Civilization has a very special place for me. I have purchased every single game and expansion that has come out. And I might be the only person (at the very least, one of the only people) on this site that actually anticipated the release of the very first Sid Meier's Civilization game.
Civ was my dream game after being obsessed with Pirates beforehand, I wondered what a game that took place over the world where you could actually found cities and build things would be like... I envisioned something much crazier, more like SimCity for the cities, but Civ was more than good enough! =D
I still remember playing Civ 1 for the first time (I played Egypt on the Earth map), the music, the animation of people moving to the city, the graphics of the city itself. Very little will ever top that experience. I had the first colonization game, I remember it having like 6 discs, and I played it a lot more than it probably deserved. Civilization 2 became an obsession of mine later on in my teen years and I became very involved with the modding scene and sites like Apolyton (actually, I was mostly involved with the site that pre-dated Apolyton, the name of it completely escapes me). I continued playing the game heavily into the Test of Time years, and Alpha Centauri I wished I had played more (the first Firaxis game after Microprose).
Modding was easy and effective, it was a matter of changing the pixel art bits, and editing a simple xml file. You could make a good mod in a few days. This is the main reason why even when later games came out, Civ 2 remained my go-to.
Unfortunately, my fandom waned following Civ 3, which I felt didn't have the magic of the first two games. The loss of the animated advisors and wonder videos hurt a lot IMO... Now looking back, it was kind of cheesy... This wasn't the first thing I missed that was retired from the series, the original Civ had the fun city building animation that I missed... but felt Xiv 2 more than made up for it. Civ 3 I felt didn't make up for it at all... and I hated how the game stalled in the later phases with loads of stacks of units. Civ 4 was a much more refined game, but felt very... "wait and see if anyone actually does anything!" This game saw the concept of sprawling empires hammered in favour of tall builds... basically, build tall, and then later conquer everything when everyone else is struggling with tech. Or not at all because it was easier to win other ways. It sounded great on paper because now I didn't have to constantly worry about an ever-expanding Empire, BUT... that's on paper. The fun of new cities, new frontiers, and new diplomatic situations was replaced with a simple building simulator with a much weaker religion/corporation spreading game, and wars were much less frequent - in the end, I kind of hated Civ 4, and that's where the series lost me to Paradox games (best known for Europa Universalis, Crusader Kings, Hearts of Iron, Victoria, and Stellaris), which I was already getting into.
Civ 5: while a lot of people thought it was inferior to Civ 4, it breathed a lot of fresh life back into the franchise, and while I don't think it matched the Civ 1 and 2 experience, was the best representation of the series since. I ended up playing a lot more of Civ 5 than Civ 3 and 4 combined. BUUUUT.... By this time, the whole 4X model was becoming stale for me. I mainly wanted to play it to turn my brain off, the grand strategy games were much more satisfying and appealing to me: AND Civ 2 had a lot to do with it...
Back in the second Civ 2 expansion Civ 2 Fantastic Worlds - they introduced a number of new features that allowed for story telling in your mods. Triggered events and such... and Civ NEVER... EVER recovered to even that point... but Civ 2 took it further with Test of Time where you could go to other worlds, this is WAY beyond where any other civ game dared to go... But Paradox games did. Not only did they add in story and events, but gave you characters, dynasties, trait-breeding, and so much more. Crusader Kings 2 was a game not about the crusades, but about the rise of Charlemagne to the rennaissance, and had so much more diversity in culture.... playing a Mongol Nomad is a bastly different experience than playing a Viking tribesman, or playing a feudal vassal. You could have people above you in your nation, people below you, and you could assassinate, charm, or fight your way up the chains of power... and as King or Emperor, clash with other rules to preserve your realm, or expand it.
Out comes Civilization 6, and unfortunately... I didn't find it very appealing any longer, it felt incredibly simplistic and lacking in scope. Civilization, which had once been the go-to franchise for the mose advanced and in depth strategy game experience, had not grown. Instead, the new features seem to be largely lifted from Paradox Games... and unfortunately, not done nearly as well. On the otherhand! I think Civ 6 is a great fit for console. The last time I played a Civ game on console was Civ 2 on PSX; the console Civ I played the most was the SNES version of Civilization 1, though.
I describe myself as a little dose of toxic masculinity.
