How did you get to Civ-games ( especially Civ 4 )

[citizenofdoom]

I just wonder how can we know the existence of such a great game - Civ 4. ( It's just sharing the real life story )
For me, it's a completely random.
I'm now at the grade of 11 ( I was born in 2002 )
When I was at the grade of 8 ( summer, going to be grade of 9 ) I looked into World's civilization on Google and it let me to Civ 2 game.
I downloaded Civ 2 game and played it but just feel like "raging" (at that time I haven't know CFC yet)
The thing is
- At some random time of my game, all the city was Civil Disoder ( I didn't know what angry citizen is )
I was trying to cut Taxes ( taxes to 10% ) but still angry. But there's something to keep me up with Civ 2 - That's the WW2 scenario.
I played as the Nazi at the lowest difficulty and won although I don't know how to move diagonally ( after that i know what can i do with the numpad :'( )
After futher discovery, i did know civ 2 game mechanics and moves on.
It's expansion.
Then I decided to buy Civ 4 ( which is relative cheap at that time too )
It's Vanila version.
First played on Noble && Modern era.
Just feeling great on building a MARINE UNIT IN 32 TURNS. LOL
* Cause i don't know combat mechanics in Civ 4. I only build artillery to attack (((((((
-----
Part 2 : The fancyness of Democracy Civics ( IT LASTED FOR 1 YEAR )
I was thinking that i would create the greatest civilization with peace and freedom
The Road to it is
Pick India ( I remember gandhi was sthing of industrious ) --> Mids ( Not for Representation :'( ) --> Cottages Spamming --> Peace ---> Try to GRAB Democracy tech ---> Statue of Liberty ---> Modern ammor ---> VS mechanized infantry ( I did know battleship, destroyer bombardment but not artillery cause i was thinking who would stupid to build the 18 strengths unit ( and aircraft too )) and don't know why my 40 strength unit lose to a 32 strength. ( 40 + 2 exp from the pentagon, no barracks :'( )
I can't play at the grade of 9 since there's hard study ahead
-----
Part 3 : Knowing CFC and read the War Acedemy
Just do it last year, it dramatically improve me, i did get used to winning on Monarch ( and a few emperor level with Inca Capac && Victoria && Rome ) and began to teach my older brother to play civ lol.
Still didn't know what build wealth.
Now I knew the build wealth and began to REX and won quite a lot Emperor games in 1800s ICBM && Tanks.
So what's your story, please tell me yours.

 

[rah]

How did you get to Civ-games ( especially Civ 4 )

As easy as I, II and III

 

[Windsor]

I first got introduced to the franchise when I got the original Colonization, which I absolutely loved. I then got introduced to Civ1 by a friend. I had already heard of the title, but seeing it in person was a disappointment. Not only where the graphics horrible dated by 1994 standards, I didn't share my friends enthusiasm over getting modern tanks 1000AD either. As a result I kind of just wrote the entire series off.

Then in 2008 I was looking for a good historical turn based strategy game. And since there really wasn't much to choose from I decided to give Civ4 a chance and I instantly loved it.

 

[Uberfrog]

I was in high school, and two of my friends had been playing it. It sounded like fun so I picked it up, played it with them, and got hooked.

 

[6K Man]

Word of mouth.

I was in bar ads when a friend of mine told me about Civ1 during an interminable lecture. I heard a lot about exploring worlds, building cities, fighting wars, launching nukes on my enemies. I was intrigued. The next day, he lent me the disks (3.5”, of course). I got home before dinner, and played to 3AM the next day.

4 or 5 years later, another friend I used to play D&D with told me about Civ2. He told me about offshore platforms, more techs, better graphics, and that if I loved Civ1 I’d love Civ2. I bought it a week later.

A couple of years after that, I found Apolyton, and later Civfanatics. I played countless succession games in Civ2 and became a forum regular. I learned from the vets there to avoid Civ3 after it came out, and I did. Civ4 got much better reviews from the forum regulars, and I bought it soon after it came out, and later BtS. I’ve been playing it pretty regularly since 2007 or so.

The same forum vets warned me away from Civ5 and Civ6

 

[citizenofdoom]

Word of mouth.

I was in bar ads when a friend of mine told me about Civ1 during an interminable lecture. I heard a lot about exploring worlds, building cities, fighting wars, launching nukes on my enemies. I was intrigued. The next day, he lent me the disks (3.5”, of course). I got home before dinner, and played to 3AM the next day.

4 or 5 years later, another friend I used to play D&D with told me about Civ2. He told me about offshore platforms, more techs, better graphics, and that if I loved Civ1 I’d love Civ2. I bought it a week later.

A couple of years after that, I found Apolyton, and later Civfanatics. I played countless succession games in Civ2 and became a forum regular. I learned from the vets there to avoid Civ3 after it came out, and I did. Civ4 got much better reviews from the forum regulars, and I bought it soon after it came out, and later BtS. I’ve been playing it pretty regularly since 2007 or so.

The same forum vets warned me away from Civ5 and Civ6

Ow man you are lucky because my internet ads mostly ( skin cream, ... things like that ) and Communism propaganda

 

[AmazonQueen]

I was a boardgamer, wargamer and roleplayer before I ever played computer games.
As I and my friends got older, got jobs, had families etc it became harder to get together for those all-night/all-weekend sessions or to even be sure that the same people would turn up from week to week.
I used a redundency payment to buy myself a decent computer (it was future-proofed, I went the extra mile and got one with an i486 cpu ). First games I bought were Neverwinter Nights and a cheapo compilation of Sid Meier games. It had Civ 1, Colonisation, Pirates and Railroad Tycoon on it. Many happy hours usefully spent.
Played all the Civ games, SMAC, Beyond Earth since and also a lot of Paradox and Bethesda games. Currently playing Civ VI which has its good and bad points.

 

[ArchGhost]

Had always been aware of Civilization, at least the series in general since before the days of looking up stuff on youtube (damn i feel old now). I live out in the sticks but of the kids I went to school with, a handful of them were into computer gaming and got me + my cousins into it playing stuff like Diablo, Baldur's Gate, their respective sequels, and especially Starcraft which I was an avid fan of (until Blizzard made Kespa nuke the professional scene in 2011 after Wings of Liberty dropped a year earlier). I grew up as mostly a console gamer and never owned a serious gaming PC but I at least heard of things like Unreal, Quake, Half-Life etc when they were topically relevant through these guys spreading word of mouth.

Anyway, these fellas played all kinds of computer stuff including quirky or out there games like Black and White, the earlier Warcraft and Age of Empire games, etc and they had mentioned Civilization on occasion but I'd never seen it or played it, just vague off-hand references to nuking other countries in the world or something.

2008-09 or so, and I'm embroiled in the Starcraft scene, frequenting TeamLiquid as my home page and some guy posts something in a blog about how he relaxed by playing a lot FreeCiv (I think it's a Civ 2 clone?). Downloaded and got frustrated at the controls, too little transparency in the menus, etc. and never thought about it again.

Fast Forward to 2014, I had just quit my job and had nothing to do while sitting around the house. Xbox Live started running (and still does to this day) their Games with Gold promotion, a program where they give away free digital copies of (usually older) games bi-monthly and one of the early ones was Civilization Revolution. I'd heard the name because one of my Halo buddies used to play it right after it came out in 2008. Its a quaint little game with simple but very solid 4x mechanics and really appealed to my preferred style of macromanagment in RTS games because it allows infinite city sprawl with 0 penalty and doesn't bog down much with overcomplications. I still really love that game, one of my favorites of all time on the xbox 360 -- I have a game running now in the other room!

So anyway I'd been discovering this game and getting better at as the last fragments of what you could call a "community" over on the 2k forums burned away -- I never found CFF when there was any of the renewed life of brand new players like myself who came along because of the Game with Gold giveaway. I never really tried hard to look around the internet for anything about it either, i mean it was already a 6 year old console game which is pretty much buried by those terms.

2012-2014 is also when the streaming culture EXPLODED into what it is today, and several people on twitch would stream civ 5 stuff. I decided to pick it up along with civ 4 since it was mentioned that it was one of the "good" ones. I hated 5 almost immediately due to the aesthetic and my copy didn't work right/was too hard on my laptop, so I booted up a game of 4 instead which went much better. My first game was an 18 civ continents map with a jolly friendly Mehmed as my good buddy cutting me off form the rest of the world, in chaos from Shaka running rampant unchecked, until Izzy came across the ocean for my heathen ass. It was pretty fun, all said, and the difficulty was welcome (Civ Rev is very, very easy on Deity ) Not sure exactly how but ended up searching for Deity playthroughs and got AZ's stuff on youtube, his mentions of the Noble's Club or Immortal University maps he would sometimes get maps from led me here, to CFF.

And it's here (and from AZ and TIMIT's vids) that I learned the necessary things to actually play Civ4 instead of fumble about in the most complex game I've ever played up to now. So thanks to CFF and the helpful folks still hanging around here for a 13 year old game. It's a testament to the quality of a game, that it can be primarily focused on single player and can still have a visible following so much time later; a decade is an eternity in the life of a game these days and CFF is still here, still learning new things about it, still helping new players better their gameplay, and still admiring their gem in light of the newer entries.

 

[plasmacannon]

1993 - Master of Orion 1
1994 - Master of Magic
1996 - Master of Orion 2 and Civilization 2
1999 - Alpha Centauri
2001 - Civilization 3 (disappointing production loss from number of cities)
2003 - Master of Orion 3 (horrible, complaints to numerous to rehash)
2005 - Civilization 4 came out, but I got tired of getting burned. So I read the forums extensively, eventually purchasing the Civ4 Gold version in early 2007 IIRC and BTS when it came out.
2008 - Civilization 4 Colonization remake, and Civilization Revolution on the PS3. Introduced my nephew the series. He still plays Civ4 from time to time.
I don't care for 1UPT, so I never purchased Civ5 or Civ6.
I don't care for the unrealistic restricted movement of star lanes in MOO3, so I never purchased Master of Orion 4 when they foolishly brought them back.
Been mostly on the Civ4 Realism Invictus mod portion of the forum from that point on.
Now, if a developer can make a MOO2.5 and a Civilization 4 (a hex map version is fine too) with an improved AI and Diplomacy screen with multiplayer support, I'll buy those.

 

[Quintillus]

Being in elementary school in the '90s, I was about six years old when my dad bought our first family computer, an AMD 486 with hundreds of megabytes of hard drive space, CD and floppy disk drives, and a dual-boot of Windows 3.1 and OS/2. I still remember the day he was setting everything up; in part because he was also assembling a new desk - it came IKEA-style, though from a local company - and it was the first big piece of furniture we'd acquired since I became old enough to remember things long-term. But one of the main reasons he'd bought the computer was the wealth of educational software available at the time, and it wasn't long before my sister and I were learning mathematics, logic, science, and history from various educational games, and developing storytelling abilities with games such as Logical Journey of the Zoombinis.

A few years and many repairs later, the original computer bit the dust, and we got a Pentium II to replace it. Around the same time, in 1999, my dad got me the three-scenario starter pack of Railroad Tycoon II. This was probably the first real strategy game I played, and I loved it. Over the next couple years I got the regular and then Platinum editions of the game. I played all the scenarios, many of them repeatedly, and learned a lot of geography along the way.

I think it was in 2002 that I first saw Civilization III. I was at CompUSA, and was browsing the selection of games. I wound up getting Age of Empires II, but Civilization III stood out enough to remember it. A year later, I'd pick it up as well. Unfortunately, it wouldn't play on our old computer - years later I'd figure out that the problem was out-of-date video card drivers - but happily enough my dad agreed that technology had progressed enough, and our hard drive was sufficiently low on space, to justify an upgrade, and we got a shiny new Pentium 4 a couple weeks later. Civilization III promptly became my most-played game for the next two years after that point.

By then I was in high school, and hearing more about games by word-of-mouth, as we didn't have high-speed Internet at home. But I was aware that Civ IV and Age of Empires III were coming out in the fall of 2005. And around the time they debuted, another of the local chain stores, Media Play, had announced they were going under, so I was able to pick up both the week after launch for 20% off.

Once again, however, Civ proved a bit demanding for the computer. 512 MB of RAM, it turns out, really isn't sufficient for Huge maps, as I was used to playing in Civ III. I was thus stuck between liking the game, and being frustrated at how glacially slow it could be at times, though I'd play it a good amount over the next half year, and a bump to 1 GB RAM did help. But in the summer of 2006, high-speed Internet arrived, and playing Age of Empires III online took front stage, though I played a few Civ4 games online as well. By the spring of 2007, I'd mostly had my fill of AoE III, and was tired of waiting for the Civ IV AI, so I transitioned back to Civ3, joining CFC at the same time.

Then I was on to college, and there were a lot of people playing Civ4 there. So in mid-2008, I picked up Beyond the Sword, and combined with the more powerful laptop I'd bought for college (and which is still my primary laptop to this day), the experience was much better than in 2005. Civ3 and Civ4 started each getting about half of my Civ playing time, and though the ratio has varied and favored Civ3 again lately, I've continued to play both of them.

Civ V I didn't pick up until 2012, largely based on reviews, and I didn't get the complete edition until 2015. Despite attempts to enjoy it, I could never get into it like III/IV. And I've yet to pick up VI or Beyond Earth, though I did try the latter over a free weekend.

 

[Luthor_Saxburg]

A friend borrowed me Civ I.... I played it all night until I finished... I was hooked.

I had no clue about Civ when I started. I kept being surprised by new techs...
* I started with stones and now I can build iron weapons? What a great game!
* Wow, it gets to Medieval age? Great !
* Factories? OMG!
* Planes.... I can now build planes!
* Spaceship... i can go to space??? At this moment I thought that this game would never end !!!
But it did end... when somebody arrived at Mars!

From then on... I bought all the Civ games... until Civ V arrived. Did not get Civ V or VI (so far, at least).

 

[robbus]

I saw civ 3 advertised and thought it looked pretty cool. I had "invented" a board game in high school that tried to mimic industrial production with weapon production. I remember my history teacher telling me that religion was an important aspect that was not addressed.

I moved on to other things and then civ3 turned up. Exactly what I was looking for. I bought civ4 based on civ3 experience.

I am mostly on 3 though.

My main problem with civ games is that it is almost impossible to defeat a more powerful rival with strategy.

I am thinking historically of the battle of marathon or Agincourt or many usa civ war battles(early).

Superior generalship defeats superior resources.

In civ3-4 you methodically grind your opponent or they grind you.

Civ3 on monarch is my current level

 

[Live trash can]

I played Civ 3 before Civ 4. I think there is no tutorial in 4 but there is in 3. I think 4 is a bit difficult for complete beginners. Therefore I suggest 3 before 4 for beginners. They will then also enjoy some of the improvements in 4 more.

I actually played 2 before 3 also, which meant that 3 seemed amazingly advanced when I started playing it.

 

[civfanchambers]

Civ4 does have a tutorial. It can only be played with the base (vanilla) version.

 

[Live trash can]

Civ4 does have a tutorial. It can only be played with the base (vanilla) version.

Okey. Do you think beginners should go for vanilla, or BTS? Or another installment?

Some might say that it is a waste to buy more than one version, but come on, who hasn't got a few ten'ers to pay for it (I don't actually know how much money they charge for it )

 

[6K Man]

I saw civ 3 advertised and thought it looked pretty cool. I had "invented" a board game in high school that tried to mimic industrial production with weapon production. I remember my history teacher telling me that religion was an important aspect that was not addressed.

I moved on to other things and then civ3 turned up. Exactly what I was looking for. I bought civ4 based on civ3 experience.

I am mostly on 3 though.

My main problem with civ games is that it is almost impossible to defeat a more powerful rival with strategy.

I am thinking historically of the battle of marathon or Agincourt or many usa civ war battles(early).

Superior generalship defeats superior resources.

In civ3-4 you methodically grind your opponent or they grind you.

Civ3 on monarch is my current level

There’s strategy in Civ4, but it’s relatively basic: Forking maneuvers work well, which is part of what makes Horse Archers so appealing. Outflanking the opposition works. Misdirection, or luring the AI into a trap sometimes works. I’m not sure how much of that would be considered tactics and not strategy, though. And much of it counts on the AI doing something stupid.

I have long felt that the Civ4 combat mechanic is stuck in the Classical or Middle ages. Defense is concentrated in cities; there’s no incentive to try to defend anywhere else. Units get bonuses for defending in cities and cities are what generate culture, which aids the defender. And there’s seldom any need to defend resources/territory outside a city. Starving a city will kill off population but has no effect on the defenders. If there were such things as supply lines or fortifications in the field, strategy might play more of a role in the game.

 

[Colon]

Bought a compilation with Civ1, Colonization, Railroad Tycoon and Pirates. I might have mainly bought it for Railroad Tycoon because I was hooked on Transport Tycoon, but Civ1 ended up being the game I played the most.
I remember the cover of the box of Civ1 always caught my eye in shops beforehand, because I also loved SimCity and the cover sort of features a city, but I never took the step to buy it.

 

[ROBERT502]

i came across civ 4 by chance in around 2008-09, i had bought medieval total war 2 a couple of weeks before and was reading some forum about tips for the game when i read somebody comparing the civilization and medieval total war games. So out of curiosity i looked for a civilization game and found civ 4 for sale, bought it and have never looked back.

 

[lymond]

... i had bought medieval total war 2...

MTW2 was the game I played extensively for a couple of years right before finding IV - and, yes, it lead me to it like you (reading the TW Center forums at the time). Loved that game..still do. First TBS was "Silent Storm" (amazing game), but MTW2 was the game that really got me into the genre and 4X.

 

[Nightinggale]

The first I heard of Civilization was from my brother, who heard something about it from somebody at school. Not long after that we were bench playing as well. This means I started out playing on an Amiga 500 from floppy disks. People complaining about long loading times in modern games have no idea what they are talking about. The game came out on 4 DD floppy disks. Disk 1 was just startup. Yes just reaching the main menu meant reading more data than some entire other games. During gameplay disk 2 and 4 were used, though I can't quite remember when each was used, partly because at some point I ended up with two disk drives. Disk 3 was the talking faces for diplomacy and at some point I ended up just clicking when it asked for disk 3 because that would skip the graphics and just display diplomacy text. The disk swap and loading for just the graphics were not worth it and that's even taking into account that the Amiga graphics were actually rather good compared to some of the other ports.

Starting a new game required the map maker to run. It took 7-8 minutes to make a new map. Much later I learned about the Amiga hardware and realized the "map making video" is a stroke of genius. The Denise chip (the video chip) can display the graphics as long as it is told where in the memory it's stored. The Paula chip could batch read from the disk into memory. Also the Paula chip could play audio when it know where in the memory to look for it. The mod audio format supported jump commands, allowing the Paula chip to loop music forever. The Angus chip could make hardware interrupts at specific timed intervals, which is useful for displaying next line of text. This is essentially the entire video and there is one very important piece of hardware, which I haven't mentioned: the CPU. Essentially the video is designed to run on the chipset while the CPU is busy making the map. The CPU is not losing speed due to playing the video. The Amiga is capable of displaying a video, which is much more impressive, but not without resorting to assistance from the CPU.

The ADA version (or advanced chipset) took this one step further and added animation to the images. However a closer inspection reveals that it's actually palette animation. This means it's still images just like the old version, but the graphics chip knows that for every x images it should update which color to draw on the screen for each color value. Use this on multiple colors and you can add waves and similar and it's still not using the CPU.

This is based on personal research as I haven't read anybody writing about this anywhere. It's truly an impressive piece of work, which seems to be completely overlooked. The same goes for the hardware, which is able to run software to do this. Usually at the time (and for quite a while later) the CPU had to request data block by block. The Amiga is standing out by allowing the CPU to make a single request for multiple blocks, up to the entire disk. It's also worth nothing that the hardware was first released in 1985, or 3 years after Commodore shocked the world by releasing the Commodore 64, an 8 bit computer with a shocking 64 kB of memory. The Amiga coming out of nowhere soon after that did look like alien technology at the time.

The intros.

Spoiler :

Original version.

Advanced chipset remake (3 years later)
Note: first 10 seconds is starting the game from HD and as such isn't affected by the load speed issues I mentioned previously.