[Spoilers] Shallow Old Human Tourist Hit the beach!

[shallow_thought]

As observant lurkers will have noticed, we're naming our cities after games we have played. For those that I've nominated, I'm going to write up a highly personal description of the game, what I enjoyed (or didn't) about it and what it meant to me. People are very welcome to add their own memories.

So, lets start with the capital, where there was a cross-team consensus as to the name.

Game: Civilization (series)
Released: 1991-
First played: 1996?
Personal rating: Undisputed Classic

Pretty much the only choice for the capital name, on this site at least. I'm not going to write much about this series - feels a bit pointless when you can just read the rest of RB ! Personally, while I remember playing Civ II briefly at university (artillery so OP) I didn't really get into the series until later. In fact, it wasn't strictly a Civ game at all that grabbed my attention - but that's a story for the second city...

I played quite a lot of Civ III, but the one I've spent most time with is Civ IV. I'm a mediocre player by RB standards (fortunately for my ego, those standards are pretty high). I didn't game much in my late teens and early twenties. Then, for over a decade, I played games, up to and including Civ IV as a way to relax, commonly with a beer, cider or wine in hand. Other than an occasional game as the Aztecs I don't think I used slavery; slavery is bad, right ? It's a sign of how good the design was that the game was so playable at that level, as well as providing a deep challenge for people who actually dived into the mechanics. Unfortunately, it left me as a bundle of ingrained lazy bad habits, as I was about to realise.

I was disappointed by Civ V (although I personally give the designers credit for trying something new and for the way that they looked at previous good games for inspiration). In fact, it was while looking for reviews to help me decide whether it was worth buying the expansion that I stumbled across a website by some guy called "Sullla". His review saved me some money, which was nice. Unfortunately, much of the rest of his website was dedicated to telling me that I was doing things wrong. The faint but pervasive sense of shame at how bad I was at Civ (and I'm considered a smart guy in my day job) has remained with me ever since . It did inspire me to at least try to take the game more seriously, fighting my way up to being able to cope at Emperor, although at heart I'm more of a Mucking about at Monarch (or even P***ing about at Prince, if I'm on holiday) kind of guy. I've really enjoyed lurking around the fringes of the MP community, but would never have the time or dedication to actually be a leading turnplayer. Being part of this team is the peak of my career so far, and I'm very happy in my roles of cheering the team on and rambling about stuff in spoiler tags to keep the post count up.