands of my case. That's actually why I signed up to CFC: in the hope that some kind amateur would do the professionals' job for them. Discovering this Civ1 forum is an unexpected but delightful bonus.
Actually, that problem with Civ5 has indeed been sorted out, with the help of kind people in the Civ5 forum, so I might go quiet for a while now as I familiarize myself with 3D graphics and Cultural Victory and such things...
BTW, I now live in Croatia with my Croatian wife, working as an 'English-language professional' (translator, proofreader, educationalist and voice-over). We wrote the English words for Croatia's entry in this year's Eurovision Song Contest. I could tell you about being held captive by Guatemalan peasants in 1998, but that would take this paragraph way too far off-topic...
I hope this hasn't been a waste of space. I wouldn't mind reading similar 'Civ-related' biogs of other denizens of this forum. Cheers!
I'm in my late 50s now, so I was around at the very beginning of home computing. In 1971 I was in the first ever intake of students on a Computer Studies course in a British school. I wrote very primitive games to play on a terminal that had paper-tape input and printout, but no screen. In 1979 I worked as a computer programmer, writing programs in pencil on coding sheets that were then punched up on cards and fed into a mainframe. That was before I'd ever heard of floppy disks. My first home computer was a ZX spectrum with a 16KB operating sytem. (With Civ5 taking up a whopping 5GB of drive space, I wonder what kind of progress that is!)
I bought Civilization (for DOS) as soon as its first cheap edition came out, which I suppose must have been in the mid 1990's. When I first tried it out I was so captivated that I didn't leave the computer (except for hasty trips to the bathroom and kitchen) for 24 hours.
I bought my first laptop in 1996 specifically to play Civ on the train as I commuted to and from a new job in London. The Civ I had then is the same one I have now: version 474.03. I've lost the manual and floppy disks, so I'm really glad the game doesn't need to be installed, but can simply be copied from one computer to another.
I've struggled with successive versions of Windows (which I hate) to play this DOS-based Civ. Under XP it runs at variable speeds: sometimes hectically fast, but mostly painfully slowly. On my new laptop under Windows 7, I haven't got it to work at all. Anyway, that machine's got one of these silly wide screens. When my currently ageing laptop with its 4x3 screen dies, will I never again be able to enjoy my favourite games at the right aspect ratio?
Civ, like most games, has its frustrating features, but it's so good that I keep coming back to it. I've learned to live with techs not being offered (which turns out, as I've just learned from this forum, to be a genuine feature, and not a bug), with no railways in cities, with Knights and Diplomats that can't climb mountains, with micro-managing overflow (population growth and city improvements), etc.
It didn't occur to me that Civ could be modded beyond the content of its text files, but now this forum is opening up an unexpected range of possibilities. I've already got rid of that shocking pink, so my Greeks and English/British now sport that 'Roman' orange. And soon my settlers will be reclaiming tundra and desert...
My style of play is not competitive: I play for fun, not to prove anything to myself or anyone else. Losing isn't fun, so I never play at Emperor level. Occasionally I indulge myself at Prince level, but that's too easy, so I use house rules to limit my options and make it more challenging. I wish there were more levels between Prince and Emperor. Actually, I wish the level was more user-configurable (as in Patrician, another of my fave games): why must fewer happy citizens always be accompanied by more expensive techs, etc.?
And I hate starting on the wrong tile, so I save every new game asap, which is 3980BC. Only then do I found my first city, which produces nothing but 'scouts' to explore the surrounding terrain. When I've seen enough to decide on the optimum placement of cities in that area, I reload that 3980BC save and start for real.
I'm no fan of reality, so I never play Earth. I always use my own names for my tribe and its cities. Amongst other themes, I've used trees, rivers (yes, I'm a nature-lover) and old flames. But usually I name the tribe with a suffix (e.g. the Matics) and the cities (e.g. Dog, The, Charis) to form complete words on the 'Top 5 Cities' screen. Obsessive and trivial, but strangely comforting.
I'm definitely Civilized rather than Militaristic. Improving land, building cities and exploring the world is more fun than fighting battles. So the kind of game I enjoy most sees me alone on a continent, left at peace to develop it before engaging in military campaigns. I rarely finish a game: once domination has been established, the process of world conquest becomes tedious.
Years back, I got hold of Civ3 and was bitterly disappointed. Why all that hard work to make the game worse? I've never played it beyond the first few turns. As for Civ5, I bought it weeks ago and wasn't able to play it for weeks. To me, it looked like an issue with Steam (which I hate), but the Steam support washed its hands of my case. That's actually why I signed up to CFC: in the hope that some kind amateur would do the professionals' job for them. Discovering this Civ1 forum is an unexpected but delightful bonus.
Actually, that problem with Civ5 has indeed been sorted out, with the help of kind people in the Civ5 forum, so I might go quiet for a while now as I familiarize myself with 3D graphics and Cultural Victory and such things...
BTW, I now live in Croatia with my Croatian wife, working as an 'English-language professional' (translator, proofreader, educationalist and voice-over). We wrote the English words for Croatia's entry in this year's Eurovision Song Contest. I could tell you about being held captive by Guatemalan peasants in 1998, but that would take this paragraph way too far off-topic...
I hope this hasn't been a waste of space. I wouldn't mind reading similar 'Civ-related' biogs of other denizens of this forum. Cheers!
