Do you remember your first game on Civ IV?

[lindsay40k]

I don’t think I’ll ever forget mine.

So my best friend and I got into a free strategy game, Battle for Wesnoth, and played it to death for a year or two. We tried some mods that introduced basic resource and tech management, and I mentioned Civilization games. She likes archaeology, and we went and got the complete edition. I’d played Civ II and Revolution a lot, so I guided her to start a two player game with me and learn the controls together.
“I want to be Japan! I want to build an army of Samurai! Let’s see... toh-coo-gore-ah? Never heard of him.”
“Is there not another leader? I can pick Stalin or Peter or Catherine...”
“No. Hmm. Oh, well, I’ll give him a go. Hmm, he seems like a strong fighter...”
“Yeah, I think I’m meant to build wonders and industry. OH MY GOD THAT’S LEONARD NIMOY THIS IS AWESOME”
“Ooer. What do I do?”
“Okay, well I’ve got a settler and a scout, and... yeah, some resources around me. If you hover over resources, it tells you what to research to use them. And if you select your settler, you can found a city, and - yeah, I think a worker is going to be the thing to start with”
“Right.
...
...
...this is a bit slow, I’m just moving this guy around waiting for things to - hey, I can see borders”
“Yeah, that’s my city, I think we can do dipl-”
“TOKUGAWA DOES NOT TRADE *bababa bababaaaaa*”
“WHAT-we’re meant to be working out how to play, not-I haven’t even got a unit defending my ci- *Moscow has been razed* *You have been defeated*”
“HAHAHAHAAAAA TOKUUUUUU”

To this day, it remains her proudest victory. And it’s been pretty much every game since XD

 

[ArchGhost]

I had only played Civ Rev before, so came in with bad habits of expand expand expand and working as much water as possible

Picked Washington because 'Murica and I don't know any better. America is NOT broken in Civ 4 like in Rev!

Huge map Fractal Map

default Civ number for Huge (12?) on Normal

Fenced in by Mehmed II at the end of peninsula early on. He's a good buddy and I recall thinking he was really peaceful (not the case at all lol)

Slavery? Remove my population and happy penalty? Ew no.

I get like 7 cities, try to build everything, grow huge, etc. but no more room to go anywhere.

Shaka running rampant through the continent interior, destroying fools left and right including fellow angry-man Genghis Khan.

Bro Mehmed sheltering me from the horrors of the world.

Trying to grow giant and go to space. 'Murica!

Izzy, who I don't even know the location of, invades me with a naval drop of a HUGE force and I have pittance army (was just slowbuilding Infantry when i ran out of buildings).

Welp, that was fun, I guess

Quit game and don't play it again for like 2 years.

Come back and actually learn after finding CFC (mentioned in YT video of AZ or TMIT I think)

 

[Live trash can]

I DON'T remember my first game of Civ 4. But I do remember an early game where I painted myself into a corner.

I had difficulty with the distances over the ocean.

I preferred Civ 3 over 4 at the time. And liked neither the gameplay nor graphics . Returned to 3 quite fast!

 

[rah]

Playing console version of civ 1. Place city. within a few turns a roman chariot shows up. game over. hooked for life.

 

[Quintillus]

Surprisingly, I don't, but I love the stories. Particularly the game-over-due-to-friend-razing-the-city one. For some reason my friends will play competitively in board games, but always want to play cooperatively in Civ and other electronic strategy games.

What I do remember is having graphical artifacts due to outdated video drivers the first time I played, and terrain not appearing below units. That was sort of fun and trippy. The actual first game once I updated the video drivers, though... I don't remember how that went.

At least I remember my first game of Civ, in Civ3. I made it to the middle of the Middle Ages by the 1960s! Settled the eastern half of Australia while playing America and was just starting to settle the western half, and was increasingly being invaded by overseas Chieftain AIs who had found me and realized I was easy pickings. Repulsed some Aztecs, but realized the odds were hopeless, and admitted defeat. But I learned from my mistakes when looking at the advanced Chieftain AI empires, played again and did far better, and walked away from my second game with a proud Chieftain victory!

 

[citizenofdoom]

roosevelt - american - noble - modern era - spend 40 turns to build a navy seal and proclaim having the strongest army in the world, declear war on Catherine and that's the story how America lost the cold war

 

[Major Tom]

I was very suspicious about approaching foreign missionaries. Impression was that religion gave away my city info to AI. So I DoW and killed them. Game ended in a mess.

 

[unas876]

I can't recall the exact first game. All I can say that when I started out I actually considered Tokugawa to be the best leader and the strongest

Bonus on Barracks, which gave those nice promotions, stronger units in general, and in case you did get attacked: not to worry, PRO Archers and GP units were my backup plan in order to not have to worry about anything

Also I somehow thought the South American leaders had a cool vibe to them: played HC a lot but on Settler the Quechua bonus doesnt really come in handy

Pacal? Sure, but I thought chopping forests was actually a bad thing because you lost one hammer on that tile forever, so the bonus on worker building didn't really do as much as you'd think

 

[Lexicus]

I have no memory of my first Civ 4 game. Oddly, I do remember my first Civ 3 game very clearly despite it having taken place a lot longer ago. I had an isolated island start and I didn't know how to change production so I only built warriors until the AI started settling on my island with medieval units, at which point I realized I must've done something wrong. My first "real" civ 3 game (second game, where 'real' is defined as 'built something other than warriors') I played as the USA and I remember the thrill of getting tanks and stuff and finally beating that perfidious Joan d'Arc, with whom I'd had a rivalry that lasted virtually all game! I remember building a ring of forts around my capital just because I thought it looked cool.

 

[lymond]

I can't remember my first game, other than the tutorial thing. However, I'm pretty sure I popped a Great Engineer and thought " Oh, cool I can rush my barracks".

 

[lindsay40k]

I can't remember my first game, other than the tutorial thing. However, I'm pretty sure I popped a Great Engineer and thought " Oh, cool I can rush my barracks".

Spirit of Attacko, right there

 

[tranx]

My first game of civ4 was with BTS. I played on the earth map with true start locations and random leaders. I got Qin ShiHuang of China.

Coming from Civ3, I started to REX and crippled my economy. As a result, I completely forewent the cultural branch of the tech tree. I got culturally pushed by Asoka and lost a couple cities to him that way. In the meantime I had developed very close relations with Isabella, selling her silk (and phantasizing about her wearing a silk sleepgown, sleeping in silk bedsheets), and very stormy ones with Catherine, who eventually declared war on me. I threatened her of apocalyptic retaliation if she ever just put a foot in my territory but that didn't deter her and she conquered a border city with a gigantic stack. I then nuked Moscow and a couple other cities and, knowing that I couldn't stop her armies, I left the game happy to have been able to go that far and launch a nuke on my first game.

Civ4ever

 

[2popbulb]

I remember that I played on Chieftain and got bored because it was too easy. I built some cities,units,researched techs but it was a bit boring. And I quit game and decided that I should play on Noble because it is fair level(or so they say...). I lost countless games on Noble until I learned how to play this game.

 

[Colon]

Can't really remember my first Civ4 game. I would try to irrigate everything in Civ1 because I wasn't aware of city radius.

 

[ROBERT502]

my first game i was the Japanese on 18civ earth map on Settler. i spent the whole game colonizing every last little pacific island and warring with barbarians on Australia before earning a time victory, it was a good learner of a basic feel for the game for me.

 

[Marla_Singer]

I preferred Civ 3 over 4 at the time. And liked neither the gameplay nor graphics . Returned to 3 quite fast!

I experienced something similar! Especially that my computer at the time could hardly handle the game so I needed to put graphics at minimum.

I remember also that I didn't figure out at all the new combat rules, so I've built tons of a unit which turned out very poor because I used it totally wrongly. It turned me off and I didn't finish the game. Later, when I've bought a new computer, I got BTS and gave a new shot at it. And then I loved it. I played in marathon speed and I've found it super immersive, having really the time to dig into each eras.

The funny thing is that I had about the same experience with Civ5. However, I've been even more turned off by the 1UPT. I've found it very linear as well even though I admit maybe I haven't dug into it enough, but I've never felt the urge to try it again and have continued playing Civ4 BTS instead.

 

[Kaitzilla]

The first year or so of playing Civ 4 I never used Slavery because I thought it was evil and immoral and my big fat cities produced stuff just fine.

 

[civfanchambers]

My first game of civ4 was with the vanilla version. I remember only 2 things about that particular game. I did eventually win thru a space victory. The second thing I remember was I was playing as Isabella of Spain and I was Dow by Monty. At the time I never noticed civ games giving personalities to Ai leaders so I had no clue that Monty was a nut job. I was located near the southwest area of the landmass with Monty south of me. Beneath my starting area was a large lake with single tile land stretching south leading to a snaky peninsula. Monty had little room to expand so he had to come thru me. There I was playing on chieftain lvl to get the hang of civ4 expecting an easy peaceful game when I heard the war horn. Monty easily took my city near the northwest of the lake, and by the time I was about to retake the city he captured the city I had at the northeast area of the lake. I was PISSED off. I remember yelling at the monitor "how dare he". I put my entire nation not only into war mode but was determined to eradicate Monty and his entire nation. I took a bit of time, but I pulled through and not only won the war but the game. Oddly Monty is the only other civ/leader I remember out of that game. I do have another memorable game involving my first fractal map, but that's a story for another time.

 

[Nightinggale]

I don't, but I remember the first time I won Civ 1 on the hardest difficulty level. I played on Earth and started with the wheel. I made chariots and conquered everybody before they really got started. I figured I just wanted to get some starting room, but by chance America was empty and before long I had won. Not only did I win, I won a one city challenge before it became a thing.

 

[Davor]

I don't really remember my first game except frustration and being pissed off. All I remember is the minimum specs were a LIE and I couldn't play the game till it was patched a few months later. It was still crap and HATED it. I did give 2K/Firaxis a chance and Civ IV did become one of the best games ever.