Sid Meier's Civilization (PC, 1991)
Graphics-7 Sound-6.5/7# Control-6.5 Challenge-6/7* Story-6
Level Design-7 Frustration-6/7.5* Fun-7 Originality-9
Overall Score-7
*Warlord (default is chieftain or very easy; can be higher in both if you get an unfair starting position)
#MT-32 sound
+
Huge scope (spans a huge period of time and (for the time) variety of units, tech and buildings; early 4X game - explore, expand (settling and improving cities, researching tech, hiring military), exploit (mining, farming, hunting, forestry and deforestation, irrigation and road building - the latter affects unit speed and trade), exterminate)
Difficulty options (5 levels - very easy (chieftain - hints are provided on what to do next in this mode although they can be turned on in other modes too) to very hard; affects game length, starting money, citizen happiness, computer player handicaps (food storage, unit+city improvements cost multiplier, research cost table (lightbulb increment per advance/invention)), human player research cost table, how much a CP will demand in payment for peace, barbarian/neutral enemy strength, etc.: https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Difficulty_level_(Civ1))
14 different nations/tribes (roman, german, indian, aztec, etc) - can also create one (though really you are just renaming the currently selected one) by pressing left or esc then enter at the selection screen
World creation/map generation option (can customize (3 settings for each) land mass size, temperature, climate and how old the planet (earth) is). If you pick Start a New Game the game will generate a random world for you, and if you pick Earth it will generate a replica of planet earth as it looked in 1991
Create new settlements wherever you like
Scouting (unexplored terrain is represented by black tiles - inspired Dune 2 and various other games)
Advisors (science advisor approaches you and asks you what invention you want to pursue nex; military, intelligence, attitude (happiness), trade) and historians (these give you an idea of how you're doing compared to other nations in 5 categories - tech/advancement, happiness, power, size, wealth)
Diplomacy (can choose to ally with other tribes depending on their leader's personality and how well you're doing in terms of tech/economy/military relative to them, can ask an ally to declare war on any of the other civilizations - also lets you discover which other nations are in play) and trade (technology or resources).
Diplomat units can make contact with other nations for trade or alliances, or they can be used to spy, sabotage, steal tech, establish an embassy for information trade (also get reports when opponents take out other opponent cities) or incite a revolt. They can also bribe military units to make them convert to your side
Terrain effects on combat and city development
Random encounter tiles (villages; can be barbarians who'll attack the nearest city or a reward (resource, unit, tech, additional city), Oubliette (RPG, 1977) seems to be the first video game with encounters that can be either enemies or treasure) - later used in HoM&M. If they are within farming range of your first (?) city they will always lead to a reward (unless playing on a higher difficulty?)
Can manually trigger revolutions to change your system of government (different systems have different pros and cons - for example a republic or democracy allows for having a "we love the president" day which makes unhappy people neutral and makes at least half the population happy+allows for more efficient land exploitation but they can't refuse a peace offer and having military units in cities won't decrease unhappiness)
Can choose the number of opponents (2-6) - Risk?
Pretty nice intro and (science victory) ending cutscenes
Various keyboard shortcuts (build, irrigate, mining, sentry, shift+s=save, shift+d=disband, center screen on unit, wait, shift+a=auto production, etc.)
Palace feature (at certain population thresholds you're given the opportunity to upgrade, can choose between three designs for each part of it)
Can win through technological advancement (when a spaceship containing colonists from any civilization reaches the nearby Alpha Centauri star system) or conquest. Being completely peaceful isn't doable however
Can establish trade routes via caravans (these can also be used to speed up the building of a wonder of the world)
Wonders (these provide a gameplay benefit such as the Lighthouse letting your ship units move one additional map square per turn) - later used in Age of Empires
Land development mechanic (fortress, irrigation, mine, railroad, road, clean up pollution; performed by settler units - have to balance these vs food production (unlike with most other non-citizen units) as they'll require food for maintenance)
Town screens (more visually pleasing representation of a city) - King's Bounty
Auto-save option (happens at specific intervals only though, such as 2000 BC, 1000 BC, etc)
In-game encyclopedia (doesn't explain icons however)
Mini-map and world map (go into a city menu to see the latter; latter was used in King's Bounty)
Tech tree (advances/inventions) - later used in Dune 2 and HoM&M
Wait command (King's Bounty?)
Can fortify units for a def bonus and not having to decide what to do with them each turn
Occupation/starvation mechanic - If you cover a tile which can produce resources and is in range of a city (1-2 tiles away in 8 directions) with one of your units, the target city won't be able to produce resources from it (so if it's a despotism civilization, all but one of its defending units will disappear)
Can use money to speed up the production of a unit or building to a single turn (can't set an amount to pay per turn to speed it up to a lesser extent however)
Can sell buildings
Animated portraits/busts for NPCs during dialogue with emissaries/diplomats (these approach you automatically when near an opponent)
Can switch from building/recruiting something to something else while keeping the previous production progress
Can build bridges across rivers (but not single ocean tiles)
Can speed up wonder building using caravans (move it into the city building the wonder)
Basic leveling system for military units (if a unit wins a battle it has a 50% chance of becoming a veteran unit)
Progress recap after winning (shows at what year each civ was destroyed if you did that, shows when and where civs founded different cities)
+/-
Save at any point (4 slots; shows your name and tribe name+what year it is only)
Can't choose to rule alongside an NPC ruler or a human ally
The different tribes are all the same in terms of starting inventions, tech trees and development tables - only the personality of the CPU controlled leader differs (three traits: aggression (friendly, normal, aggressive), development (perfectionist, normal, expansionistic), militarism (civilized, normal, militaristic); http://www.civfanatics.com/civ1/cia/). Each civilization automatically starts with irrigation, mining, roads and then 1-2 random bonus inventions chosen from the first level of inventions
Starting positions are not equal on an Earth map however - the english get the worst deal being isolated on a small island, while babylonians are surrounded by other civs
The only exception to the above is that Russians can sometimes start with 2 settlers and if you conquer their capitol there might be civil war among them
It's worth using cheap units with decent offense to attack stronger ones with a weak defense early on (a Militia attacking a Chariot in clear terrain has a 50% chance to win while only costing 25% as much)
Have to place a city next to the ocean to build boats
Disasters (SimCity; can completely protect against most of them through technology here) - they seem pretty rare until the late game
Environmentalist element (minimizing pollution and global warming)
Pinning/zone of control mechanic (makes most units unable to move to a tile next to an enemy unit if they were next to an enemy unit unless they're entering or exiting a city; similar to Military Madness/Nectaris where a group of units asserting a zone of control also do more damage). Note that non-diplomat units can ignore this restriction if the destination square already has a friendly unit, even if it's a diplomat unit, so the latter can be used to lead other units past enemies
The tutorial messages encourage isolating and conquering other civilizations if they are weaker militarily
It doesn't really make sense that you can choose between technologies to research unless you learned of them through other civilizations
If you find or trade for an advance/tech which you are currently researching then the spent research points are wasted (can be annoying, but it's good in that it might give players an unfair advantage based on luck if you could reallocate the points into something else)
Right click moving the active unit takes some getting used to
Opponents' diplomats sometimes act like they have multiple personality disorder (we laugh at your civilization - let's make peace!)
It seems you can make money faster by selling certain city improvements like the great wall repeatedly
Can't overexploit a land tile - resources don't run out
Can't build or even finish building a wonder if an opponent beats you to it
Funny how there's no corruption under democracy and a strong religious presence is the best way to keep the most happy under it
Need an embassy in an opponent's city to check their military stats (still can't check individual units though?)
Saved money is shared between cities while food is not - however a city still needs to have the resources to maintain its units and buildings otherwise these will automatically disappear*
Pyramid is OP (immediately switch to any system of government)
-
Control/interface issues (can't examine a tile next to a blinking/active unit with the mouse as it'll move the unit instead, sometimes bad pathfinding when using the "go to" command instead of manually moving units per turn (units can even go attack a nearby unit when using it!), can't cancel or change what you're researching after choosing (clicking "help available" outside of the list picks the bottom choice), clicking on the side menu outside of the text also ends the turn if the "end turn" message is displayed there, no in-game explanation of various things (the difficulty settings or the different tribes when starting a new game, what effects an invention has on your civilization, etc; no tooltips in the city menu - have to look up what the icons mean), can't investigate tiles from within the city menu or make the camera center on military units by clicking on them there, have to go quit the game and restart it to load a saved game, weird how clicking outside of something interactive in a city menu will close that menu, no warning that you're about to lose a settler unit due to not having enough food before it happens, somewhat sloppy hit detection on city tiles and fortified units that you're trying to reactivate (for the latter you can click the unit and then the portrait in the window that comes up instead), icons read slower than numbers in the city menu (but are easier to understand for kids I suppose) - it would've been good if you could display it like the city status menu instead, can't see if you're currently gaining or losing money in the main view's sidebar, can't click on a unit to check its stats (besides their home city which is the city that pays their maintenance) - also can't check the def bonus from terrain for an enemy unit by clicking on it (it would be best if the game had an option to show the likely outcome of a battle before it happens like in Master of Monsters), can't tell exactly how many turns you have left to research something, menus don't wrap around, the city status screen could've given a better overview of important buildings like the palace's location and if you're about to lose a building in a city, can't see the tech tree in-game - would've helped to see it when picking the next advance to research as well as see how long each one will take, have to click on a unit to see if it's a veteran)
If you stack or fortify more than one unit on one (non-city and non-fortress) tile and it's attacked and destroyed, all the others on that tile are as well! (doesn't happen when losing an attacking unit in a stack however)
*without warning or being given a time window of 1-2 turns before it happening (there could also have been a debt built up that you paid later if you had banking or something)
Weird and frustrating how 3 superior units in a row can lose to a phalanx on grass (phalanx in a city, musketeer, frigate) and later on a musketeer on plains at 1/3 attack str wins to a legion in a city while one at 100% strength and in the mountains loses - makes the game feel very luck-based at times (at one point I instead had a rifleman take out about 10 tanks in a row while fortified; this can happen because units either win or lose completely (they have no additional HP) so you can't wear a unit down),
Can't cancel a move
Other tedious aspects (the poor sight range of most units when it comes to spotting enemy units (even frigates can barely see ahead) can lead to frustrating surprise attacks since the CPU knows where your units are - one solution could've been making militia only cost maintenance/cause unhappiness for a city at every 3rd one built or so and to have them available throughout the game (or quick to build watch towers or certain units seeing further), not being able to break peace or renegotiate due to your system of government when opponents place several military units near your cities despite the peace and can even get your units stuck if there's not much land due to zone of control (can lead them using diplomats though), several copy protection checks in-game, building up new cities from scratch gets a bit tiresome further into the game - there could've been a way to speed up resource and food production via your other cities besides speeding up wonder construction (the CPU's tendency to sell off all city improvements even on easy/warlord makes it an even bigger issue - especially combined with surprise attacks), corruption (black arrows) can hinder your trade a lot if you lose your palace - if you do have it it mainly affects very remote cities relative to the capitol (the city with the palace in it), units supported by a city are also lost when their home city is lost - you could've been given one turn to try and move them to another city at least since you might lose a city to a surprise attack)
Pretty shallow combat without attack animations (no separate battle screens - battles are based on dice rolls and stats, no flanking or surround mechanics, no morale, no hit points meaning the loser dies immediately, no sphere of influence (Langrisser/Warsong - allies do more damage), )
Some trial & error (can't capture a city if it's at 1 population with military units - only destroy it (can use a diplomat and incite a revolt with money however), invisible fog of war - most units can only see non-neutral/critter enemies from 2 tiles away, random (?) barbarian raids via the sea - you tend to only have a couple of turns to react after they disembark (you'll want to settle fairly close to the sea since it lets you irrigate the land tiles around your city (otherwise have to build next to an irrigated tile each time), opponents tend to fully destroy a the improvements of a city that they've conquered even on easy/warlord, triremes are lost at sea if they end their turn 2+ tiles away from land - in their description but there could've been a warning, figuring out which river tiles have +1 production/shield, only the three most lucrative trade routes that a city has established can be in effect at the same time, corruption will rise without a palace - no warning if you've lost yours, certain things such as End of Turn toggle aren't explained in the manual (supposedly shows a button for it after moving all units letting you make final adjustments before you let your opponents move - if turned off then the game auto-ends the turn after having moved your military units))
Can't queue up city building orders or settler land improvement orders (Herzog Zwei (1989) actually had some although they were baked into a single command)
Can't move people nor food between cities
No in-game music besides jingles and during certain events (diplomat encounters, upgrading your palace)
The advisors' advice on what to build isn't that good in various situations
Weird how for example the German diplomat seems to be wearing 1800s clothes in 3500 BC and be accompanied by people from a different civilization
Unskippable intro cutscene
Can't upgrade non-veteran units without making them fight (or into a later form such as phalanx->rifleman)
The AI cheats in various ways (gets wonders earlier, triremes can cross open ocean without being lost, teleporting caravans, more?)
Notes:
-Tech tree (advances chart): https://forums.civfanatics.com/attachments/civ_1_advances_chart-jpg.411701/
-Keyboard shortcuts: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/any-kb-commands-shortcuts-for-civ1.10174/
-There's hidden rule, activating after 1 AD, which forces every nation that has more than one city to betray you as long as you have the most powerful civilization and do not have nuclear weapons (can be edited out manually with a hex editor)
-Best wonders (Pyramids, Colossus, Great Library, Women's Suffrage, Hoover Dam, J.S.Bach's Cathedral, Manhattan Project, Darwin's Voyage; Great Wall and UN if pacifist): https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/best-civ-1-wonder.54383/
Early game tips (very easy-easy):
-Build a phalanx first if you started with Bronze Working, then a settler (don't spend time on mines or irrigation until you have 5+ cities)
-Irrigation can be done on Deserts, Grasslands, Hills, Plains and Rivers
-Granaries help your cities grow faster as you only need to fill the second half of the food box up to create another population point
-Place outer cities tactically on terrain with a def bonus (not on grass)
-For food considerations (pop growth), the best tiles are: Desert with oasis: 2 food, Forest with game: 2 food, Grassland (any type): 2 food, Ocean with fish: 2 food, Tundra with game: 2 food
-Convert woods to plains after you have a republic or democracy (since money is more important than production resource/shields later on)
Bugs:
-https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Cheating_(Civ1)
-It seems the game sometimes forget to warn you about unhappy citizens in some cities while under democracy, leading to the government being overthrown and your civ falling into anarchy for a few turns unless you have the pyramids
-Froze once (was going into the build menu in the late game)
-The enemy AI sometimes glitches out and doesn't expand properly
Level Design-7 Frustration-6/7.5* Fun-7 Originality-9
Overall Score-7
*Warlord (default is chieftain or very easy; can be higher in both if you get an unfair starting position)
#MT-32 sound
+
Huge scope (spans a huge period of time and (for the time) variety of units, tech and buildings; early 4X game - explore, expand (settling and improving cities, researching tech, hiring military), exploit (mining, farming, hunting, forestry and deforestation, irrigation and road building - the latter affects unit speed and trade), exterminate)
Difficulty options (5 levels - very easy (chieftain - hints are provided on what to do next in this mode although they can be turned on in other modes too) to very hard; affects game length, starting money, citizen happiness, computer player handicaps (food storage, unit+city improvements cost multiplier, research cost table (lightbulb increment per advance/invention)), human player research cost table, how much a CP will demand in payment for peace, barbarian/neutral enemy strength, etc.: https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Difficulty_level_(Civ1))
14 different nations/tribes (roman, german, indian, aztec, etc) - can also create one (though really you are just renaming the currently selected one) by pressing left or esc then enter at the selection screen
World creation/map generation option (can customize (3 settings for each) land mass size, temperature, climate and how old the planet (earth) is). If you pick Start a New Game the game will generate a random world for you, and if you pick Earth it will generate a replica of planet earth as it looked in 1991
Create new settlements wherever you like
Scouting (unexplored terrain is represented by black tiles - inspired Dune 2 and various other games)
Advisors (science advisor approaches you and asks you what invention you want to pursue nex; military, intelligence, attitude (happiness), trade) and historians (these give you an idea of how you're doing compared to other nations in 5 categories - tech/advancement, happiness, power, size, wealth)
Diplomacy (can choose to ally with other tribes depending on their leader's personality and how well you're doing in terms of tech/economy/military relative to them, can ask an ally to declare war on any of the other civilizations - also lets you discover which other nations are in play) and trade (technology or resources).
Diplomat units can make contact with other nations for trade or alliances, or they can be used to spy, sabotage, steal tech, establish an embassy for information trade (also get reports when opponents take out other opponent cities) or incite a revolt. They can also bribe military units to make them convert to your side
Terrain effects on combat and city development
Random encounter tiles (villages; can be barbarians who'll attack the nearest city or a reward (resource, unit, tech, additional city), Oubliette (RPG, 1977) seems to be the first video game with encounters that can be either enemies or treasure) - later used in HoM&M. If they are within farming range of your first (?) city they will always lead to a reward (unless playing on a higher difficulty?)
Can manually trigger revolutions to change your system of government (different systems have different pros and cons - for example a republic or democracy allows for having a "we love the president" day which makes unhappy people neutral and makes at least half the population happy+allows for more efficient land exploitation but they can't refuse a peace offer and having military units in cities won't decrease unhappiness)
Can choose the number of opponents (2-6) - Risk?
Pretty nice intro and (science victory) ending cutscenes
Various keyboard shortcuts (build, irrigate, mining, sentry, shift+s=save, shift+d=disband, center screen on unit, wait, shift+a=auto production, etc.)
Palace feature (at certain population thresholds you're given the opportunity to upgrade, can choose between three designs for each part of it)
Can win through technological advancement (when a spaceship containing colonists from any civilization reaches the nearby Alpha Centauri star system) or conquest. Being completely peaceful isn't doable however
Can establish trade routes via caravans (these can also be used to speed up the building of a wonder of the world)
Wonders (these provide a gameplay benefit such as the Lighthouse letting your ship units move one additional map square per turn) - later used in Age of Empires
Land development mechanic (fortress, irrigation, mine, railroad, road, clean up pollution; performed by settler units - have to balance these vs food production (unlike with most other non-citizen units) as they'll require food for maintenance)
Town screens (more visually pleasing representation of a city) - King's Bounty
Auto-save option (happens at specific intervals only though, such as 2000 BC, 1000 BC, etc)
In-game encyclopedia (doesn't explain icons however)
Mini-map and world map (go into a city menu to see the latter; latter was used in King's Bounty)
Tech tree (advances/inventions) - later used in Dune 2 and HoM&M
Wait command (King's Bounty?)
Can fortify units for a def bonus and not having to decide what to do with them each turn
Occupation/starvation mechanic - If you cover a tile which can produce resources and is in range of a city (1-2 tiles away in 8 directions) with one of your units, the target city won't be able to produce resources from it (so if it's a despotism civilization, all but one of its defending units will disappear)
Can use money to speed up the production of a unit or building to a single turn (can't set an amount to pay per turn to speed it up to a lesser extent however)
Can sell buildings
Animated portraits/busts for NPCs during dialogue with emissaries/diplomats (these approach you automatically when near an opponent)
Can switch from building/recruiting something to something else while keeping the previous production progress
Can build bridges across rivers (but not single ocean tiles)
Can speed up wonder building using caravans (move it into the city building the wonder)
Basic leveling system for military units (if a unit wins a battle it has a 50% chance of becoming a veteran unit)
Progress recap after winning (shows at what year each civ was destroyed if you did that, shows when and where civs founded different cities)
+/-
Save at any point (4 slots; shows your name and tribe name+what year it is only)
Can't choose to rule alongside an NPC ruler or a human ally
The different tribes are all the same in terms of starting inventions, tech trees and development tables - only the personality of the CPU controlled leader differs (three traits: aggression (friendly, normal, aggressive), development (perfectionist, normal, expansionistic), militarism (civilized, normal, militaristic); http://www.civfanatics.com/civ1/cia/). Each civilization automatically starts with irrigation, mining, roads and then 1-2 random bonus inventions chosen from the first level of inventions
Starting positions are not equal on an Earth map however - the english get the worst deal being isolated on a small island, while babylonians are surrounded by other civs
The only exception to the above is that Russians can sometimes start with 2 settlers and if you conquer their capitol there might be civil war among them
It's worth using cheap units with decent offense to attack stronger ones with a weak defense early on (a Militia attacking a Chariot in clear terrain has a 50% chance to win while only costing 25% as much)
Have to place a city next to the ocean to build boats
Disasters (SimCity; can completely protect against most of them through technology here) - they seem pretty rare until the late game
Environmentalist element (minimizing pollution and global warming)
Pinning/zone of control mechanic (makes most units unable to move to a tile next to an enemy unit if they were next to an enemy unit unless they're entering or exiting a city; similar to Military Madness/Nectaris where a group of units asserting a zone of control also do more damage). Note that non-diplomat units can ignore this restriction if the destination square already has a friendly unit, even if it's a diplomat unit, so the latter can be used to lead other units past enemies
The tutorial messages encourage isolating and conquering other civilizations if they are weaker militarily
It doesn't really make sense that you can choose between technologies to research unless you learned of them through other civilizations
If you find or trade for an advance/tech which you are currently researching then the spent research points are wasted (can be annoying, but it's good in that it might give players an unfair advantage based on luck if you could reallocate the points into something else)
Right click moving the active unit takes some getting used to
Opponents' diplomats sometimes act like they have multiple personality disorder (we laugh at your civilization - let's make peace!)
It seems you can make money faster by selling certain city improvements like the great wall repeatedly
Can't overexploit a land tile - resources don't run out
Can't build or even finish building a wonder if an opponent beats you to it
Funny how there's no corruption under democracy and a strong religious presence is the best way to keep the most happy under it
Need an embassy in an opponent's city to check their military stats (still can't check individual units though?)
Saved money is shared between cities while food is not - however a city still needs to have the resources to maintain its units and buildings otherwise these will automatically disappear*
Pyramid is OP (immediately switch to any system of government)
-
Control/interface issues (can't examine a tile next to a blinking/active unit with the mouse as it'll move the unit instead, sometimes bad pathfinding when using the "go to" command instead of manually moving units per turn (units can even go attack a nearby unit when using it!), can't cancel or change what you're researching after choosing (clicking "help available" outside of the list picks the bottom choice), clicking on the side menu outside of the text also ends the turn if the "end turn" message is displayed there, no in-game explanation of various things (the difficulty settings or the different tribes when starting a new game, what effects an invention has on your civilization, etc; no tooltips in the city menu - have to look up what the icons mean), can't investigate tiles from within the city menu or make the camera center on military units by clicking on them there, have to go quit the game and restart it to load a saved game, weird how clicking outside of something interactive in a city menu will close that menu, no warning that you're about to lose a settler unit due to not having enough food before it happens, somewhat sloppy hit detection on city tiles and fortified units that you're trying to reactivate (for the latter you can click the unit and then the portrait in the window that comes up instead), icons read slower than numbers in the city menu (but are easier to understand for kids I suppose) - it would've been good if you could display it like the city status menu instead, can't see if you're currently gaining or losing money in the main view's sidebar, can't click on a unit to check its stats (besides their home city which is the city that pays their maintenance) - also can't check the def bonus from terrain for an enemy unit by clicking on it (it would be best if the game had an option to show the likely outcome of a battle before it happens like in Master of Monsters), can't tell exactly how many turns you have left to research something, menus don't wrap around, the city status screen could've given a better overview of important buildings like the palace's location and if you're about to lose a building in a city, can't see the tech tree in-game - would've helped to see it when picking the next advance to research as well as see how long each one will take, have to click on a unit to see if it's a veteran)
If you stack or fortify more than one unit on one (non-city and non-fortress) tile and it's attacked and destroyed, all the others on that tile are as well! (doesn't happen when losing an attacking unit in a stack however)
*without warning or being given a time window of 1-2 turns before it happening (there could also have been a debt built up that you paid later if you had banking or something)
Weird and frustrating how 3 superior units in a row can lose to a phalanx on grass (phalanx in a city, musketeer, frigate) and later on a musketeer on plains at 1/3 attack str wins to a legion in a city while one at 100% strength and in the mountains loses - makes the game feel very luck-based at times (at one point I instead had a rifleman take out about 10 tanks in a row while fortified; this can happen because units either win or lose completely (they have no additional HP) so you can't wear a unit down),
Can't cancel a move
Other tedious aspects (the poor sight range of most units when it comes to spotting enemy units (even frigates can barely see ahead) can lead to frustrating surprise attacks since the CPU knows where your units are - one solution could've been making militia only cost maintenance/cause unhappiness for a city at every 3rd one built or so and to have them available throughout the game (or quick to build watch towers or certain units seeing further), not being able to break peace or renegotiate due to your system of government when opponents place several military units near your cities despite the peace and can even get your units stuck if there's not much land due to zone of control (can lead them using diplomats though), several copy protection checks in-game, building up new cities from scratch gets a bit tiresome further into the game - there could've been a way to speed up resource and food production via your other cities besides speeding up wonder construction (the CPU's tendency to sell off all city improvements even on easy/warlord makes it an even bigger issue - especially combined with surprise attacks), corruption (black arrows) can hinder your trade a lot if you lose your palace - if you do have it it mainly affects very remote cities relative to the capitol (the city with the palace in it), units supported by a city are also lost when their home city is lost - you could've been given one turn to try and move them to another city at least since you might lose a city to a surprise attack)
Pretty shallow combat without attack animations (no separate battle screens - battles are based on dice rolls and stats, no flanking or surround mechanics, no morale, no hit points meaning the loser dies immediately, no sphere of influence (Langrisser/Warsong - allies do more damage), )
Some trial & error (can't capture a city if it's at 1 population with military units - only destroy it (can use a diplomat and incite a revolt with money however), invisible fog of war - most units can only see non-neutral/critter enemies from 2 tiles away, random (?) barbarian raids via the sea - you tend to only have a couple of turns to react after they disembark (you'll want to settle fairly close to the sea since it lets you irrigate the land tiles around your city (otherwise have to build next to an irrigated tile each time), opponents tend to fully destroy a the improvements of a city that they've conquered even on easy/warlord, triremes are lost at sea if they end their turn 2+ tiles away from land - in their description but there could've been a warning, figuring out which river tiles have +1 production/shield, only the three most lucrative trade routes that a city has established can be in effect at the same time, corruption will rise without a palace - no warning if you've lost yours, certain things such as End of Turn toggle aren't explained in the manual (supposedly shows a button for it after moving all units letting you make final adjustments before you let your opponents move - if turned off then the game auto-ends the turn after having moved your military units))
Can't queue up city building orders or settler land improvement orders (Herzog Zwei (1989) actually had some although they were baked into a single command)
Can't move people nor food between cities
No in-game music besides jingles and during certain events (diplomat encounters, upgrading your palace)
The advisors' advice on what to build isn't that good in various situations
Weird how for example the German diplomat seems to be wearing 1800s clothes in 3500 BC and be accompanied by people from a different civilization
Unskippable intro cutscene
Can't upgrade non-veteran units without making them fight (or into a later form such as phalanx->rifleman)
The AI cheats in various ways (gets wonders earlier, triremes can cross open ocean without being lost, teleporting caravans, more?)
Notes:
-Tech tree (advances chart): https://forums.civfanatics.com/attachments/civ_1_advances_chart-jpg.411701/
-Keyboard shortcuts: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/any-kb-commands-shortcuts-for-civ1.10174/
-There's hidden rule, activating after 1 AD, which forces every nation that has more than one city to betray you as long as you have the most powerful civilization and do not have nuclear weapons (can be edited out manually with a hex editor)
-Best wonders (Pyramids, Colossus, Great Library, Women's Suffrage, Hoover Dam, J.S.Bach's Cathedral, Manhattan Project, Darwin's Voyage; Great Wall and UN if pacifist): https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/best-civ-1-wonder.54383/
Early game tips (very easy-easy):
-Build a phalanx first if you started with Bronze Working, then a settler (don't spend time on mines or irrigation until you have 5+ cities)
-Irrigation can be done on Deserts, Grasslands, Hills, Plains and Rivers
-Granaries help your cities grow faster as you only need to fill the second half of the food box up to create another population point
-Place outer cities tactically on terrain with a def bonus (not on grass)
-For food considerations (pop growth), the best tiles are: Desert with oasis: 2 food, Forest with game: 2 food, Grassland (any type): 2 food, Ocean with fish: 2 food, Tundra with game: 2 food
-Convert woods to plains after you have a republic or democracy (since money is more important than production resource/shields later on)
Bugs:
-https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Cheating_(Civ1)
-It seems the game sometimes forget to warn you about unhappy citizens in some cities while under democracy, leading to the government being overthrown and your civ falling into anarchy for a few turns unless you have the pyramids
-Froze once (was going into the build menu in the late game)
-The enemy AI sometimes glitches out and doesn't expand properly