So, what has GOG planned for this anniversary? Will we finally see CIV I, CIV II and CIV V on GOG?
Please GOG, be civilized and give us some more Civilization this month!

30 years of civ and ghandi jokes.... go figure

Love me some Civ

Uncivilised GOG with no Civ 1 & 2.

Civ 1, the most important strategy video game in the history.

More than likely... Nothing! Absolutely nothing!

Personally, I finally want Civ V to be released on GOG! It's long overdue!

Man, I'd love to buy all of them here. It'd be even nicer if Civ 6 also got a DRM-free release but I'd be content even if just Civ 1 and 2 came to GOG. Civ 5 would be a nice bonus.

Wow.

So I never got into Civ series. It's hard for me to get into these without a fixed campaign.

Is it entirely sandbox or is there some kind of campaign?

The Civ games, like most 4X games, are more about you essentially creating your own story in a dynamic environment. You can try to mimic the paths of real-world civilizations or you can create alternate history for yourself, though either way, it's usually very difficult to get everything in the way you want it (just like real history).

If you prefer story in your games, I recommend checking out Stellaris. It's a 4X/grand strategy game that has a lot of Civ's aspects but it also has a decent amount of story content inside of it that dynamically appears depending on how you play. this is doubly so if you buy the story pack DLCs.

Also, Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, along with the Endless Space games, would also be worth checking out at some point as both have a hefty amount of lore and storytelling that unfolds as you play.

Either way, though, 4X and grand strategy are more like strategy sandboxes where you are the one making the story rather than the devs writing one for you. It's more akin to a very complicated and automated version of board games like Risk. They're not necessarily for everyone but they're absolutely rewarding to play once you get the hang of it. I just recommend sticking with it long enough for it to truly sink in because eventually, it becomes addictive and immensely fun.

The story is you found your first city, play a few more turns, then wonder why it's suddenly the next morning.

More seriously, there's no story or campaign- it's just a straight up strategy game of building and expanding a civilization, competing with other civilizations, and eventually working towards one of several possible victory conditions (ranging from uniting the world through diplomacy to wiping out the rest of the civilizations and reigning from atop a pile of skulls).

Interesting bit of Civ trivia: the "Gandhi bug" is actually an urban legend. The reality is that all the AI's were programmed to become more aggressive once they had nuclear weapons, and it was just more noticeable with Gandhi due to how peaceful he was prior to getting nukes.

The campaign is part of the game itself.
Civilization is not a sandbox game, you can obviously try what happens if you don't develop technology, and start just fooling around. You can even get relatively far that way too, as surrounding events are random, but you can't win the game by playing a sandbox game.

There are several ways to win the game, and which one you attempt to achieve also defines how your campaign will be like. Obviously the game doesn't give you any tips or feedback, you need to do it on your own.

You can try to achieve world domination by conquering all other countries, in which case it is easier to build fast-moving military and do it early in the game, when other countries haven't spread out far and wide on the map yet. Or if you try to achieve victory by building a space ship to Alpha Centauri, you need to develop science and have many cities building different things in the technology tree, and in the end different space ship components.

So which winning state you are trying to achieve is also going to define how the game will be for you and how you play it. It's different from let's say SimCity, where you can just keep building stuff for fun. Such a mode isn't part of Civilization, the original game at least, I haven't played every sequel so maybe one of them has it.

What unfortunately doesn't get mentioned that much when discussing Civ are the scenarios, which are like mini-campaigns ('mini' only in civ terms of course)
https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_scenarios_in_Civ5

Most of these are surprisingly excellent. I think it's because turns are days/weeks instead of years, and the topographical detail is much better due to the smaller scale, that it makes for a much more authentic experience. At times I've found myself enjoying these scenarios more than the 'main' game.

Some of my personal favorite here include
[url=https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Scramble_for_Africa_(Civ5)]Scramble for Africa[/url]
where I try to survive as the Boers in South Africa surrounded by the english, germans and zulus, and
[url=https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Vikings_(scenario)_(Civ4)]Vikings[/url]
where you have to raid England and France as the Vikings.

* goddammit gog, fix your blasted forum code!