Blog Banter: History of My Civilization!
“Blog Banter is a group of bloggers passionate about video games. We enjoy getting together once a month to write about the same subject. You will be amazed at the different viewpoints so many people can have on the same exact topic. If you are interested in participating, contact bs angel for more information. Enjoy our stories!”
Blog Banter is a idea from Hawty McBloggy where she gives a bunch of gaming-related blogs the same post title and a brief. We then all go away and write what it means to us - it sounds like a pretty cool idea, so here’s the first post of Blog Banter which is about Memorable Gaming Moments, from both past and more recent games.
I’ve already written about various gaming moments during the course of some of my previous posts such as Speedball 2: Brutal Deluxe on Xbox Live, Ghostbusters 3 Game and Football Manager Demo, so I thought I’d approach it from a new angle this time round - from a series of games I’ve liked for around 17 years, namely Sid Meier’s classic Civilization games, where you must ‘Build an Empire to Stand the Test of Time’!
I have many fond memories of playing the first Civilization game my Commodore Amiga long into the early hours, revelling in the turn-based strategy system that it employed - it was certainly good to be able to have the time to think about your decisions, I was never a big fan of real-time strategy games. You took on the role of the leader of a small tribe, you need to survive, explore, trade, expand, wage wars and ultimately over the course of around 6000 years, take control of the planet or be the first to send a spaceship of colonists to Alpha Centauri to win the game!
Obviously it employed no multiplayer system at this time, but I remember having two Amigas set up next to each other with a mate of mine and we’d start off as the same civilization and play through the game and see who ended up doing the best - now that was DIY multiplayer gaming!
Civilization also meant that I learnt about history! For example, you create different military units as you progress through the game and also build special projects or ‘Wonders of the World’ and you definitely develop a familiarity for these things and even learn what they were - especially when the game came with the obligatory encyclopedia-esque huge manual from Microprose - who seemed to spend as much time writing manuals as they did publishing games back then!
There’s been numerous instalments along the way and we’re now up to Civilization 4
I have to admit that due to Civilization being a game that takes up huge amounts of time, I’ve never really played Civilization 4 as nearly as much as I’d like to and also not had chance to check out the expansion packs, but fundamentally the game has the same spirit as the original. This must obviously have something to do with Sid Meier still being the man behind it - how unusual is that these days for the same person to be involved in a game series for so long?
I’ve played the multiplayer version of Civilization 4 a few times though and must say it really adds to the game, however I’d suggest against playing the ‘Play by Email’ option - it took a friend and I about a 10 hours to play what could have been played in about 1 hour! - We were really ‘hard-coring’ it that week!
Overall Civilization still appeals to my turn-based strategic leanings of ‘god-games’ when it comes down to it and is ultimately has to feature in my Top 3 games ever and it could quite possibly be there at No. 1!
Have you ever played any of the Civilization games? What do you think of them now?
Other Blog Banter Articles :
Boffman22’s Memorable Gaming Moments (Boom Stick Brigade)
I love you Intellivision! (Boom Stick Brigade)
Just how much fun LAN can be! (Cat’s Blog)
Memoirs of a Young Gamer (Gaming with Baby)
Memorable Gaming Moments (Hawty McBloggy)
To Memory Lane and Back (Play Your Station)
Hit the Reset Button (Thoughts and Rants)
History of my Civilization (Zath Games Tech)
Becoming an Ace and Dealing With Minsc (Delayed Responsibility)
Old School, Middle School, New School (lukeshep.com)
I haven’t played that game before. It sounds like something I would like though as I lived off of Risk and Stratego growing up.
I love the DIY multiplayer you and your friend came up with. Children are just brilliant making do with what they have.
You’re very much the strategy player!
A friend of mine loves Civilisation, but I’ve just never seen the appeal of it.
I do remember doing a similar version of the ‘DIY multiplayer’ on Oblivion. Great times.
@bs angel - If you like Risk, you should definitely check Civilization out sometime, it is somewhat like that, but much more in-depth!
@Cat - You’ve got to love ‘DIY Multiplayer’ don’t you? Civ isn’t the only game I’ve done that for neither!
I love Civilization, but I never played any of the recent ones. I think I’m going to grab my old copy of the game and play it again.
Zath man! Civ is tha shitt! I love that game and also have fond memories playing it.
I remember playing Civ while getting drunk to get me through one of the worst weeks of my life. The stress in that week almost seemed to kill me but the game made me feel like a god.
Ah, good old Civ.
Great post Zath and totally expected. Loved it.
@ninja.s - After you’ve played your old copy of Civ, you should take a look at Civilization 4, it’s a really refined game now and brings new concepts to the game.
@Get More Traffic - Thanks! I remember finding Civ 2 in Toys R Us when I had no idea they were making another one. At that time I had some exams coming up, needless to say, I didn’t do as much revision as I should have!
Hello:
I love Civilization for commodore Amiga.
We are a group of Majorca (Balearic islands Spain) who we artisan made hardware for the users of Commodore Amiga, C64/128, which they need new and exclusive hardware.
You can visit to us in our Web: http://www.retro-data.com
Greetings,
Juan J. Costa