Nostalgic cultural connotations etc.

Renergy

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Couple of nostalgic points and "memoirs" on a rainy afternoon.

I came to play civ around 1993, while on high school.

#1 - "Dr. Quinn's Railroad" - My grandma used to live with our family at that time. She used to watch "Dr. Quinn, M.W.". The TV set was in the same room as the computer I was playing on. It was rather usual (due to the time it aired here in Czech Rep. and time I got home from school) that I was about to discover Railroad, already "railroading" a continent or JUST discovering it at the same time as grandma turned the TV on and the intro to that soap opera (with a nice steam locomotive) appeared.

#2 - "Horemheb's Chariots" - (Sinuhe) The Egyptian (a book by Mika Waltari) is another cultural connotation. I read the book at that time and there's a well written part about a chariot battle, that came to my mind many times while "pressing the key" to attack, providing "background story" of what is going on behind "this couple of pixels annihilating that couple of pixels". (still I mostly played for Aztecs, not Egyptians)

This is connected with struggling a bit with history on high school, which kind of interfered with playing civ.

#3 - "To learn or to play" - my usual inner monologue (while civving) would be "I should really be learning dates for the history test..." -> "well I AM learning, am I not? The point of learning is to give one a notion what the history was, and look, I now _understand_ how bad the situation can be if you wander too much into enemy's territory and suddenly/unexpectedly loose your units" :) sometimes I thought of "being a pioneer of interactive learning", "screw dates, make civ mandatory, it is THE way to teach/learn history" - thankfully, at the same time I knew I was fooling myself (and I somehow got through high school)

#4 - "civjunkie" or "how pollution bug caused overdose". This happened to me around ~1998. It was (only) around that time that I discovered "fast settlers" and I guess won Emperor for the first time. Then "the usual" came - I wanted to max out the score. So I went for future techs and "here comes the pollution bug". We all know, and I knew by that time how "time can fly" while playing civ. Or, rather, I thought I knew. So around ~7pm pollution bug kicks in. I'm starting to wonder "what the heck is this? there are no smokestacks" "I'll try to clean it up". It is around 8pm, other members of my family beginning to gather to watch TV in the evening. I'm cleaning up with settlers. Ten minutes later - I thought "I should just give the game up, this is obviously a bug" - "I'm just doing stupidly repetitive actions" - "I will watch just a bit of what's on TV" - but, voila, the TV program is just ending!!! It was 10:30 all of a sudden!!! Not ten minutes, it was two and a half hour!

It was like when a drunk is having a "window", something similar, though I was conscious all the time. This was not just the "just one more turn" syndrome. It was the "next level" - I thought I knew what the time is, I thought "I have it under control". I was also quite "sucked out" (physically), which I realized only after "falling out of the trance". Simply, a junkie's overdose. Nothing less. It was actually pretty scary.

and #5 - "that MUCH time overall??" - when civ5 came out on steam, it was the first time I would be able to see how much time I spend with it - and I was pretty shocked to see how much time is that (civ5 is not that bad to my eye, btw). Considering how often I played civ between 1993-1999, the number of hours I've given into it would be.. ouch.. ouch..

"All those moments will be lost in time like tears in rain..."

Sorry for ending a bit bitterly, but civ. really can be a "diagnosis" sometimes rather than anything else.

geez, it is a bleaky afternoon today...
 
To rant a bit more about how addictive civ can be, I will add to #2 that sometimes my inner monologue would be "look you idiot? you are still playing this stupid game, when it is just moving pixels - the real life is more complicated, as you read in the book - go do something better" - "e.g. read some compulsory reading for the school" :)

Actually, on a couple of occasions, I even "convinced myself" and stopped playing (for a while) :)
 
To add some details to #1 - now that I looked up the intro on youtube :mischief:

http://youtu.be/q0f2xW5aFQo?t=8s

One of the reason why this sticked so much to my memory was the timing I guess. I was playing in much the same pattern, beelining for Railroads (I was always more of a builder, partly a source of my early failures on Emperor) and that took +- a constant amount of time. Combined with the (constant) time I got home, there is the reason for coincidence with the intro.

Also, the second shot of the intro (now that I've seen it again) is "plains from above" with - well, not a chariot, but coach is not that far from a chariot (it raises the dust just as chariots did, imho). So you have railroads and ""chariots"" in two nice shots in 10 seconds ;) PLus basically a "review of terrain types" (mountains, river). The intro is just connected to civ for me.

There were other series which my grandma watched ("Dallas" and "Dynasty"), but they did not stick with e.g. "refining" or whatever would be suitable for Dynasty (guess nothing :)) Firstly there is not as nice/sutiable intro/shot as for Dr. Quinn. And the time when I got "refining" varied uncomparably more than "railroads" [a) opponents began arriving, b) varying time it took to railroad the continent I was on]. Dallas and Dynasty also aired a bit later (I think), parents were returning home by then so the "peace for playing civ" was also gone by that time (not that grandma had not had her share of "comments" towards my "constant sitting at the computer" :)

Anyhow, guess this thread is a bit odd, who would have expect Dr. Quinn here :crazyeye: It was my "weekly bread" then, though :lol: and not a bad one...
 
#3 - "To learn or to play" - my usual inner monologue (while civving) would be "I should really be learning dates for the history test..." -> "well I AM learning, am I not? The point of learning is to give one a notion what the history was, and look, I now _understand_ how bad the situation can be if you wander too much into enemy's territory and suddenly/unexpectedly loose your units" :) sometimes I thought of "being a pioneer of interactive learning", "screw dates, make civ mandatory, it is THE way to teach/learn history" - thankfully, at the same time I knew I was fooling myself (and I somehow got through high school)

Well, of course playing Civ is not a substitute for learning History.
However, some historical concepts are (in my opinion) best understood after playing Civ. The importance of technology which is the starting point os Sid Meier's Civilization (I remember reading that it all started with a list of technological advances that were important to the evolution of mankind) and the way isolated societies get normally behind in the tech race are "real world" things that make it into the game.
You also are given the opportunity to rewrite History and the conclusion is definitely that this (the world we live in) could have been some other way.
 
#2 - "Horemheb's Chariots" - (Sinuhe) The Egyptian (a book by Mika Waltari) is another cultural connotation. I read the book at that time and there's a well written part about a chariot battle, that came to my mind many times while "pressing the key" to attack, providing "background story" of what is going on behind "this couple of pixels annihilating that couple of pixels". (still I mostly played for Aztecs, not Egyptians)

Haha! I've got similar experience when i read that book many years ago.

Another one is when i hear Beatles song A Day In Life, the line " the english army had just won the war" it for some reason makes me think playing civ with english... not sure it's good thing...:)
 
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