Civ3 was actually the first Computer game I bought at full price right when it was published... I had been playing Civ1 from 1992-95 using a "backup copy" I got from a friend. (This is so many years ago now, I hope I can confess this here in public without getting myself into jail.
)
Anyway Civ1 was fascinating and I was hooked right away. Two buddies and me spent endless winter evenings gathering in front of the PC and hoping to get the keyboard for a couple of turns... (At that time not everyone could afford a PC...) Already at that time we were dreaming of a version that would allow each one of us to manage one nation. (Kind of like the hotseat feature in Civ3...)
In '93 I finally had enough money to buy my first PC with incredible 4MB RAM and a 66MHz 486 -- the fastest machine in the dormitory! Installed were DOS 6.0 (don't remember, where I got it from... probably another "backup copy" from one of my friends...), a Fortran compiler, the LaTeX typesetting program, Chessbase and of course Civ1. (This probably delayed my diploma by a semester or so...)
In '96 I decided I needed to concentrate on my PhD and erased Civ1 from the harddrive. (That was probably one of the saddest moments in my life
) Then in 2000 I accidentally found a Civ2 CD for sale in a "bargain-bin" in a super-market for 5 DM (approx. 3$ at that time). I bought it right away and was hooked for good this time.
Finally in Feb. 2002 I visited my little brother-in-law and he showed my his computer games, including a brand-new Civ3 that had just appeared on the European market. The first reaction was: shock...! I tried to attack a Russian town with a catapult, but nothing happened?! And then a warrior came out of that town and captured my catapult!!
But after the initial learning phase was over, I began to like it. My brother-in-law and me played the entire weekend (much to the dismay of my wife and my parents-in-law
), and first thing after I was back home was to go to the next computer market and buy it. (For the full price of 49.90 Euro. Besides the Conquest add-on a year later the only computer game I ever bought at full price. But it was worth it.)
As I said, when C3C came out in 2003, I also bought it right-away, and hoped that my dream of playing against real human opponents would finally come true. (I extra bought a second PC and setup a little LAN at home.) What a disappointment, when I noticed that the game crashed, whenever I tried to enter the Multiplayer-Modus! I sent an email to the Fireaxis/Infogrames support hotline, but never got a reply up to this day! Quite a disappointment after having spent almost 100 Euro on Civ3 & C3C, so I promised myself to never buy a game again. (It was years later that I accidentally found the reason for the crash: I had deactivated the sound-card in the Windows Device Manager, as I never used sound anyway. When I activated it again, the MP-Modus was working fine...)
So this is the story of how I got Civ3... For completeness here is also the "end" of the story: in 2005 my brother-in-law lent me his copy of Civ4, and I played it for a couple of weeks. Then I uninstalled it and went back to Civ3... It just didn't feel like Civilization anymore.
And finally in April 2009 I found a special "Civilization Chronicles" box on Ebay, which contains Civ1 - Civ4 (English versions). As I always wanted to make a "sentimental journey" and play a good old Civ1 game again, and as I always have problems playing Mods and Scenarios (including the old GOTM games, which require a special Mod) in my German version of C3C, I decided to buy it.
Lanzelot
and finaly Civ3.
