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

[Khshayarsha]

When I first got Civ, I was so excited. I couldn't wait to play. I had not yet discovered this site, where I have learned so much useful knowledge. I read the manual, but didn't understand half of it. So I just plunged right into playing. That game was by far my worst, most disgraceful disaster story that could have been.

I chose to play Aztec on Chieftain level. I started exploring, and sent a Jaguar Warrior way to the south where he popped a goodie hut and found a Settler who wanted to join my civilization. So I got a city far, far away from my capital. I didn't realize I had to garrison military units to protect it.

Pretty soon, "The Egyptians declared war on us!" Egyptian units just waltzed into my southern city and took it over. I was enraged. I sent my Jaguar Warrior to take it back, but of course it was fortified with Egyptian Spearmen and I just lost my Warrior. So I kept sending more Warriors to take it back. Eventually I understood that single Warriors one at a time could never take back the city, and I had to stack them. But it took them so long to walk down there.

Somehow my techs advanced to where I could build Spearman. I thought, "Now I've got them!" I didn't know what Jaguar Warrior was, exactly, but it sounded formidable. All I did was keep sending Jaguar Warriors and Spearmen down there. Once I built up a big enough stack to take out a Spearman—but there were still more Spearmen holding the city. I didn't know the difference between offensive and defensive units, so I was using Spearmen to attack. After a long time like this, I became frustrated. When the Americans crossed to my shore and put a city right next to my capital, I took out my frustration on them. Pretty soon American units were swarming all over my cities and capturing or razing them. It wasn't long before they took my capital. "You lose! You have suffered a humiliating defeat."

I haven't played Aztec since.

I won my second game, though...

 

[Bamspeedy]

I don't really remember my very first Civ3 game, but I think it was on a huge map, chieftain level. I peacefully expanded and then was trying to sneak a few more settlers past some civ and claim a few more cities in jungle, when the English sneak attack me with a stack of warriors. I can't remember if I quit that game out of frustration, or if I kept playing. I know I didn't lose the game, unless I quit. I know my first win was a culture win (being a 'builder' it isn't hard at all to get 100k on a huge map).

My first deity game, I remember better. I was the Americans on a huge pangea map. I was still a regent level player at that time. I got a couple cities built, then other civs were starting to settle all of *my* spots. I carelessly put some cities near the AI cities trying to grab some luxuries. After I had probably 7 cities, I then lost 2 cities within 3 turns to ZULU culture!! I gave up at that point.

 

[Kan' Sharuminar]

On my first game I took far too many of my Civ2 experiences with me - especially when it came to expansion and combat.

I began by slowly building up my empire, only to discover (to my horror) that the rival civs had built massive sprawling empires by the time I met them, and there was little space left for expansion.

Seeing how dire my empire was, it wasn't long before someone attacked me, and it was the good old Babylonians who did it first. Thinking civ2 'oh ho ho, they'll only send a suicide warrior or two across the border,' I concentrated on bringing my empire up to the world average - a rather fatal mistake. The Babylonians sent a large invasion force and conquered my frontier cities before moving towards the capital.

I think I quit in frustration My second game I think I won via Space Race victory, and future games after that I've managed at least to survive the whole game (except that one with the evil backstabbing English - grr!)

 

[Hooray]

I don't remember it well, since it was only a very short game. But I remember a few things.

I played as the French. I started out wondering why I couldn't irrigate. "Hey, I'm right next to the ocean! I should be able to irrigate!!" I was assuming that it was the same as Civ2. I guessed that maybe I needed to learn a tech before I could irrigate.

Eventually I founded a second town north of Paris where there was a small fresh water lake. I (correctly) guessed that fresh water was needed to irrigate.

A while later, I had an empire of three or four cities, and contact with Russia and Babylon. Russia soon founded a city really close to me, and I was really tempted to take it. So I declared war and invaded it with Horsemen. Surprisingly, I did well and captured the town. I even got a Great Leader Napolean, who ran all the way back to Paris to rush the Pyramids.

I don't remember anything after that except that my game crashed when I entered the Middle Ages. I had forgotten to save, too.

 

[cgannon64]

It was on Chieftain. I was the Greeks. I did less than max Civs, so I had lots of space. I also had lots of great territory. I had filled out my core by the early Middle Ages. I noted the Babylonians to the NE. War wasn't necessary, but I wanted to fight my first war in the game. I had heard on this forum about the idea of a mass upgrade, so I built lots of horsemen. I put them on the border town, ready to upgrade when Knights came. I got Knights. I clicked on all of them, but they wouldn't upgrade! I had Iron, I had Horses, I didn't get it! So I went along with the invasion anyway.

It failed spectacularly. I took one city and my entire force was slaughtered. I negotiated peace, saved, and went back to the forums depressed. Apparently I forgot a BARRACKS!

I stayed peaceful for the rest of the game, until in the Modern Age I tried one more invasion. It was a naval invasion of Egypt, who was on the other side of my continent. It also failed miserably - I had forgotten defensive units!

I also fought a series of small wars for tiny islands far away. They were totally worthless, but fun to fight.

I went on to win by Culture in the year 2010 or so.

 

[PreTzeL_22]

Hey, great idea for a thread. My first game was on Chieftain with the English, and my first grandly prepared invasion struck the neighbouring Chinese with 4 Knights! And each Knight formed an individual 'Army Group' with its own axis of advance! Amazingly, progress was very good. Two Knights arrived mid-way through the campaign as reinforcements, and pretty soon the Chinese were all gone.

After my first taste of genocide, (much to my liking) I repeated this simple process on each of my neighbours with steadily improving offensive units, until my ten modern armours destroyed the last Egyptian city, garrisoned by Musketmen. A good game? You betcha!

 

[Leha]

My first game was Rome on a huge map . I played Alpha Centauri
before and therefore decided that this game will be peace of cake.
I played on the chieftain level . Peacefully plopping my cities here
and there I consulted from time to time my diplomatic advisor
where happy face of Ceasar was shining and it was warming me inside ( cause I was sure that if he is smiling everything is gonna
be OK ) . Suddenly there came blue horsemen of Americans and
my workers started to disappear , BTW face of Lincoln was not
that happy . Very fast I've understood that game is lost .

 

[JollyRoger]

I had a little Civ2 experience under my belt and thought I should be able to easily survive on Chieftain. I randomly drew the Americans. My scout quickly discovered the Aztecs. I rashly declared war and before I knew it, I discovered the game ending power of the Jaguar Warrior.

 

[Sullla]

This is taken directly from my website, where I typed it up a long time ago.

First Game: We All Have to Start Somewhere

I first bought Civ3 shortly after Christmas of 2001 and started up my first game with virtually all the default settings: standard map size, configuration, climate, etc. The civ was the Romans, since they are my favorite historical civ, and the difficulty was Chieftan. Since I had never played the game before, I thought I'd run it on the easiest difficulty so I could teach myself how to play without getting creamed. I suppose I should also mention this was the original, unpatched version of Civ3, which is not much like the current version at ALL.

I can't say too much about this game because I unfortunately no longer have a savegame from it. I accidently saved over it when playing a later game, so I can't provide any maps, or pictures, or look at my early follies in detail. But I can narrate what went on in the game. I started in the middle of a bunch of grassland tiles, with a few hills nearby. It was a decent starting location, but not a great one. Like most new players, my biggest mistake was not building enough cities; I'm sure if I could watch a replay of that game now my expansion would look painfully slow. The Aztecs ended up starting about 3 city-spaces to my south, and I fought an early war against them with archers. Given the crippling disadvantages that the AI works under on Chieftan difficulty, it's not surprising that I was able to win, though my horribly bad strategy should have cost me here. But you can get away with just about anything on Cheiftan, so I was able to get a couple of Aztec cities, which was good because I had only built 2 of my own in the first 100 turns!

As it turned out, the French were my neighbors to the east. The Aztecs were dead by 1000BC, and there was a large jungle south of them. Past that were the Egyptians, Iroquois, Americans, and the Babylonians. The English started out on an island in the middle of nowhere and played no role in the game at all; the map was virtually a pangea though I had selected continents. I out-researched the AI in terms of tech (of course) and eventually attacked France with knights and legions. I should mention as well that I never conducted any diplomacy in this game at all. I just saw the AI civs as opponents to run over. I guess I was still stuck in my Civ1 mentality, where that was more or less true. I would improve in later games though, as you can see on my site.

My war against France lasted a very long time. I didn't commit enough forces to the task, thinking I could get by with only a few knights, and I consequently failed to keep producing more to replace those that died. I think part of this was due to my previous experience with Civ1, where I would reload when combat results didn't go my way. (Hey, I was only 11 years old at the time But regardless, I didn't prepare fully enough for war, and as a result the fighting dragged out for a VERY long time. Inevitably though (on Cheiftan) I gained more and more of an advantage over France and ultimately conquered them.

By this time I was by far the most powerful nation in the world. I had a good chunk of territory, about 1/3 of the total land area, and (completely by accident) a good Forbidden Palace placement in former Azteca. I didn't understand what the FP did, and had built it there randomly. Nice! I also automated almost all the workers in this game, though I started to unautomate them later as they prioritized cutting down jungle over building rails in my core cities, and I could see even then that that was just silly.

I went into a democracy at some point and tried to research up to tanks. But this was the original version of Civ3, and tech moved really slowly, so I decided to fight wars before tanks arrived (since they were taking so long). I was of course an age ahead of the other civs in tech (it was Chieftan), so it was infantry and cavs against pikes and muskets. I can't believe I initially thought that infantry were better than cavalry on offense since both had 6 attack and infantry had much higher defense! But even in the course of this game I discovered that 3-move units are much stronger than their numbers would otherwise indicate.

Despite doing a ton of ridiculously stupid things in this game, I still won a domination victory in 1952AD. I had killed Azteca, France, Egypt, America, and Babylon at that point and was surprised to see the game was over. I was bored with the game though, so I wasn't disappointed or anything like that. I still had not reached tanks yet on the tech tree. On the whole, this game was a great experience for me. It taught me many of the basics of the game in a pressure-less environment. But I knew that it would be a waste to stay at Chieftan level any longer than for one introductory game, so my next one was to be played on Warlord, where I hoped to get more of a challenge.

Domination Victory
1952AD
811 points

EDIT: Oh, and unlike Bamspeedy I actually won my first Deity game. You can read about that here if desired.

 

[Smellincoffee]

My first game:

I played as the Aztecs, on Chieftan, standard map with all the default options. I had NO idea how to play, so I just put all my workers on automatic. I started making Jaguar Warriors and exploring, planting cities in what I thought looked like good areas. I met the Iroquios, who only had one city to my three, and attempted to rid the map of their kind with Jaguar warriors. Alas, I had no idea what ADM was, and so lost. I did get a golden age from one victory. After that, I figured I'd leave the Iroquios alone. But then they planted a city in the area I consiquered mine, so I took it over. I then took the rest of the Iroquios empire out. I had no idea what the FP was, and one of my cities built it without me knowing.

After this, the Americans, the other civ on my continent, planted Chicago on "my" land. I took it over and beat back Abe's pathetic assaults. I made nice with the fellow, and once I got knights, I took three cities. I managed to take out the rest of the American nation, albiet at a big price. I had discoverd Persia and Babylonia. Discovering gunpowder, I was saddened that I only had once source- so I invaded Persia and took HER over.I got a great leader, but had no idea how to make an army, so I stuck him in a city. At the same time I was razing the colonies the other powers were planting.

TIme dragged on. I conquered the Persian empire and secured my islands, and made ready an invasion of Babylon. It didn't work well. I made nice with Hammi. Anyhoo, the Germans were annoyed at my razing their colonies, and razed one of mine and took over another. I retook the captured citiy and launched an invasion of Germany..

...which was obliterated. Didn't know longbowmen could take out my cavalry. I made peace, then got into MPPs wth England and France. Germany took over a French city (oy), and I launched a very big invasion- eight Galleons of cavalry! It was a tough fight, as we got into the industrial era and I had to deal with foritifed riflemen - tons of conscripts- with only cavalry. I managed to win, but had a crapload of cavalry- so I bought a ROP with France and took over England. Geez, but she was weak. I bought France's help and used a sneaky tactic. I let her get her forces slaughtered taking out most of the defense, then took out the last guy myself and the city.

After this, I got a ROP with Babylon, kept moving my troops into his land. Lots of elites, but no GLs due to my old Persian War one I had forgotten about. Anyhoo, after the ROP was over, I disabled his rubber, gunpowder, horses, and iron. Babylon was tough, but I finally one. Then I started planting cities EVERYWHERE and got a Domination victory. Whew.

 

[MattyB2]

My First game was a very quick affair with me who didn't build another city, then i just built a settler realising i should before a boat landed a spearman next to me killed the settler and took the city.

 

[Heffalump]

My first game was CivI, a long time ago now and I only remember the basics.

I founded a few cities, built units to defend them, and hung on for quite a while. But my first attempt to shift governments to republic was such a miserable failure that I immediately went back to monarchy and remained there.

Things went downwhill. I was already last in tech and that made things worse. Eventually a war broke our with a neighbor and my empire collapsed like a house of cards due to my obsolete defenders.

 

[NightThatSaysNI]

my first game was about three months ago i remember i was the Chineese i had no experience with the civilization ceries but my freind told me it kicked ass.i remember it was just me and the Americans i had about 20 or so cities on my contenet and was half way in the middle ages when a American Carvel landed 3 cavalry off the coast of bejing he declares war and i sen't a mixture of sordsmen and riders they quickly died i was still pretty peacfully sitting there going thro tech and i got up to the modern age and a shot hadn't been fired between me or the Americans even tho we were at war.so i used marines against this city defended by ritflemen and took it.then immeadiatly a bunch of musketmen/ritflemen/infantry attacked my marines and took back their city.i built the manhaton project and built several nukes and i blew those american capatilist pigs into ablivion!i quickly conquered their contenent i noticed they had some cities on islands so i tryed to attack them with modern armor then remebered marines i tried with 16 marines to take one city defended by a mech infantry to my suprise i lost everyone i got pissed and nuked them then rolled in there with some infantry.i won domination 1980ad pretty good for just having a little advice from my freind and a first game

 

[Yaype]

I don't really remember my first Civ game, as it was Civ 1, and more than a decade ago. But I do remember a first game for somebody else.

I tried teaching my dad to play Civ 1 as a father/son type of activity. He chose the Russians. Anyways, he ended up on a small island with no contacts. He built a few cities, but despite my suggestions, never even began researching any techs. To make a long story short, it was pretty far into the AD years before he gave up, not even having discovered BW. That was the last time he tried playing any of my computer games.

 

[The Last Conformist]

My first Civilization game was in Civ2. I played as the Babylonians, and didn't commit any particularly idiotic errors, beyond never building more than twelve cities on a huge map. I had like four or five into the Industrial era.

The Civ2 AI being beyond pathetic on Chieftain, I still did reasonably well. I was allied to the Spanish for most of the game, and got them to defend me against a couple of other AIs. When the Spanish developed nukes, however, they cancelled the alliance, and declared war a few turns later. I quickly dropped a transport-load of Armor outside their capital (which was on another continent - I can't recall why I had the troops there), and was amazed and delighted to see the Spanish go into civil war. The two fractions spent the rest of the game nuking one another, and the time ran out without anyone building the SS.

In the next game, I tried using my first home-built Settler for founding a new city before my capital was fully improved ...

For my first Civ3 game, someone had told me that one should play one's first game one level below what one was used to from Civ2. Having beaten Deity in Civ2 a couple of times, I thought Monarch would then be a piece of cake. I played as Persia on a huge map, and was crushed before the end of the ancient game.

After a few equally failed starts, I went down to Warlord to learn the new game mechanics. I lost my first Warlord games to a French UN, but felt strong enough to play the next game at Regent, which I eventually won (by SS).

 

[general_kill]

I played as the romans and I spent my first few dozen turns searching for a large mass of water because the turtorial thing told me to. After I found my first city I started expanding. Things went pretty well and I met the egyptions. I thought cleoptra looked ugly so I declared war on them. I sent legion after legion to take their cities and was successful. But Cleaptra built her empire like a line and it would take me for ever to take her cities. And culture flips killed me and she keeps on capturing the workers that were setting up roads. I wanted peace but didn't know how to contact her. But she contacted me and asked for peace. I didn't accept but quit the game because it took too long

 

[Quokka]

My first game was as the Germans on Warlord because I liked the idea of being a German Warlord. I forget the settings but ended up on a mid-sized island with the Aztecs. We eventually split the island pretty evenly, but I got the only Iron.
Started following a builder route like Civ2 and got about 20 Knights when I decided to attack and take the rest of the island. I thought I was safe as I left some Knights as a mobile defence and had Fortresses everywhere for them to hide in. First turn went great, something like 15-0. Then I had my first run-in with a Jag rush. They just swarmed all over me. I knew it was over a few turns later and couldn't believe I had lost to 1/1.
Next game I was the Aztecs and did the same thing to the Indians.

 

[jack merchant]

I don't remember my first game of Civ1 - it was about 10 years ago I think. A friend of mine had it and showed it to me, but he didn't understand it very well either ( we were young, dumb teenagers, and at that time, the concept of buying games and getting a manual was completely alien to us . Since then, I have learned better). Still, I got a newspaper round until I had enough money for a second-hand 286 on which I played Civ1 for years, figuring out the game all by myself.

I don't remember my first game of Civ2 either, though having gotten older and smarter, I did buy it this time and played it for quite a while (and recently rediscovered the original disc, yay!).

My first Civ3 game I do remember - I started out as the Greeks on Warlord and having no clue about corruption, culture and stuff (whoever reads manuals anyway ? ), I just built cities a bit like in Civ2,, expanding far and wide with little military protection . Then I met the Romans, and soon, Caesar tried to extort me. I said no. BIG mistake A horde of Legions, archers and spears appeared and captured 3 or 4 of my cities, at which point I quit It's hard to imagine I ever played warlord level now !

 

[Bamspeedy]

EDIT: Oh, and unlike Bamspeedy I actually won my first Deity game. You can read about that here if desired.

Thats because you waited too long before making the jump .

I think I tried that deity game when I was still only a Regent level player. I just wanted to see how badly they would beat me.

 

[Yndy]

I had two stages in my Civ3 experience: Pre CFC and post CFC.

I played the first 3 games as Americans because I wrongly believed that they would be the best civ to play (game made in US – foolish me). I also started on high difficulty because of my experience with civ1, civ2.

First game: Emperor level: lost before knowing what the game was about.
Second game: Monarch level: lost to a sneak attack in the ADs. I actually abandoned the game as I had gathered a lot of info about how the game is played.

Third game: Monarch level: Won by domination in the Modern Age. It was a hard game but I made it.

In the following months (Mar 2002 – May 2002) I managed to beat Emperor and had several attempts at deity – all losses. I finally won deity end of May, playing Romans on a tiny continents world with 5 opponents IIRC. I managed to build exactly two cities in addition to the capitol. Managed to turn everybody against everybody. Wonderful game it was but RNG and reloads brought me the victory.

Several weeks later I discovered CFC and improved style tremendously. Still, it took 3 months before I got my first clean deity victory on a standard map with Persia.

BTW my first ever Regent game was a GOTM in 2003 (16?)