What did you think of Civ when you first got it?

[stratego]

What did you think of Civ when you first got it? The first Civ game for me was CivIII, and honestly the first time I played it I didn't like it. The box showed 3-D figures, but I wasn't expecting the game to be a turned based 2-D game. Seemed pretty boring at first. It wasn't until I saw my friend research laser that I started to be interested in the game. I returned to the game wanting to research all of the tech tree, and I ended up playing the whole game until 2050, then I tried to beat it in every other way I can and I was hooked from there. I stopped playing though, after some rehab.

 

[Nicci]

"damn, this isn't easy" was one of the first thoughts that came to mind.

 

[Volum]

I actually liked it from the start, alltough i played terrible, thinking that my legions was almost undefeatable, and when i tought there was something wrong with the game when Immortals beat my legions...

 

[citizen001]

i shoved it into my comp and said: "What the hell is this!" and dumped the cd somewhere until my friend started playing it and then i got the idea it was actually worthwhile and fun.

 

[bluebox]

i was annoyed by the humour of the advisors. later i found out that therre is a lot of irony.

 

[jkp1187]

"Huh. Ghandi has Nuclear Weapons? I wonder how you get those. Oh. I guess that means the game is over." (First thoughts on playing Civ 1, 1992).

 

[eldar]

I got Civ3 after having been addicted to SMAC for a couple of years. It was a fairly smooth transition, though it's taken me a looooooooong time to get even remotely competent.

Neil.

 

[rysingsun]

i thought "the graphics sure is a lot more cluttered than civ II and it crashes too much. the graphics thing i guess i just sort of got used to because i dont think about it much anymore. the crashing .. well ... im not sure... other software used to crash too until i replaced my graphics card so i think that was part of it. patching to 1.29 definitely helped as well.

after my initial poor experience i didnt try it again for years. my brother bought a disk and (lol) i told him my advice was "play on diety only. anything else for you will breed bad play habits." boy did he ever get squashed on his first game

after that i was starting to become impressed that civ III offered a true challenge for the player who thinks he can beat anything out there every time. im very pleased about that.

 

[doolally]

-my first Civ game was an old, dusty copy of CivNet that i played against the AI. i was hooked right from the start and have spent more time being tortured by Sid Meier than any other game designer. the jump from CivNet to CivII was smooth. the jump from CivII to SMAC was not so smooth. i loved the diplomatic options but having to learn what all the techs did made me a sad panda. i actually put it away for 6 months and went back to CivII. then one day i decided sod it! it's Sid! there has to be a really good game in here. i just need to learn it. so i did. and loved it.

-then came Civ3 and it was another rocky start. the first release of the game felt really un-optimized to me and ran like a pig on my system. it got put away for 3-4 months and i ran home to SMAC-X. then gradually i worked my way into Civ3. now i can't imagine playing any other way. i tried to play SMAC-X this past weekend but the interaction with the AI just feels so shallow after all these years of Civ3.

-no doubt, when Civ4 arrives, i'll sulk for a few months cos i need to re-learn stuff and then will grow to love it.

 

[Drakan]

Yeah, I bet we'll all be critisizing Firaxis designers the first couple of months untill we start knowing the game mechanics, and winning ! Then we'll all agree, what another great game of Sid Meier.

My first game was in a PSone with CivII. I had bought it because this friend of mine kept talking and talking in College about some game he had called Civilization. So I gave it a go. I first thought what a strange game this was. You actually had to think and plan in order to win, wow ! Since then I'm hooked. It's all your fault Sid !!

 

[Volstag]

Played Civ I briefly... didn't understand it, therefore I didn't like it. Same thing happened w/ Civ II and SMAC (never bothered to read the rulebook, or take the time to learn). I knew that people loved the games, and I had this suspicion that I would too.

Why I bought Civ III, I'll never know, but I did. Installed and started my first game. I think it was the initial diplomacy that hooked me. I actually played, and finished (cultural victory) my first game. Was hooked after that.

-V

 

[sabo]

I thought, "thank God, someone finally came up with a game where the high difficulty levels are actually HARD" then I got mesmerized by all the units, wonders, and buildings you can build. That was when Civ II came out.

 

[JackRules]

I tried CIV1 on my brothers comp many years back and though I liked the concept I never could get into it. Then 3 years ago I picked up CIV111 but never really put the time into it until I found this forum, and really started to learn how to play. I still enjoy it alot but RL makes it hard to play more than one game a month. But it is by far the best waste of time ever created.

 

[kevincompton]

My first game was Civ 1. I was just a kid so i didn't know how to install the game yet...I read the whole manual (big manual) by the time my mom loaded it for me. Man it was like the coolest thing ever cause i loved history and the only other video game I had was Scorched Earth...also a cool game though.

 

[Yakodi]

My first thoughts when I had bought Civ1 in 1992
Well I think it was something like this: "You finally should buy a PC now ..."
Because at that time my homecomputer was a Atari 1024 and I had to play civ at the office - after the end of workday of course and at that time you could even see me sundays at the office.

 

[alamo]

What? That's the big combat graphics?!

Then it was - oh good, the entire stack wasn't killed!

 

[Thriller4ever]

I start playing at civ with civ 2 on playstation at the age of 13. I could get scoth in front of my tv for days just to finish a game or even miss school just to beat up an opponent or to build a peaceful nation.

My friend did'nt understand why i was so thrill by a game so slow and boring.

The fact that i always love history and to build my own empire make me feel very powerful when i was young, now is just a entertainment but i can get really in a game when is very difficult.

 

[Grille]

"Huh. Ghandi has Nuclear Weapons? I wonder how you get those. Oh. I guess that means the game is over." (First thoughts on playing Civ 1, 1992).

-"Our words are backed with nuclear weapons!"
-"So? Shut your face, you're kidding as usual."
...
-"Aha, this time it's different" (Second thoughts in one of the first civ1 games)

 

[Dirkonium]

I was given a copy of the original DOS Civ not long after it came out (somebody told me to play a REAL world conquest game instead of the crappy shareware Risk-clone I was hooked on). I was immediately addicted, and have avidly followed the franchise since. Although I don't have Conquests yet, gotta get that soon! For a long time I felt that Civ 3 was too geared against war, and was boring in the later stages of the game. That was until I moved it up to Monarch, and found some new joy in managing the greater difficulty of the game.

 

[Raggo]

Time Frame:
Getting Game: "Boring, what the hell do I do this is really lame game, time to go back to CS"
few days later: "HMM im starting to get it"
after that: "Totally addicted play every day can't stop got one more turn syndrome:

Verdict: I LOVE CIV 3