Tell of your very first Civ game—before you learned how to play

[RedAlert]

My first game? Lol, did I ever suck, I had no idea how to do anything.

Here's what happened:

Started as Romans, built a whole bunch of spearman and made them explore everywhere. I foolishly tried to get them to cross the wter without a boat (duh). I then built settlers, but did not know how to build any more cities (duh again) I also killed off all my spearmen because I didn't know I could fortify and avoid having to painstakingly move every single one of them each and every turn (duh!!!)

Then the English arrived with Cavalry.....

The End


Fortunately, I got the hang of the whole thing and in a month, I was playing a couple games a day.
Ahh, those were the days!

 

[viper275]

My First Civ3 Game

I played as Germany on Chieftain. I never read the manual and didn't know what to do. I played Civ2 once at a friend's house but that was it. I had 3 opponents and a medium-sized world, Pangea. I immediately built cities at random locations. Once I got to about 5 cities, I spent a lot on science and found the Japanese, the Americans, and the French. I declared war on the French and learned my first lesson: if there are more enemy units around a city that you captured than you have to protect it, destroy the city. Anything I gained was recaptured. Eventually, I just destroyed the cities. The French sent all of their units to the capital and from there I couldn't capture it. I brought Japan into the war, and as a result, France brought in America. I figured that Japan would take care of Paris and that I could work on building a big military to destroy America. Japan just sat there and France expanded again. I cut back on science and rushed production (I got Monarchy.) I never payed much attention to wonders. After about 25 turns, Japan and France signed a peace treaty, while I was in the process of destroying France! Now, when I talk about building a military and destroying people, there's something you should know: I did not understand resources. As a result, I would occaisionally get good units (my best friends were Longbowmen) but since most of my cities were in civil disorder, the production wasn't very high (I didn't understand city management either.) When I finally destroyed the French, I remembered America. From there on, I didn't have a very hard time. My main problem was that I used some sneaky tricks that I shouldn't have used (breaking right of passage, etc.) As a result, Japan hated me. Japan was, however, small and weak (yes, like me) so the wars didn't mean much. The second I got nukes, I went crazy. Every city rushed nukes (I understood resources better by now.) This is where I liked Communism so much (in the game, of course.) I'd make a city of 30 something population and then convert that into a nuke. After a few mistakes with ICBMs, I quickly destroyed the Japanese and won the game at about 2040.

 

[The Commander]

My first time i played as Romans, and built cities all over without thinking, like, i had ones not at all connected to my empire, and i didn't even think to build roads to them or anything, just the immediate cluster around my capital.

I built up a bunch of units and declareed war on some neighbors. It went well at first, but eventually they just overwhelemd and crushed me.

After that i decided i had to try a different approach.

 

[zApstAr]

A long time ago... on a computer system far far away...


My first contact with Civilization was with Civ1 on AMIGA (4 discs).

I really didn't know what to do as I didn't had a manual (lost it? ) and of course I had no internet connection to visit civfanatics. So I try and click and try and click and lose and restart and lose and lose and loose... but I was fascinated and keep playing! I remember my first win, oh Lord, how proud I was.

And the best thing: every new version of Civ was better than the old and today I'am playing my favourite version (Conquests). But this time I got the manual, I got internet and of course YOU.

Thanks to everyone working on this community, you do a great job.

greets
zAp

 

[The Commander]

Heh, i remember in my second game i had a better idea of how diplomacy worked, but still didn't grasp teh importance of culture and city improvements. I also didn't build more than like, 5-7 cities.

I managed to conquer considerable territory, but i razed all the cities, i remember my empire, which was like, 10 cities by then, was sitting alsmo alone on my littel continent with tons and tons of open space just sitting there.

Eventually i lost to a space race. Man, it took me sooooo long to finally WIN a game

 

[civ_is_my_life]

I was playing as the French against the Indians. I remember that at the year 1800 I was still in the early middle ages. I was killed by the Indians, who had 11 cities and I had 1, and I had about six warriors and that was my entire military.

 

[gunsnroses]

Originally posted by zApstAr
A long time ago... on a computer system far far away...


My first contact with Civilization was with Civ1 on AMIGA (4 discs).

I really didn't know what to do as I didn't had a manual (lost it? ) and of course I had no internet connection to visit civfanatics. So I try and click and try and click and lose and restart and lose and lose and loose... but I was fascinated and keep playing! I remember my first win, oh Lord, how proud I was.

And the best thing: every new version of Civ was better than the old and today I'am playing my favourite version (Conquests). But this time I got the manual, I got internet and of course YOU.

Thanks to everyone working on this community, you do a great job.

greets
zAp

with me it was a bit the same, only i played civ1 on a pc 486
but yeah, i lost, lost and lost again and was indeed fascinated cause it was fun. I had great wars wich were only fought with catapults and that lasted from 50 bc to 1800 AD and then the germans came in rolling tanks
but i never mastered the game back then (i was 8 or somethin), but when i was 13 i bought the game in combination with civ2 and thanks to the tutorial in civ2 i mastered civ1 a bit
now mastering civ3 (ok, chieftain and warlord i could do myself) thanks to the guy's on the forum!

 

[General Brown]

Germany on chieftain. Did decent, built 4 cities near each other. Then got to iindustrial age when everyone else was in end of modern age. Attacked Japan, and got invaded in return. lol

 

[Heffalump]

I wrote at length about my first Civ 3 game several years ago.

How We Learned To Love the Panzer

 

[Greebley]

Silly me. I already posted.

Interesting thread It is always fun to compare then with now

 

[Offa]

My first game was Civ 1, which I bought cheap in 1995. I didn't have the first clue how to play. I worked out how to make the first town, but beyond that I had no idea. At the time I was completely confused but now realize that my town kept making endless warriors by default which I sent around aimlessly, wondering what I was supposed to do with them. My town got pretty big, but I didn't know how to change the production.

Eventually I was asked a question to test my leadership (in fact to test whether I had the manual I think). I couldn't be bothered to look up the answer in the manual, guessed wrong and all of my troops "returned home". I felt pretty relieved at the time as it seemed better to keep the troops at home, but this wasn't really good.

I gave up soon after this, thinking Civ was the lamest game ever, but tried again after reading the manual a bit and got a lot more out of it, learning to build things other than warriors, although I still got hammered. After that Civ 2 came out and I upgraded straight away; I have persisted and I am a fair bit better now.

Therefore I have never won at Civ 1, which is a pity, but since it was a DOS only game I could never get it work very well. It was pretty charming though and yhis thread makes me tempted to have another go. Will Civ1 play on windows XP?

 

[Baccus]

should do - u could set compatability mode to windows 95