Sid Meier's Civilization

Oh, the time I wasted on this game...

I only 'discovered' the game in 1994, at the same time as having a dead-end job as an electrical draughtsman (I drew plug symbols on architectural drawings)

Suffice to say, I spent 90% of my time at work playing Civilisation - and still managed to get my job done, it was so quiet.

I had a second hand copy, missing the manual, so I had to 'guess' the inevitable question that popped up around about turn 3.

I recall it being a deeply frustrating, but unbelievably addictive game.

I never quite managed to finish it and launch a spaceship. I came close, but got wiped out in a nuclear holocaust.

Probably the single most frustrating aspect was trying to placate the citizens - there was never any option to be an overbearing dictator and *still* succeed.

Ah yes. I remember the days. And nights. And days...

How much of my life did I sink into this game? Probably more than I did playing Doom, Doom2 and Descent combined.

Undemanding hardware requirements and a small footprint meant that I could play this (almost) anywhere. I'd start a game on a Saturday afternoon and still be playing the same game on Sunday morning. Just one more turn...

I still dig it out from time to time and it still sucks me in.

I was never a big fan of Civ 2 (hey, lets do multi media!). I loved Civ 3 and 4 though and had many sleepless nights playing Alpha Centauri. Haven't bought Civ 5 (don't like the rule changes).

A true classic.

Wow, what memories!

I lost my first year at uni (90-91) to Tetris and my final year (93-94) to Civ and Doom. I didn't enjoy the course, but I can't deny the detrimental effect of these games had on my final degree classification...!

I knew I'd been up far too long when I started to consider the horrible effects of using nukes on another civilisation.

Explore the World

Conquer my enemies and build a castle, like a boss.

That's gameplay for you

What this 20 year long franchise proves is that you can;t beat good gameplay, and I still remember the first week I lost to this game on my Commodore Amiga.

Yes the latest version has fancy 3d animated scenery and units, but at the heart of it is the same basic, addictive, one-more-turn, play it in many different styles, as big or as small as you want it... gameplay.

You can take all your first-person shooters, Real Time Strategy (I still grate my teeth at the contradiction in that phrase) and waving your hands around in the air modern stuff - just give me another 20 years of Civilisation with carefully evolved tweaks to gameplay and I'll happily pop my mortal coil then!

Ahhh .... Civilization. How much do I love thee?

I remember playing a hooky copy of this (on two floppies, no less) when I was at university. Between this, Wolfenstein and Doom I shudder to think how much time was wasted during the first year of my PhD :-) I think it's largely because of the original Civilization that most of the games I play nowadays are either turn-based or real-time strategy games.

Unusually for sequels, the follow-on Civ games (and Alpha Centauri) were just as good, with the notable exception of Civ5, which turned out to be an absolute dog.

Nuke, 'cos that's what I always aim for when I'm playing Civ4 :-)

Great series

I remember getting a pirate copy of Civ for my Amiga back in the day. I guess this is a case of piracy leading to purchases, because I went on to buy Civ II, III Conquests, IV, and V (bought Civ V just recently on Steam, but haven't downloaded it yet). I never got on with IV, but I still play III - for some reason it just never gets old.

If you got a degree in the 90s

Then you didn't spend enough time playing Civ!

If they port freeciv to android, I'm going to lose my job and my marriage!

The daddy.

I always got to the point where I was searching for the last enemy city, then built the Apollo wonder to show me the world and found it hidden away in some previously explored niche.

I borrowed it off a mate and it was my first genuine play through the night and phone in sick game. Sit back, realise your back is killing and your eyes are gritty, check the time and realise you're not going to be much use for the rest of the day. Good job we had youth on our side.

The fun you can have with chariot spamming. The joy the first time an enemy city defected. The WTF?! when yours did.

Amazing game.

Here’s hoping you can cover CM:BO next time.

Love this!

We still play Civ at the house; the boys are addicted to it (and now they're interested in history). My wife, who was a history major, thought it was silly until she tried it, after hearing the rest of us talking about it. Now she's hooked, badly. We might need an intervention.

I still think my favorite Civ moment came when I was playing Civ II and changed governments, causing anarchy. The "advisors" wanted to talk to me, and, well, search on youtube for this if you haven't seen it.

Classic and still modern!

Very nice game indeed. One aspect I liked as well was that while playing you actually got a rough taste of common civilizations too.

I never did care for the sequels because I don't think you should try to change a good formula (to me it all looks like "the quest for more money") but when a revamped version of the old classic was released for my PS3 I immediately grabbed it.

A little dumbed down but still a brilliant game IMO.

My Amiga rocked..

..to the beat of Civiliation.

Didnt realise it could be found on the fondle slab, @Ralthor my wife will not thank you for this :)

Absolutely fantastic classic

Had this on the Amiga. Every win would just make me want to go for an even better win. Another of the big culprits (and probably the biggest) of my playing-till-dawn sessions. How many times have I said to myself those famous last words:

"OK, just one more turn"

CivNet & CtP

noteable absent from comments so far: CivNet & Call to Power.

Civnet - we played multiple networked games on the Uni comps - with the first player to finish starting the countdown to next turn - giving a premium to the agility of a small empire.

CtP - great concepts, still more advanced than Civ5 in some ways, but let down by gameplay. I still look at it sometimes and think, if only...

Just one more turn...

I was unfamiliar with the time '4am' until this game came into my life.

Sleep Thief.

How to kill time and not realise it?

"Just one more turn...", "I'll just capture that city and I've wiped out the Indians..." Then with a peek out of the window of the room where the PC was it still looked dark, trip across the landing to the bathroom before bedtime and you wonder what that dim light is that's starting to break through the frosted glass, that would be the SUN!

Oops, another grouchy day at work after <4 hours sleep.

It was a slippery slope after Civilisation: Railroad Tycoon, Command and Conquer, Alpha Centauri all conspired to deprive me of sleep.

Excellent game and now I feel really old as my son is playing Civ IV.

Loses it's charm abruptly...

This brings back memories, awaesom game and truly addictive.

Having played for hours every day over a couple of months (Uni Student + summer break + no commitments = bliss), I reached the point where I struggling to find a way to improve my best score.

Then it happened... Got into fight with the (soon-to-be-ex) girlfriend, and next game went on a global rampage that would have made the real Mr Khan giggle like a scoolgirl. When I'd wiped out the last competing nation the game ended and I had beaten my previous high score by a factor of 5, and the game only lasted 2-3 hours.

Once the penny dropped that the utopian dream Sid Meyer was pushing didn't jive with the rewards of being a brutal dictator I got bored pretty quickly.

Was fun until then!

Serriously addictive

I discovered a demo of the game on a PC magazine freebie disc in 92, and bought the game so I could play it on a computer at work out of hours.

I've never been so addicted to a game series, and I've bought them all... playing Civ V right now, even tried the knock off clones like call to power 1 & 2, tried Alpha Centauri but didn't enjoy it as much.

The down side is losing so much time on the game... I remember waking up one Sunday morning, making a cup of tea and sitting down to play the newly released Civ III, and then realising that it was 12hrs later and I'd not showered, eaten or moved from my chair at all... and there was a cold cup of tea still sat on the desk. That's a little scary, and so I now limit myself to sessions no more than a couple of hours long... which means playing a marathon game from start to finish can take a couple of weeks.

Can't wait for Civ 6 in about 3-4yrs time.

A classic which I no longer possess.

My first PC came with this in the form of CivNET - basically the same game with the graphics tweaked a bit, no copy protection quiz, CD music, and the option for network (on Windows 95? Hah!) play. I foolishly gave it away with said PC.

I would (probably) give a small kingdom if someone put the CD tracks up for download (I seem to recall the English theme was a variation of Mouret's "Rondeau").

"Civilization completely kickstarted the turn-based strategy ... genre"

No it didn't.

Either that or I was hallucinating in the 1980s while playing Rebelstar Raiders and Laser Squad on the ZX Spectrum. These were far more accessible TBS games, and a lot of fun. Games like Civilization required masses of spare time to play, which—contrary to popular belief—many gamers didn't have.

It's also worth considering that the "IBM compatible PC" didn't really catch on as a gaming machine in Europe until the appearance of games like "Doom". During the early '90s, most of the attention of European games developers was focussed on the Commodore Amiga and Atari ST (and the SNES and Sega Megadrive.) PCs were for offices.

your fault

Going to hunt down my Civ 2 disk when I get home, and it's all your fault!

Playability at it's very best

Still worth a visit now and then.

I put it right up there with Unreal Tournament as one of the most playable games of all time.

Spent many an hour

playing this, Infact I was just playing Civ IV yesterday. And did the whole "one more turn" thing until 3am.

The Colonization series also isn't bad, but could do with allowing you more turns.

(And FreeCol is heaps better than FreeCiv).

DosDOX for Android should allow the older versions to run on my tablet......hmmmmmmm

CIV5. It's a bit of a grower

Been playing since CIV1 (in fact, Mr Meier owes me a degree!), but have got to say that CIV5 is the best since the first one.

Didn't like it when I first started playing, but stuck with it, and what first appeared to be a slow moving game relieved itself as depth. Much more tactical than previous versions.

To make it perfect, they need to add the landscape deformation of Alpha Centauri and planet buster bombs.