30 Years of Civilization - Conquering Gamers' Free Time

[JustPlainDan]

Few games have captured gamers minds and free time quite like Civilization. From its humble beginnings as a turn-based strategy game to an expansive, complex empire builder, this is how Civilization has progressed over the past 30 years.

Read the full article here.

https://www.techspot.com/article/2682-30-years-of-civilization/

 

[Blqckout]

Might try it out now
seems interesting

 

[loki1944]

Hate 6; love the rest

 

[winjer]

I was going to post a witty comment, but I have one more turn to play...

 

[MarcusNumb]

I can't say how many hours I spent on this game cause I feel so stupid xD It is indeed an interesting and time consuming game xD

 

[Manuel Diego]

Civilization was initially a board game, before being ported to computers. Still one of the best games I've ever played!

 

[JKnight]

I have played Civ 4,5,6 and personally I think the 5 is the best Civ. TechSpot should do another article like this for Total War Series.

 

[madboyv1]

I played entirely too much Alpha Centauri, and now I want to boot it up again.

 

[passwordistaco]

From at least Civ 2 through 4 there were 8 adjacent tiles for motion and combat because units could move and attack diagonally. 8 directions, not 4. The move to hexagons (6 directions) simplified the game.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

The single biggest issue I had with civ V was the AI. When it comes to diplomacy, they will immediately oppose the player once said player pulls ahead, torpedoing their own economy by refusing to trade, or choosing ideology that opposes the player even if said ideology conflicts with the victory condition said AI is going for.

And the military actions, good lord. I developed a theory, and stand by it, that when Fireaxis removed the stacking system, they never bothered changing the AI to accommodate it. The AI will do incredibly dumb things, like marching armies single file towards a city, or move the artillery before infantry. If I can defend a city against a giant army using just the city and a single ranged unit, your military AI is severely screwed. It makes the game boring later, since you can, quite literally, use two infantry units and a single artillery to wipe out entire nations do dumb to understand how to concentrate fire.

I played a bit of Civ VI, and saw that the military was still braindead, and the diplomats self sabotaging. Its the main reason I never bought VI.

I wish they'd do a proper HD remaster (NOT remake) of alpha centauri.

 

[kinetix]

Oh boy. not the Civilization, but the Colonization. I spent hours on it. I won it three times each one in a better way than the previous one, either earlier in time and/or with better results and development.
coincidentally a few days ago nostalgia assailed me and I started playing Settlers II for the third time (many years ago a friend told me that I was the only person he knew who had won it, and even more rare, twice)

 

[passwordistaco]

The single biggest issue I had with civ V was the AI. When it comes to diplomacy, they will immediately oppose the player once said player pulls ahead, torpedoing their own economy by refusing to trade, or choosing ideology that opposes the player even if said ideology conflicts with the victory condition said AI is going for.

And the military actions, good lord. I developed a theory, and stand by it, that when Fireaxis removed the stacking system, they never bothered changing the AI to accommodate it. The AI will do incredibly dumb things, like marching armies single file towards a city, or move the artillery before infantry. If I can defend a city against a giant army using just the city and a single ranged unit, your military AI is severely screwed. It makes the game boring later, since you can, quite literally, use two infantry units and a single artillery to wipe out entire nations do dumb to understand how to concentrate fire.

I played a bit of Civ VI, and saw that the military was still braindead, and the diplomats self sabotaging. Its the main reason I never bought VI.

I wish they'd do a proper HD remaster (NOT remake) of alpha centauri.

I trade a bit in the early game but I know every other civ is going to hate me by the end, so **** 'em. The AI places waaay too much value on their luxury resources by early midgame; it usually makes more sense to take a city that has what you want. Warmonger penalty? See above.

With no real alliances, diplomacy is empty. "Diplomatic victory" just means getting more votes than all AI civs combined so you can pass whatever you want in the World Congress.

 

[OortCloud]

Civ 4 for me was the high watermark, absolutely loved it. Civ 5 AI was a bit odd and I wasn't that keen on the City States mechanic. I never played Civ 6.

 

[Achaios]

I just wanna say that exotic hardware like the latest $500 CPU and a 4090 is not necessary to game.

This message is often lost here b/c reviews are always about the latest "triple A" titles that require modern and expensive hardware to play.

I mostly play Civ VI on the go on a 2015 laptop equipped with a Core i5-6200 and an AMD radeon R5 M330 GPU and I am able to fully enjoy the game.

You don't need a 4090 and a 7800 X3D to game.

This laptop cost less than 500 Euros new.

 

[brunocasarini]

The best way to play Civ 1 and 2 is using the original DosBox or is there a better alternative?

 

[Benchsalyst]

Civ VI , cartoon graphics unreadable , unlookable , even free I dont play this crap !

 

[p51d007]

Never played games like this, sim city etc.
I was more into the first person shooters.
Especially with cheat codes. Bad/rough day at work, come
home, enable cheat codes, then walk up behind the "bad guy"
and pop one in the back of the head LOL.

 

[mcnabney]

No matter what you heard my wife say I have NOT spent a billion hours playing Civ.

 

[RickSteele]

My favorite is 3 / Conquests, still play it from time to time. Later versions got too complicated IMO, particularly the civics and religion, though I do like the hex tiles and single unit per. And they sure are pretty to look at.

 

[dalpilot]

I spent way too many hours between 1999-2001 playing Alpha Centauri (while not playing ANY of the Civ games until Civ III). I still have it loaded on my computer and the game play is still very good (especially with fast computers making the time for Computer AI turns much, much shorter. Even though its a DOS based game (not Windows) it still plays well.

 

[dalpilot]

Never played games like this, sim city etc.
I was more into the first person shooters.
Especially with cheat codes. Bad/rough day at work, come
home, enable cheat codes, then walk up behind the "bad guy"
and pop one in the back of the head LOL.

As you get older the reflexes are just not there any more for FPS. Spent way too many hours back in the day playing Mech Warrior.

 

[gingerbill]

Love the Civ series , played many hours of them all except 6 , Civ 6 I found mediocre and didn't play much.

great article.

 

[DukeD]

Still play V, frequently. VI was a LARGE disappointment for a variety of reasons.

 

[Tantor]

The article claims that "With hexagonal tiles, players now had six movement options per tile, compared to the four provided by the old square tile system." That is obviously incorrect. Squares provide EIGHT movement options. In addition, four of those (the diagonals) provide the option for a different quality of motion. This is best understood when you look at a Chess Board which adds square colors.

Hexagons are a huge step backwards.

 

[zulu53]

One of those games that was supposed to be educational as well as fun. Unfortunately the fun aspect took over for most players and the educational aspects dropped away as the game "improved" from version to version and the "steal, break, destroy" aspects of civilisations survival took over. Al Gore is my example - he played the game but learn't nothing from it when it came to humans and environmental management to allow for climate change. It many gamers minds this "game" has nothing to do with the reality of our world and developers of the game promoted this - sad!