When did you start playing CIV?

[Lord Valentine]

Started in 1992 or 1993 with Civ on my first x86 PC - a 486DLC, continued with Colonization, Civ2 and now Civ3.

Of all these I can say that Civ1 and Civ3 are the ones that I played the most.

 

[pkmink]

Originally posted by Yeti
For official "Sid Meier's Civilizations" games - Civ I.

Do you guys remember a game from I believe about 1982 or 1983 on the TRS-80? Might have been called Empire? Some of the same basics of map is blank until you explore and build units to conquer the world. I don't think you could build anything but military units. No trade, no diplomacy.. no color

Then on the Commodore 64 (so probably also on the PC/XT/AT and Apple II series, maybe the Amiga and Atari ST or whatever that was back then too) there was a similar game (maybe called Empire - I think one or both of these was named that), but with color and other advancements.

Yes, I remember both games, I was addicted to both of them! The first one was indeed called Empire and is still available as Freeware somewhere on the internet. The second was I think a color sequel some years later called Empire Deluxe with some more advanced play, it had the same authors. That one is also available as Freeware, kindly donated by it's authors. That second one came out in 1989 or so, the first one (with ASCII characters ) was 1985. Still later they made Empire II The Art of War, so the third installment... But that one somehow wasn't so succesfull, I also didn't like that one very much compared to the previous versions. They must have been the first strategy games with some depth and length of play.

 

[Yeti]

pkmink - Ahh great! My memory isn't totally shot

Those Empire / Empire Deluxe games stuck around for a long time because I remember years later playing with a roommate on a 386 or 486. They were hot seat games that took days to finish


Someone else mentioned Colonization - Yep I played and enjoyed that one too! And the other early Microprose strategy games (Railroad Tycoon and Pirates), and the other early strategy classics (M.U.L.E., Seven Cities of Gold), and many others! Ya know... it really seems like there were more good games back then than there are today.

Although I guess if I was into first person shooters or RTS games I'd be very happy with the current crop of games.

 

[KingBruiser]

Well i began in 1998 on civ2 when i was 10, i traded it for warcraft lol and i still remember my first game i cheated and used mech inf to storm over the egyptians.. i then used to spend hours on the ww2 scenario just doing the germans (lol) then in 2001 i bough civ3 and got the add-ons shortly after they were out.. im not addicted to civ tho.. i play it on and off.

 

[dojoboy]

Civ2 in January of 2000, followd by SMACx and Civ3.

 

[Blasphemous]

I played a couple short sessions at a friend who had Civ2 Gold aroung 1998-2000, but never really got the hang of it.
Then for some reason I decided I wanna try Civ3 late in 2001 or early in 2002 (not really sure), read a review, liked it, bought it, played VC3 probably for about a year almost every day, then stopped till PTW came out, got hooked again when a friend came over for a few days... We played every available second in hotseat mode, never did manage to finish though... So that gave me a few months of fun, and now just a week ago I recalled seeing C3C in a store, checked out two reviews, and downloaded it to try it out... Been playing almost non-stop since then, gonna buy it as soon as I can... Thinking back, VC3 is probably my best buy ever (the worst, btw, is the first Harry Potter video game. Argh! That game taught me the value of a review.)

 

[Raijer]

I didn't get into Civ until around 2001. I'd never owned a computer, and never owned a counsol system either. That year wrangled a free Mac G3, so the first thing I did was zip down to Frye's to buy my first video game. I perused the shelves looking for something interesting, and found a copy of CivII for $9.99. Read the box - it sounded right up my alley, and the price was right. Went home, installed and played. I was addicted within an hour.

It didn't take me long to find CivFanatics, where I learned that CivIII was already out, so six months later, I went out and bought that. Same story as above.

 

[magoo]

i first started playing civ2. i saw my cousin playing it and it looked pretty cool. at first i thought the game was so stupid because i didnt understand how to do anything but soon i was playing for 8 hrs at a time haha.

 

[Felix928]

Wow, the memories. I played Civ 1 on my 386 16 Turbo

Also played MoM, MOO, Colonization, Civ2 and now Civ 3. I'm a civ junkie for life...

 

[Eir]

I started with Civ1, which I copyed from one of my friends in 1995. I played Colonization too, at the same time, and I actually liked that one better. (And I was really disappointed two years ago, when I learned that my new computer wouldn't run it... Still, I heard that it works with XP, so I will have to try that. )

I totally missed out on Civ2, and didn't try it until after I tried Civ3, which was kind of a downer. After borrowing Civ3 from a friend for about a year, I finally bought my own this fall, and right after that I bought Conquests too. I'm totally hooked, and I love to play the Vikings, since I'm Norwegian, and it makes my patriotic heart pund...