What did you do before Civ?

[Cannon Fodder]

What did you do before Civ 1 came out (1992?)?
Were you a gameplayer of any kind? If so, what? And if not on computers,
what did you do? I think it takes a certain way of thinking to become a
long-term Civ player and there are probably interests we shared.

?

My route through computers began with the ZX81, then Spectrum, Amiga and PC's.

My main memories of the early days was the frustration of typing in listings from magazines and having to spend time debugging before the game would run. Don't even mention Rampack wobble!!

My favourite games from the Spectrum were text adventures like Valhalla (If you typed in a swearword you would get the response "Mary is not amused"
and a redfaced Mary would come in and slap your face.) We had simple pleasures in those days.

I also spent a lot of time on Elite.

On the Amiga I played the much bigger adventures like Zork also Populous,
Lords of The Realm, Patrician, Premier Manager and of course Cannon Fodder.

I first got Civ1 on the Amiga and have got all the versions since on the PC.

I tend to spend time now playing various Ascaron games like Patrician III and Port Royal II as well as trying to get better at Civ IV.

 

[Amunhotep]

I may have to check that out, but BTS will be with me soon, so I don't think much else will get a look in

KMadCandy you have brought back all my suppressed memories of the competivness I had with my brother over the Atari, no deed was too low to stop the other one from beating your high score, I'm sure that machine spent half its life locked away to being peace to the house

 

[Ranbir]

Before Civ... I went to nursery. :x

 

[gps]

My route through computers began with the ZX81, then Spectrum, Amiga and PC's.

…

I also spent a lot of time on Elite.

…

I first got Civ1 on the Amiga and have got all the versions since on the PC.

I tend to spend time now playing various Ascaron games like Patrician III and Port Royal II as well as trying to get better at Civ IV.

Almost exactly my gaming career, brother...

My main memories of the early days was the frustration of typing in listings from magazines and having to spend time debugging before the game would run. Don't even mention Rampack wobble!!

I liked that time very much. That's where I learned to programm. First typing the game listings, then debugging it and finally changing it to whatever I wanted. Later I started actually programming my own games. Things started to get frustrating when the Basic listings changed into cryptic Hex-code nonsense - with misscalculated or missprinted checksums, so after spending two days of stupid typing you had to find out, that something must be wrong.
But what a great time for beginners. I really feel sorry for the computer kids of today, who need two weeks of computer training until they even FIND out there IS a programming language installed on the PC - or what to do yith it! And even then you need a degree in computerscience before you manage to open a graphic window to draw or print in. And how do you want to learn to program, if there are no listings available that reward you with a new computer game once you finished typing?

 

[jaythewise]

I did not play Civ seriously until civ2. So for me it was strategy games like Romance of the Three Kingdoms (1, 2, 3, 4), Bandit Kings of Ancient China, Napoleon, Gemstones, and the likes. Does anyone remember/played these games???
I also played adventure games like Freddy Pharkas, Leisure Suite Larry, Eco Quest and the likes...
I found Colonization which I actually loved more than Civ2 games since Col had more micromanagement and trade options (yes I love going tribes to tribes buying tobacco for the cheapest price and sell the cigars back to them or the Europeans for tons more $$$)
I love Master of Magic and Master of Orion (1&2) games. I spent countless hours playing these games. The strategic aspect of the combats was great. I love the fact that different species have inherent differences and you can create highly customized colonies/cities based on their inhabitants and/or resources.

I loved romance of the three kingdoms. But I would always go for Lu Bu. Dude would always switch sides the bastard...

 

[DragonHawk]

I loved romance of the three kingdoms. But I would always go for Lu Bu. Dude would always switch sides the bastard...

Lu Bu was one of the few charaters starting with 100 STR right off the bat. But it is almost impossible to keep him loyal (unless you deliberately choose him as your leader). It was actually very hard to defeat his army in straight up war due to high STR and his horse. If I tried to attack someone whom Lu Bu is a general, I usually bribed Lu Bu to switch side or escape before I attacked the master. If Lu Bu was one of the ruler, I would leave other rulers to take care of him.

 

[Gudinsdiv]

I started with Nobunaga's Ambition, but in many ways, specifically map size and having ten units on the board, made the first Romance of the Three Kingdoms for Nintendo an awesome game. Even now, with the Playstation versions, it doesn't reach that level of being able to outflank and outmanuever your opponent on the battlefield. And remeber capturing the castles? Some of them had six specific gates you had to capture to get the state.
Yeah, those two and L'Empeur, also for the nintendo.
Panzer General, and Risk on Playstation, and fooling arpound, all alone, with Empires In Arms, a board game.

 

[Dark Sheer]

Wow, looks like we have lots of old timer here.

And I sure do remember typing in those codes from Computer magazine back then.

@DragonHawk : The new generation might have heard of 5 1/4". But how many have seen a 8 1/2" Floppy before? I have seen those in one of my client's factory, I think it was Yamaha where their HQ used it to send monthly budget figures.

Speaking of 5 1/4", I remember back in Apple II+ days if you punch a hole on the rightside of the disk you can actually turn it over and it become a doublesided disk.

And come to think of it, modding game must have been in the blood. I remember digging into good old Pacman's code (Using assembly of course ) and opening additional door on top and bottom of screen (It actually make you last longer with 4 doors as compared to the usual two )

 

[littlej]

I always gave Lu Bu about 10 soldiers (in the 2nd game) and only brought him in for duels.

 

[needsomesleep]

I never played Romance of the Three kingdoms, but I did try most everything else. The biggest thing I do outside of Civ for gaming is role playing games. Outside of video games, RPGs have been a big theme in how my free time ie spent for many years. Dungeons and Dragons. I've been playing for 15 years and continue to play today. I started with Battletech, then Mechwarior, and a great but pretty much dead game called Twilight 2000.
I'm 28, for some perspective on when I was doing this stuff, started with board and card games. I played Monopoly as often as I could find someone willing to play with me up until I was about 12. I was also a big trivia pursuit fan. I had an ATARI 2600 and a ton of games for it. As someone previously mentioned, Pitfall for ATARI was great. Simple, but great. We were the first ones in our neighborhood to get the ATARI, but slow to get any other consoles.
I was into a game called Revolution of 76 on my Apple IIGS for a long time, then came my dad's 386 computer from work. I played colonization like crazy for about a year, then as my computer resources increased, went to Blizzard's products. Warcraft, Starcraft, Diablo. Then D&D games started coming out on PC, so I played those for a while. I found CivII pretty much by accident. I picked it up a local superstore becuase it looked cool. Little did I know...
Started playing Civ II, then CIV II Call to power, which I thought had the best infrastructure improvements so far and I wish I could build a sea colony in Civ IV, but anyway. Moved on to CIV III as soon as it came out, played that until CIV.

 

[Winston Hughes]

Balance of Power, Sim City, and petty vandalism.

Make of that what you will...

Edit:

Premier Manager

Wycombe Wanderers ftw!

 

[cryogenics]

My first Civ experience was the third installment. I still like to play the Civ 3 where you can build radar towers (those were so cool), and use artillery to bomb slow-moving infantrymen into dust (loved that).

Before I ever knew a thing called Civilization existed Nintendo consumed almost every waking hour I could dedicate to it growing up (and I was a devious little child, able to sneak in a game of Mario Bros. 3 whenever nobody was looking).

I still remember my first Nintendo game - you all probably know the one with the gold case - I think it was Legend of Link I believe, or something like that.

Aside from gaming, I was an avid chess player through grade school - I even played tournaments and was invited to a provincial closed tournament (yes, I'm a Canuck). But the thing is, I never told anyone about playing chess - not even friends. My chess coach at the time thought it would be "nice" to tip off the local newspaper to do a little story about my humble chess success.

Well, I was beside myself. I did the interview, took the pic and locked myself in my room - dreading Monday. Lucky for me highschoolers don't read newspaper much, lol... ah it was no big deal looking back on it now. Of course in my teenaged mind the whole world was going to end the minute everybody found out about my carefully guarded, top-secret secret - that I spent my weekends playing (and often beating) people at chess who were old enough to be my parents.

Before making Civ my game of choice in later years, I played the Age of Empires series, but finally quit multiplayer after being victim of too much smurfing (when good players create new handles and pretend to be rooks). Plus I was in the camp of AoE players who felt the game had become too reliant on hand-eye co-ordination and speed instead of intelligent gameplay (which I think is inherent in RTS games).

Now I'm eager to play the new SimCity Societies, another series fav of mine.

player_13

PS - I was a fanatical Age of Wonders player, especially Shadow Magic, until I lost my game CDs. On that note, maybe I do some surfing and find another copy!

13

 

[NewWaver]

My answer is short and simple...

Commodore 64 and Amiga 2000.

 

[3 EMS]

I had this boulder chipped down to a round shape and was trying to decide what to do with it.

 

[Strato]

I faintly remember Boulder Dash. Also very much remember Dangerous Dave. That game was too hard.

Of course, I was pretty young then, around 6/7.

 

[The Flame]

I'm 15, but before I discovered CivIII (the game I started out on), I was playing SimCity3000. I enjoy playing board games such as Monopoly, Risk, and Chess.