Episode: 3820
Title: HPR3820: Introduction to Gaming
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3820/hpr3820.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 05:57:00

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 3,820 for Friday the 24th of March 2023.
Today's show is entitled Introduction to Gaming.
It is hosted by Ahuka and is about 17 minutes long.
It carries a clean flag.
The summary is, how I first got started with computer strategy games.
Hello, this is Ahuka, welcoming you to Hacker Public Radio and another exciting episode of Hacker Public Radio.
Yeah, so I'm starting something new.
This began with a conversation on mastodon, and we've talked about mastodon before.
I hope many of you are there, a wonderful federated alternative to Twitter.
I got talking about gaming, and I said, you know, I was thinking I'd like to maybe do a series about some of the games that I like,
and the response I got was pretty positive, so I'm doing it.
So this is the first of what will probably be many episodes.
Now, I'm just going to lay out a few principles, so to speak, and the first principle is I play games for fun.
I make no claim to be the ultimate expert.
You know, if you want to say you're better at that game than I am, wonderful.
That's not anything that matters to me much one way or the other.
Now, I may not be the ultimate expert.
I have learned a few things, and I want to share the things I've learned.
But, you know, for any game I discuss, there are people who know a lot more than me, including the people who made the games.
So I play for my own enjoyment. I think you should play games for your own enjoyment.
I'll give some tips about gameplay, mention places you can go for more information should you want more.
And that's fine. I don't play at the highest difficulty settings, and only move up the settings if the level I have been playing at is no longer fun for me.
Now, I hope in this series I'll introduce some people to games they will enjoy, or maybe remind them of games they haven't played in some time.
But for me, it's just a game. It's not a moral statement. It's not a vindication of my manhood or, you know, whatever crazy kind of things you do.
It's a way I relax. And now that I'm retired, I can do more.
Now, I'm going to go back to where it really kind of started for me.
I'm not going to say it was the first game I ever played. It was the first game that I got hooked on.
And that was civilization. I picked up a copy of the very first civilization.
Now, I don't know exactly when I picked that up. I know the game came out in 91.
And by the time Civ 2 came out in 96, I already had a lot of hours in.
And I do remember it was the Windows version that I got, even though the very first release was DOS.
So, you know, 92.93 maybe? I don't know.
Now, I've got some links in the show notes to additional stuff.
You can take a look at the Wikipedia page for the whole civilization series.
But what is civilization? It is an example of a turn-based 4X strategy game.
Now, what is 4X? 4X means explore, expand, exploit, exterminate.
And it introduced me to the experience of what all civilization diards call the one more turn phenomenon.
Many times I saw the sun rise to my pleat surprise because I've been so focused on playing the game I paid no attention at the time.
Of course, I was younger than and could get away with it. These days, staying up until 10 pm is kind of an all-nighter for me.
Now, the idea is that you build a civilization from the beginning.
Starting as a wandering tribe of nomads in 4,000 BC, and finally ending with sending a ship full of colonists to Alpha Centauri.
Along the way you build settlers to found new cities, build buildings to improve your cities, and military units to defend your cities, or to attack someone else's cities.
Then there are wonders you can build along the way, starting with the seven wonders of the ancient world, but adding more wonders as you progress through times, such as Michelangelo's Chapel or the Eiffel Tower.
Some of these wonders give you empire-wide effects, as contrasted with the buildings that apply to a single city, and have to be repeated in each city where you want that benefit.
And there is a technology tree where you learn new technologies that help you advance, unlocking new buildings you can build, or new military units you can train.
If you build your empire successfully, and are the first to build the spaceship and land your colonists on Alpha Centauri, you win the game.
Of course, there is an alternate path to victory. That's called wiping out everyone else.
And for some people, that's the preferred option. Do it whatever way you like.
Now the graphics were pretty primitive. This was a DOS game.
1991, relatively low-powered computers at the time, so it didn't look like a whole lot, but the gameplay was great.
And if the actions I mentioned, like researching technologies, building units, etc., sound familiar, it's because the template created by civilization was very influential on games that came later.
So that by now they're considered standard game elements in a wide variety of games.
Now there was a classic strategy guide for the game called Civilization, or Rome, on 640K a day.
And that was written by a couple of editors from computer gaming world, Johnny Wilson, and Alan Emmerich.
I know I had a copy at one time, it seems to have gone away, and to be fair I wouldn't have used for it now.
But if you have an interest, it can perhaps be found in used bookstores.
As for the game itself, it is long out of print.
Now I have a box set called Sidmeyer Civilization Chronicles, which contains the versions from Civ through Civ 4, and you might find a used copy.
But you can also play it online in a browser at Play Classic Games. There's a link in the show notes for that, which is an invaluable site if you're interested in reliving some of your early game experiences.
I can only recommend it for seeing what the games were like.
You know, they run the old games in a version of DOS box, and while there is a way to save your game, and for something like Civ that really matters,
it looks to me like you're sharing the save space with other users, so I'm not certain your save files will last for a long time there.
Now, Civ has always been a long game. After all, you're building an empire over the span of some 6,000 years.
In any case, the game was originally a 2.6 megabyte DOS game, and it looks like it.
But remember that many DOS games back then fit on a couple of 640k floppies.
By the way, Play Classic Games is a great resource if you want to check out Classic Games, and all they ask is that you buy them a beer, which apparently translates to about 10 euros.
So, of course, I made the donation.
However, if you really feel the need to play the game, there is another alternative.
There is a site called myabandonware.com that has a lot of the old games, including the first civilization.
You can download it from here, then install DOS box, which is available for a number of platforms, including Linux and Windows, and run the game in there.
But you will need to get a copy of the manual.
You see, in those days, the way they did copy protection for many of SID's early games was to ask a question, which could only be answered from the manual.
Now, fortunately, it's available online. The SIV's fanatics site, link in the show notes, has the manual online, and the page even healthily has a section at the bottom with all of the copy protection answers.
Now, myabandonware.com asks that you buy them a coffee. I only cost about three bucks, so I bought them a cup of coffee.
So, gameplay.
You begin a new game by choosing the level to play at. There were five levels.
Chieftain, Warlord, Prince, King, and Emperor.
At the first three levels, the human player has an advantage over the computer players in terms of population growth, resources, resource, research, speed, etc.
At the king level, the players are all at about the same level for these things, and at the emperor level, the computer players have the advantage.
Then you choose how many opponents you will have and how active the barbarians will be.
Barbarians exist solely to give you problems by attacking your cities and units, but you can make them more or less active as you choose.
Then you choose your civilization from the list.
Every civilization is slightly different. Later versions of civilization would differentiate them a whole lot more.
But the slight differences here in terms of their propensity to be aggressive and militaristic versus peacefully developing their cities and doing research.
You can read all about the different civilizations at the Siv fanatics site, link in the show notes.
Finally, you choose the name of your leader. There is a default choice, but you can change it.
For example, the default name for the leader of Romans is Caesar, but you could make a diocletian, if you wish, or even Fred.
Once all of your choices have been made, the game begins.
You have a tribe of nomads ready to settle down, and a small section of the map around them is visible.
You don't see the rest of the map until you explore it, so it's all dark until you send units there to see what's going on.
Now if you press the letter B on your keyboard for build, your tribe of nomads will build a city.
Then you choose what you want the city to work on. A militia unit will help with defense, or you could build another settler to get a second city.
Now, if you get attacked by either barbarians or another civilization, you will wish you had a military unit for defense.
Now you could also build a barracks first, which takes additional time, but it means the units you build here have veteran status, which makes them stronger.
If you build another settler, it will reduce the population of the city by one, which slows your building progress, but getting more cities is the way to build your empire.
Then you need to decide what to research, what technologies will you need first.
So you can see that this game is all about making choices, and the choices you make have consequences.
As an example, I started a game as the Mongols, figuring that would mean one less blood-thirsty opponent.
In my first city, I built another settler right away, and used that to create my second city.
Then I started on a barracks, so I could produce veteran defensive units.
But before the barracks was even done, Germany showed up and wiped me out completely. That was a very short game.
So, you take chances, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but whatever choices you make, you have to live with.
Now, as you explore the map, more of it becomes available, and there are a number of reasons to do so.
First, you want to find good sites for additional cities.
Second, you want to find out who your neighbors are.
If the Mongols or the Greeks are anywhere near you, you can expect war, and probably sooner rather than later.
In that case, building units and preparing is a good idea.
The Mongols are the worst, and a preemptive war to exterminate them is a good idea.
The third reason you want to explore is that there are villages on the map.
And when you explore them, you may get a reward, like money, a unit, or a tech.
But watch out, you might instead unleash a horde of barbarians.
Now, we generally, as versions of civilization have gone on, start referring to these as goody-huts.
And every version of Sib has them, so interesting little wrinkle.
Units and buildings, the ones that are available are the same for every city, both for you and the computer players.
Wonders, on the other hand, are unique. Only one of each can be built.
So you are in a competition with the computer players for each one you want to build.
There are three ages in this game, ancient, middle ages, and industrial, and each age has seven wonders.
So there's a total of 21 wonders that can be built.
You unlock the ability to build a wonder through the technologies you research.
For instance, when you research bronze working, you unlock the ability to build the colossus, which increases your trade revenue.
But while that is an ancient wonder, you could build it later if no one has built it.
However, it's rare for wonders to exist for too long without being built by someone.
And if you build it later, you may not get full benefit.
The trade effects of the colossus expire upon the discovery of electricity, for example.
So, conclusion.
Siv, as it's referred to in the short, or Siv won for this, was great in its day.
I'd have to say it really hasn't aged all that well to see what I mean, check it out at Play Classic Games.
Now, it did spawn a whole ecosystem of Forex Games, including all the later versions of Siv, and all of the main gameplay elements are here.
Now, I lost many hours playing this game, but when Siv 2 was announced, I was eager to see how it improved upon the classic.
So, I've got lots of links in the show notes.
You can get some additional information about this, about how the game was made, and so on.
But for now, this is Ahuka for Hacker Public Radio signing off, and as always, encouraging you to support Free Software. Bye-bye!
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