Saturday, 13th August 2022

The first Civilization

I clearly remember the first time I played Civilization. It was, perhaps, the first time I played a 4X game (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate). It took me a fair amount of time to learn the mechanics, understand the pace of the game, the gameplay and to finally beat the computer AI. Civilization marked the birth of a new genre that spawned sequels, blatant copies, and lots of other 4X strategy games and I think I can talk for every turn-based strategy fan out there when I say: thank god for that.

Game info

Genres: strategy, 4x, turn-based strategy

System: DOS, Windows 3.x

Year: 1991

Publisher: MicroProse Software

Developer: MicroProse Software

Designers: Sid Meier, Bruce Campbell Shelley

Themes: historical

Keywords: turn based, multi-directional scroller, top down

Multiplayer modes: single-player
Input: keyboard, mouse, joystick
Distributed on: 3,5 floppy disk, 5,25 floppy disk, cd-rom
Also published for: Amiga, Atari ST, Mac, PC-98, PlayStation, SNES

Awards won by Civilization:
1992 - Computer Games of the Year, Electronic Games Arcade Awards (MS-DOS).
1992 - Best Entertainment Program, CODiE Awards.
1992 - Best Strategy Program, CODiE Awards.
1992 - Best Consumer Program, CODiE Awards.
1991 - , Gamespot Greatest PC Games of all Time.
Selected for All-TIME 100 video games TIME.com.

Collector's info
The original manual included the famous tech tree on paper called "Civilization Advances Chart".

Find out more about Civilization