So, what lead you to the Civ series?

[ShiVvV]

Recently I've been investigating re-purchasing some old 'die-cut cardboard counter board games' that I used to play eons ago. This lead me to toying with idea of starting this thread (which might be better placed in other than Civ4 forum but this is where I spend my time here). I'm interested in hearing how other folks got into Civ-especially those with a 'hex and counter' board game path.

So, for me, the games I loved (in somewhat chronological order) which led me to Civ were:

1) Diplomacy--used to play this game with a group of high school friends. Where I learned to backstab effectively I believe .
2) The Russian Campaign--fantastic WW2 east front game. A friend introduced me to it and beat me at it relentlessly. I finally got good enough at tallying attacker vs defender unit counter strengths and negotiating combat results table to play a decent game. This game was really the one that whet my war gaming appetite as I look back.
3) Rise and Decline of the Third Reich--WW2 of course, larger in scope than Russian Campaign, so more of a strategic than tactical level game. Had to manage an economy along with an overall military campaign...should sound familiar to us Civvers.
4. Advanced Squad Leader--the game that almost made me want to stop playing war games . Huge 200+ page rulebook and excruciating level of detail, but man we had some fun with those.
5. American Civil War--a game I could just play over and over and is actually the title I'm looking to repurchase. This game was probably my favorite because it wasn't too complicated, was very replayable and deals with period of interest of mine.

So...chime in with your memories/nostalgia if so inclined.

 

[Thormodr]

I loved the Civilization board game back in the day.

So when the Civilization computer game came out, I was intrigued to say the least.

 

[georgjorge]

I played the first Civilization game when I was about nine or ten years old. Loved it.

Didn't play any other game of the series.

Some years ago, my flatmate gave me his CD of Civ IV to keep safe because "he wanted to get away from this addictive game". I inserted the CD, and have been playing ever since (with some breaks of several months in between). I have been very stalwart about not giving him back the CD (despite increased begging) , so he bought it again. I'm happy with that solution.

 

[HeliosDisciple]

I was a bigtime Paradox player, but after my desktop got fried, I started looking for something similar my laptop could run without chugging.

 

[ringwraith18]

Started playing civ 2 when i was a kid and just enjoyed it I guess. C'mon, who doesn't get some nostalgia over this -

And who can forget these guys??

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Back when I found the Civ series it wasn't like it was hidden in a very large crowd. In that era I don't think there were any games I didn't play.

 

[Lennier]

Started playing civ 2 when i was a kid and just enjoyed it I guess. C'mon, who doesn't get some nostalgia over this -

Boy you've got a lot of pollution and global warming there.

And who can forget these guys??

And their reactions during anarchy was the best. Boy I miss those guys and gals.

I was introduced to Civ II while stationed in Korea. Got hooked on it.

 

[Ephesian429]

I started back with Civ 1 at my cousin's house in the 90's. I used to go there after work, start playing, and next thing I knew it was 1am.

A few years before that I had played Empire a little bit.

 

[civfanchambers]

I would be playing Master of Orion or X-com on my moms computer, my brother playing Civ2 on his computer. Watching him convinced me to try it. Immediately I was hooked...just one more turn...

 

[traius]

Played moo2 at a friends place, talked to a friend, he recommended SMAC. Loved it, played it to death. It's still my fave, even over civ4, but I truly have played it to death. Made my own AI enemies with exceptional stats (efficiency etc) on highest difficulty. Then as now, I like the game maps huge and the games long, and SMAC AI cannot handle it well. Cannot play it anymore.
Then I tried some civ game on the Playstation and thought.... this sucks. But then I went looking for other games like it and found this.

 

[TheMulattoMaker]

Setting: An apartment in suburban Detroit, mid-1991. A rather dorky-looking 13-year old sits in a recliner and flips through his dad’s PC game magazine*. His eyes fall on a picture† showing a map of a continent not of this Earth. Intrigued, he reads the article accompanying the picture.

Dork: Hey Dad! We should totally get this rad game.‡
Dad: What game?
Dork: This game. (Shows father the article.) It’s called “Civilization”. Looks kinda like SimCity, but with a whole continent. And armies and planes and stuff. And you can, like, build the Pyramids and stuff.
Dad: Hmm… I dunno. We’ve been buying an awful lot of games lately.
Dork: But this one was made by that guy who made Railroad Tycoon. And… Red Storm Rising. And Gunship and Strike Eagle. And, uh, I guess pretty much every game we have except King’s Quest V.
Dad: Okay, fine, maybe we’ll look for it at the computer show tomorrow.

Narrator: Predictably, Dork was unsuccessful in his attempt to locate a brand-new game among the Shareware titles that weekend. He would broach the subject again that Sunday evening, while mounting a desperate defense against the Soviet juggernaut invading Kwangtung.

Dork: Y’know, Dad, that Civilization game has all the same stuff from Axis & Allies, I bet. I know there’s tanks and battleships and probably factories too.
Dad: You’re just trying to distract me. Shoulda moved your AA gun here from Japan.
Dork: I read in that article that they even made a map to look just like Earth- I bet we could set up a game where the Russians actually do invade Eastern China.
Dad: (rolls dice) Eight hits from my tanks and fighters.
Dork: grumbles

Narrator: Dork would try, and try, and try again to reason with his father. For six months Dork petitioned to have this new “Civilization” game added to the pantheon. Not a day went by that the game was not mentioned. During this time, dubbed “The Great Pestering”, Dork’s father’s remaining brown hair turned gray, and it is believed that adoption, military prep school, and third-world sweatshops were all considered as a means of ending the questioning. Until one day…

Dad: (entering apartment) Hey [Dork’s first name], I got ya something.
Dork: You went to the store, right? Did you get taco pizza?
Dad: Well, yeah, but that’s not what I was talking about. Hold on, I gotta do something on the computer real quick.
Dork: (absentmindedly) …kay. (Continues playing Centurion on the Genesis.)

A short while later…

Dad: Okay, c’mere, check this out.
(Dork approaches the computer and happens to notice a semi-buried box that wasn’t there before. On it appears to be a pharaoh buried under a modern city. A faint hope rises in Dork’s consciousness but he dare not speak its name.)
Dad: Got this thing, wanted to see if you might like it.
(On the monitor is a beautiful rendering of outer space, panning towards a planet being formed in 16 glorious colors. State-of-the-art speakers bleep out an unknown tune. Unfamiliar names scroll by, as Dork’s father made sure that Dork missed the first twenty seconds of the intro, so as not to spoil the surprise. Dork gradually realizes the truth&#8230
Dork: OHMYGODHOLYCRAPDADYOUREFREAKINAWESOMEWHOOOOAAAA
Dad: …breathe.

Narrator: After settling down, and after a rather unfulfilling five minutes of confusion, the Dad/Dork team realized that the blinking Cheshire grin was, in fact, a settler. A settler that they could move towards the blackness and uncover new lands. And, after several centuries of random exploring in which they discovered oceans, mountain ranges, and a small tribe that gave them money for some reason, they accidently discovered that they could create a city. The Dorkan civilization was founded.

The next year of Dork’s life was spent in the following cycle: Wake up. “Help” Dad play Civ. Wait impatiently for Dad to go to work. Load saved game from last night. Play Civ until the very last second before sprinting to the bus stop. Slog through school thinking about the next fifty turns. Race home. Play Civ until Dad comes home from work. Grudgingly give up the computer, usually with helpful reminders about who pays the bills. “Help” Dad some more. Try to stay awake longer than Dad in order to get in a few turns before falling asleep. Dream about crushing the Zulus in nuclear fire. Rinse. Repeat.

…and I guess I’ve been a Fanatic since then.

Notes:
*A “magazine”, in this case, is, uh, a collection of gaming website printouts. See “Archaic forms of information”.
†i.e., a screenshot.
‡Sorry, but if you aren’t from the 90’s, you don’t get to know what “rad” means.

In related news, holy crap did this video bring back memories.

And, adding to the discussion- Lennier, that's a pic of The Eternal War. That dude started that game ten (real) years ago, and has been fighting the same war for 1700 (game) years.

Also, the High Council should have been mandatory for every version of Civ after II. That foreign-affairs girl...

 

[dohh]

A New Year´s Eve about 25 years back. There were not too many home computers, but my friends mom worked for the government, so my friend showed me how to boot civ1 for 2 floppy discs. And there I was almost 10 hours later: fireworks splashing behind the offices window and me... me nailed behind PC and wondering how did chariot beat my tank.

 

[MedicalElephant]

Well if I had known about any board games like civ I surely would have loved them.

I started playing Civ1 back on an Amiga and would frequently do that thing where you lean back and have a stretch and while gazing round the room suddenly notice that its getting light outside.

 

[ShiVvV]

@TheMulattoMaker--too damn funny! I can't match your entertaining narrative expertise, but I totally forgot about Axis & Allies in my original post.

 

[Mount Suribachi]

Mulatto totally owns this thread - with one exception. Why weren't you watching a young Sergei Fedorov and Nick Lidstrom in 91-92 instead of pestering your dad about Civ?

Anyway, my story is that I bought my first PC in '98. I had heard of this Civilisation game, saw it one day on sale for £10 and was intrueged enough to buy it. I liked it. Then Alpha Centauri came out.....and that was that. Still one of my all time favourite games. I never got Call To Power, but I always wanted to.

After losing intrest in SMAC, about 5 years ago I bought a budget copy of Civ4 in the supermarket. I played it a little bit, but never got super into it. Then about a year ago I re-installed it and got really into it this time.

Then saw Beyond Earth was coming out, and got super excited. Then bought Beyond Earth, and was super disapointed

 

[Ambidexter]

I've always liked TBS games. I still play MOO2 (DOSBOX is a great piece of software). Someone recommended Civ2 to me so I tried it. I've played every Civ game. Civ5 went in a couple of directions I don't care for so I don't play it. Right now I've got a CivIV C2C game going on.

 

[Quintillus]

*grabs Civ3 Vanilla box from the bookshelf on which it is displayed*

Back in the early summer of 2003, I was with my dad in the local CompUSA, having convinced him that it had been long enough since I'd looked at new games to do so again. At the time, I didn't have an income of my own, and thus wasn't able to buy just any game. Looking around, Age of Mythology caught my eye, and looked pretty awesome. Mythological Greek, Norse, and Egyptian creatures... what's not to love? But my dad wasn't sure my mom would approve of a Teen rated game, and besides, its minimum specs were somewhat higher than what our computer had. So, looking around some more, I find this game called Civilization III. Game of the Year, it says on the box. "Build a Civilization from humble beginnings to create a base of power." "Rule with greatness and lead your Civilization to the ultimate destiny." A game that spans the whole scope of history? That sounds pretty promising, too. And it's rated E, and the minimum specs are within bounds. It's approved!

So, I take it home, and the next day or so it's set up and ready to go. But... it doesn't work. Theoretically it should, so we take it back and get another copy in case the disc was bad. It still doesn't work. It still doesn't work, and Dad concludes it's probably related to the age of the computer, then 4 years old. So, while Dad scopes out a new computer, the younger Quintillus reads nearly the entire 300+ page Civilization III manual, saving only some of the unit stats so there's still at least some surprise. After an eternity a couple weeks, a new, faster, and more powerful computer is acquired. Civilization III is installed posthaste relatively soon, and Quintillus plays a game all the way up to 1969 AD, on a Vanilla Huge map, in less than 24 hours. A large chunk of the remainder of the summer is spent playing Civilization, as well as much of the next year, and it's only acquiring Age of Empires II that temporarily brings that to a halt.

The combination of Civilization III and a world-class history teacher the next school year resulted in a new interest in history, and Civilization III would also eventually lead to an interest in writing. Neither would lead to a career, but one would lead to a college minor, and both would be enjoyable.

Prior to Civilization III, Railroad Tycoon II had been one of my favorite games. I didn't know it had a common first-version designer with Civilization, but the strategic allure was even greater with Civilization - which was saying something, as I'd already played gobs of RT2. Years later, I'd find that over 5% of the hard drive of our 1999 computer consisted of RT2 save files. Civ3 save files took up a similar proportion of the space on the 2003 computer with a much larger hard drive.

@Lennier - I thought that was an Eternal War screenshot, and sure enough, the URL confirmed it. It's pretty awesome to have a game ongoing for 10 years. One of my few Civ regrets was that somewhere along the line, likely one of the times I had to reinstall Windows Vista, most of my old Civ files were lost. Otherwise, those 10-year-old games would provide great nostalgia.

@Ephesian429 - Only 1 AM? That's early for a Civ game!

@TheMulattoMaker - A fantastic story. Six months to wait to get Civ... that must have really been an eternity!

Eventually Paradox stole my heart, but I still get buried in Civ occasionally, most often Civ4 nowadays. And board games are doing well in that competition lately, too - I'd like to try the Civilization board game some day. Diplomacy, of course, is a favorite - any game that can result in nearly losing friends is a good game. But I actually got into Civilization before I got into strategic board games.

 

[Seraiel]

I started out with CIV 1, which was so long ago, that I don't even remember if it had different difficulties. Liked it very much, but never got deep into it, because MOO was just so intruiging with its Space-setting. Then CIV 2 came out, I actually think I only played a single round, but I think I liked the game too.

Then came a loooooooong break, several years of other games, mostly 10y in which I played nothing but MMOs like Dark Age of Camelot, Warhammer, AION, Rift, but at one evening, I sat at the Playstation of a friend, and he played a Space-shooter on the easiest difficulty, doing quite good but dying again and again.
He wanted me to try out the game to see how I play, knowing that I had been playing really "a lot" during my past. I took over the controller, made it flawlessly through the complete game, so without dying once. My friend said:

"That makes no sense, you gotta play on a harder difficulty" , and set the game to Ultra difficulty.

Well, through MMOs like Dark Age of Camelot, I had learned how to "focus" on things, so in the Space-Shooter, I focussed only getting a big gun, evading all Bullets, and I could have cared less about actually killing the enemies, but as the game scrolled continously forward, I again came to the endboss, evaded everything, hardest difficulty beaten flawless in first try.

He laughed out loud and said "Philip, is there any game you know which has a really high difficulty?" , and I remembered CIV4 to have been really hard. I told him "Yes, CIV4, I've only beaten it on Emperor with a 6 Gems start and it has two difficulties that are still above that!"
"Philip I tell you: You gotta play the most difficult game that you know, if it's Civilization IV, take that, and play it on the highest possible difficulty, ok?"

"Ok" I said.

Since then, I play CIV4 on Deity, and I wouldn't myself have believed, how much of a struggle it still can be today. I've become quite good at it up 'til now already though

 

[Quintillus]

Another great story, Seraiel. This is all making me want to fire up Civ and resume the game I started a month or two ago. But that would be a bad idea at this time of night...

 

[Thormodr]

Thanks for the great stories people.