In 1993 I saw the first Civ advertised in a computer magazine; a picture of an Egytian sarcophagus under a modern cityscape and started saving up for a pc right away. Got the game with its two or three 5 1/4 inch floppies and read the manual for at least a month before even installing it(for some reason, I thought losing would be a really bad experience and wanted to be an expert out of the gate). Great times from I through IV (and SMAC).

With everybody loving Civ here it makes me feel like I'm not part of the TBS group

But I see it like I evolved in strategygaming and now favor the Real Time part of strategy

My first Civ experience was like 15 years ago (plus minus two years) with Civ II The Test of Time. I played the first game together with a friend and it didn't go well....a Russian came after only a few turns and said something about keeping out of his area.

Then we wanted to start irrigation but couldn't find out how to do it so we called a friend. I can't recall if we understood what he said but I wasn't awed by Civ II so we quit it. I did try some of the other versions on the disk which were a fantasy and also a sci-fi version. I didn't like Civ though so after like five 30min tries I never ever played a Civ game again and haven't done so until this day.

Absolutely. Civ games were and still are the best strategy games ever. They also changed my life. In fact, that was the main reason for doing what I do these days, which is mostly read, talk and write about 4X games. Thanks Sid for so many years of excellent entertainment. Live long and prosper Sir, so that we can have more of these wonderful games.

So, Brad, I see that Sid also changed your life, thank god for that (GalCiv2, Sins of a Solar Empire and more 4X games to come ...).