A solid start to the Civ series with a pretty charming pixel aesthetic. Obviously, it's not quite as replayable or complex as its sequels, but it is nice to play a relatively quick Civ game
Civ marked another milestone in Gaming History. The concept and success of round based building games is more or less founded on games like Civilization. Ok at a point it became odd, when u had nukes while your neighbour civ just invented the muskets....but hey...life is not always fair :D :D :D
The ideas in this game are definitely held back by the power and game design principles of 1991.
Extremely innovative, but the controls, menus, and mechanics take a fair bit of adjustment if you're familiar with modern strategy games (Civ or others)
Extremely innovative, but the controls, menus, and mechanics take a fair bit of adjustment if you're familiar with modern strategy games (Civ or others)
Koei Tecmo took this game to a whole nother level on the SNES
One of the first games I got for my first PC. Brought it home from the shops on Saturday morning, loaded it up, and the next thing I knew I launched for Alpha Centauri, it was Sunday afternoon, and I suddenly felt very tired.
Seminal start to a genre-defining series and amazing for its time.
Seminal start to a genre-defining series and amazing for its time.
I was fresh out of High School, it was late 1993, and my mother purchased a Packard Bell desktop computer. I picked up Civilization on the way out, as I had seen a review and I loved strategy games.
This was either a mistake, or one of the best casual decisions of my life.
Civilization puts you in charge of a culture (Roman, Egyptian, Zulu, Indian, American, a few others) or you can name your own. You start at the literal dawn of civilization, with a tech tree that starts with things like "The Wheel" and "Writing". You settle cities, and build them up, build military units and non-military units, spreading your culture across the globe.
You encounter other cultures, plus primitive tribes that may grant you small bonuses. You can interact with those other Civ's via trade, or warfare.
I have played every version of Civilization ever since, and it is still a go-to for me. The depth of what you can do, with multiple paths to go for a win condition, the personalities of the leaders, the now famous and intentional sudden reversal of Ghandi from a peace loving pacifist to a nuclear armed Warlord.... all of it changed the way I interact with games in genera, and set me on a path of 4X games that I am still on 30 years later.
This was either a mistake, or one of the best casual decisions of my life.
Civilization puts you in charge of a culture (Roman, Egyptian, Zulu, Indian, American, a few others) or you can name your own. You start at the literal dawn of civilization, with a tech tree that starts with things like "The Wheel" and "Writing". You settle cities, and build them up, build military units and non-military units, spreading your culture across the globe.
You encounter other cultures, plus primitive tribes that may grant you small bonuses. You can interact with those other Civ's via trade, or warfare.
I have played every version of Civilization ever since, and it is still a go-to for me. The depth of what you can do, with multiple paths to go for a win condition, the personalities of the leaders, the now famous and intentional sudden reversal of Ghandi from a peace loving pacifist to a nuclear armed Warlord.... all of it changed the way I interact with games in genera, and set me on a path of 4X games that I am still on 30 years later.
The first in Sid Meier's long running series, Civilization represents a milestone in the strategy game genre and set the table for a lot of fundamentals that would be replicated by dozens of other games going forward. It takes a lot of the good bits from titles like Empire, Populous, SimCity and Pirates among others and synthesizes them into the foundational 4X title several years before the term was even coined. It certainly wasn't perfect, with certain aspects of gameplay not being as fleshed out as others, but what was there was more than competent enough for 1991 and a fantastic launchpad for bigger and better titles in the coming years.
As a side note, I want to also praise its tutorial components because very few games up to this point bothered to explain game systems and mechanics to players inside the game itself. This was often a memory limitation that resulted in very thick instruction manuals, but Civilization is one of the earliest examples I can think of that provides context menu tooltips to explain parts of the interface which was its own little revolution worth praising.
As a side note, I want to also praise its tutorial components because very few games up to this point bothered to explain game systems and mechanics to players inside the game itself. This was often a memory limitation that resulted in very thick instruction manuals, but Civilization is one of the earliest examples I can think of that provides context menu tooltips to explain parts of the interface which was its own little revolution worth praising.