I can't say that Civilization is my favorite game series, none of the parts are in the Top 10 of my games by time spent on Steam, where there are enough projects with 400+ hours on the counter, I'm already silent about Microsoft Flight Simulator (2020) in the Microsoft Store with 800+ hours. But, if you count all Civilization, and I only have 16 of them on Steam (different versions and editions), and add the time I spent on these games, especially on Civilization 1, before Steam appeared, it will probably be much more than 1000 hours. But the main thing is not even that, but the fact that Civilization is literally the game of my life, with which many important personal events for me are connected.
My acquaintance with "video games" began with games for the programmable calculator "Electronics MK-54" (by the way, it was produced in Kyiv, at the "Krystal" plant), which were published in the magazine "Technique - Youth" in the early 1980s, and continued with "Tetris" for the Robotron A 7100 at the Computing Center of the Central Bank of the Ukrainian SSR in 1988. But with real AAA games of those times (yes, I know, this term did not yet exist), I got acquainted with them already at the Department of Automation of the Heat and Power Faculty of KPI in 1991-1992. Instead of learning programming, we spent hours playing "Search-2" and playing F-15 Strike Eagle (1988), Dangerous Dave in the Haunted Mansion (1991), PGA Tour Golf (1990), F29 Retaliator (1990) and... Sid Meier's Civilization (1991). Well, I still love golf simulators, flight sims and complex turn-based strategies.
Soon I met the girl who would later become my wife, and for several years I visited her... to play Civilization or Colonization with her and her brother on the same computer. Her brother or I would lead, but we would make important decisions after a general discussion. I supported scientific research, my future wife - the development of the economy, my younger brother tried to solve all problems by military means.
After the appearance of my own home PC in 1992, I played a lot of Civilization, Civilization II (1996) and Colonization at home, so it is not surprising that my first article, published in the weekly "Computer Review" No. 39 for 1996, was dedicated to "Civilization" and Sid Meier. It was a heartfelt, but very bad article. With a bunch of factual errors, unverified data, etc. One of the readers of the publication, I still suspect that it was Sasha Ptitsya, wrote an angry letter to the editor, where he literally destroyed the article point by point.
Computer Review
In my defense, I can say that in 1996, the Internet in Ukraine was only available in some government buildings and large companies, and Google or Wikipedia did not exist at all, so searching for information and fact-checking took an incredible amount of time, literally hours. But this criticism worked in my favor, and since then I have been trying to carefully check my facts (not spelling mistakes, unfortunately I have a perpetual problem with this).
I almost missed Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri (1999), Civilization III (2001), and Civilization IV (2005). Over the years, I've cooled off a bit on turn-based strategies and have been busy publishing magazines, launching new editions, holding exhibitions and competitions, etc.
I returned to the series with Civilization V (2010) and have been playing Civilization VI (2016) a lot, especially after the updates Rise and Fall (2018) and Gathering Storm (2019), which finally fixed the game and added a bunch of interesting new mechanics. I even bought the Leader Pass for Civ VI, although of course I didn't have time to try all the leaders.
In 2021, a guy she had known for several years started visiting my daughter. They... played Civilization V on laptops, sometimes online. Yeah, I got it, we need to prepare for the wedding.
A few weeks ago, my daughter sent me a photo. Her husband is playing Civilization VI on his laptop, with my grandson sitting on his lap, watching with amazement and interest what is happening on the screen...
So yes, Sid Meier's Civilization is the "Civilization" of my life. This game has been with me for 34 years, and now I'm playing Civilization VII. And although I have a lot of complaints about Firaxis and Civilization VII, I like the game overall. As with any "Civilization", starting with Civ V, the studio needs to be given a year or two to work on the bugs, but Civ VII is truly the boldest experiment in the series' history, and Firaxis deserves credit for that.
I hope a big review of Sid Meier's Civilization VII will appear on Mezha next week.