How old were you when you first played Civ?

[Trajan emperor]

I got it from a friend when I was 10. Funnily enough it took me another year or so to actually reach Alpha Centauri as I had a habit of just quitting games halfway through and restarting from scratch again.

 

[Grand Dad]

Good luck !


PEACE!!!

 

[Yashed To]

I was 23 when Civ 1 came out in 1991, and I still enjoy it playing today.

 

[fed1943]

Almost 50.

 

[Grand Dad]

Those were, and still are, my favourite games and many others from MicroProse ! And I am 73 and still at them!

PEACE!!!

 

[MXB]

Well I believe I got Civ from Rentronics sometime in 1991 after I got my very own IBM computer, a Express Micro 386sx with 2 MB running at 20 MHz. Having been born in 1966 that would have made me 25 years old. That's pretty much the age when I first played most of the great games as well as started MUDding.
Still playing at 42... have a Emperor level game going right now (on hold while I go through a Colonization patch) which is very tricky indeed.

 

[Old MacDonald]

I would guess 15. Give or take a year.

Me and a good friend of mine were selling homemade candy at the town square. His family made them using all natural ingredients, and they always needed someone to sell them for them. It was a bad day for selling sweets, apparently (very hot), so we didn't sell much. We did, however, get enough to buy a game.

Originally, we wanted something else. But the local game store (there were only one at the time, and even that was mainly a store selling electronics and photo equipment) didn't have what we wanted, so we were planning on going home and just splitting the money. But then I saw Civilization AGA.

The store was getting rid of all their Amiga games, so this one was at a reduced price. And I had heard about it, so it was somewhat interesting. We wanted a two-player game originally (we used to spend ages playing stuff like The Settlers, with split-screen and two mice connected to the Amiga 1200), but okay - we agreed to try it.

I still remember walking/hitchhiking home to try it for the first time, and then getting completely hooked. What an amazing experience that game was.

 

[Narz]

I was thirteen. Sixteen years ago.

 

[Sciguy001]

I started when i was eleven when I got Civ 3 from my older brother who used to play it.

 

[RedWolf]

In 1993, when I was 13, I bought for my 386 SX/25 with 2MB RAM the same Creative Labs multimedia "super kit" Chieftess mentioned, which included a Sound Blaster 16, a proprietary 2x CDROM drive, and a generous helping of quality, if not cutting edge, titles. Civilization was included on a Microprose CD along with Nighthawk: F-117A Stealth Fighter, Railroad Tycoon, and Silent Service II.

I first played civ from the exact same package... in addition to the microprose titles it also had CDROM games which although visually impressive (for the time) were mostly pretty lousy - Iron Helix and Rebel Assault. I was in grade 9.. which was probably about 1994 or so... I would have been about 14 or 15.

One day I loaded up civ and was presented with that initial start screen - a lone settler on a few squares of green and the rest of the screen black. At this time I had never played a turn based strategy game so I took one look at the graphics and said "This looks SUPER crappy" and turned it off and didn't give it a second thought. Over the coming months I played all the rest of the games in the package until I was bored of them.. one day I was home from school for the day (maybe when I had my appendectomy not sure) and I picked up the civ manual to read (for something to do). I read it front to back and couldn't WAIT to play the game so I fired it back up.. I was hooked - played it for the entire day as the Germans...

The rest as they say is history... bought civ2 the week it hit the stores.. just recently purchased civ3 and I love it also.

 

[Whelkman]

Iron Helix was good for killing a few hours. I remember some of the bugs being entertaining. The install process was hideously long for no good reason. Rebel Assault was flat out disappointing. It looked awesome in the store demo but controlled like ass. The "wire frame" arcade versions from the 70s were infinitely better.

Was Return to Zork packaged in there? That was okay, though burning the bra to get a wire was a little much. Weren't there some games on floppy, too? I thought that was bizarre for a CDROM package.

 

[RedWolf]

Iron Helix was good for killing a few hours. I remember some of the bugs being entertaining. The install process was hideously long for no good reason. Rebel Assault was flat out disappointing. It looked awesome in the store demo but controlled like ass. The "wire frame" arcade versions from the 70s were infinitely better.

Was Return to Zork packaged in there? That was okay, though burning the bra to get a wire was a little much. Weren't there some games on floppy, too? I thought that was bizarre for a CDROM package.

Yes return to zork was the other one! I was trying to remember the name of it. Not sure about the floppies - it was a long time ago now.

Iron Helix, rebel assault and zork were all thrown in there because they were graphical/video showcases - "look how amazing the video on CDROM looks - just like a movie!". Too bad they put no real effort into the rest of the game.

I probably still have most of those CDs sitting around somewhere...

 

[bru]

I was 43 in 1991!

 

[Grand Dad]

Hahaha ! I was 56 in 1991!!


PEACE!!!

 

[bru]

Peace be with you also!!

 

[Magic_gorter]

I think I start playing civ 1 first about 16 years ago. I was 17 years old.....

 

[JonathanStrange]

I was 12-years-old. Civ 1 was my first game. I recall my grandfather said when he worked at NASA some engineers would play a text -game Hammurabi where you allocated grain, workers, resources, etc. and the computer would type out a response like "Sorry, you're people are starving. You didn't save enough grain" and that was it. When he gave me Civ, he said this is what they had in mind but couldn't do back then.

 

[Osvaldo Manso]

I recall my grandfather said when he worked at NASA some engineers would play a text -game Hammurabi where you allocated grain, workers, resources, etc. and the computer would type out a response like "Sorry, you're people are starving. You didn't save enough grain" and that was it. When he gave me Civ, he said this is what they had in mind but couldn't do back then.

This is very interesting. Just imagine how many people from every generation dreamed of having a game that would allow them to "play God" but that was impossible due to lack of knowledge/technology. We are a fortunate generation.

It is by no means innocent that when you research Computers, the picture which is shown depicts a computer with a Civilization screenshot.

 

[trada]

It is by no means innocent that when you research Computers, the picture which is shown depicts a computer with a Civilization screenshot.

I enjoy how just that extra touch puts a lot of perspective into the game. In your cities there are little people playing Civilization 1 right now.

 

[JonathanStrange]

And probably better too!

(And in their Civ 1 game, there's another, and another...)