Civilization III
Sid Meier's Civilization III is a turn-based strategy computer game by Firaxis Games, the sequel to Sid Meier's Civilization II. Also called "Civ 3" for short, the game is the third generation of the original Civilization. The game offers highly evolved gameplay in terms of both mechanics and strategy. Unlike the previous versions of the game, Civ III was not designed by Sid Meier, but by Jeff Briggs and Soren Johnson, another game designer and a programmer at Firaxis respectively.
Overview
Among its enhancements, Civilization III introduced many new victory conditions, including a "diplomatic" option (that is, the victory is achieved by becoming the world leader by constructing the United Nations Wonder), as well as a "cultural" option involving building culturally strong cities with many improvements such as temples and universities. The game also allowed for "domination" victories, where players with two-thirds of both the world's population and landmasses can win, helping gamers skip over 'mop up' operations once it became clear that victory was certain.
Two expansion sets have been published for Civilization III: Play the World and Conquests. Play the World adds the ability to play against other human players, and it adds numerous features to the original release. Conquests offers eight historical playable scenarios, ranging from Mesopotamia to WWII in the Pacific. In addition to adding many more features to the game, they also add a total of 15 new playable civilizations.
Magazines, reviewers and strategy game fans consistently hail Civilization III as one of the best strategy games ever made. The entire Civilization series (including the first two versions) is the greatest selling strategy game series of all time.
Civilizations
Every civilization starts with certain special abilities. These include a unique unit which only that civilization can construct, as well as other specialties.
Changes from Civilization II
Wonders
Unlike Civilization II, there are Great Wonders, which can only be built by one civilization, and Small Wonders, which can be built once by every civilization.
Also there are a few name and properties changes in wonders from Civ II. For example,
- Darwin's Voyage was changed to Theory of Evolution.
- Women's suffrage was changed to Universal Suffrage.
- Sun Tsu War Academy was changed to Sun Tzu's Art of War.
Citizen ethnic background
Every citizen in every city now has a ethnic background that will not be changed from war. For example, if America captures a city from Germany, the citizens in that city, although under America's control, are still Germans. (Although subsequent citizens are Americans.) As a result of this, recently captured cities are hotspot of revolution.
Army
Players can now build an army with a leader. Leaders may be produced when one of your elite units is victorious in battle. Once you have an army, it is possible to build the Military Academy (provided Military Tradition has been researched). The Military Academy allows a player to produce leaders in the city that the wonder was built. The advantage to having an army is that the army consists of three units. The best unit in the army will always be used for battle situations, this is extremely advantageous because it allows for maximum unit effect. The one draw back of the army is that units in the army no longer receive battle experience, as a result it is advisable to level the units up to elite before forming the army.
Fan Reaction
With the popular success of Civilization II fans had high expectations. Borrowing features from Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri and the Civilization: Call To Power series, it had other innovative features such as resources.
The initial release of the game had some bugs and glitches. Some commented gameplay was poor due to the lack of features, such as having to move every unit individually as opposed to as a stack. The game editor, which many fans were looking forward to, was virtually useless and did not even have a minimap. The first patch came very soon after its initial release and other patches were released subsequently. The corruption system that renders cities far away from the capital almost useless has also been critized by many.
Some felt that features included in the Play the World expansion should have been included in the original game. These features include several new civilizations, scenarios, and a multiplayer mode. The multiplayer mode had significant problems and most users were never able to get it to work without the later patch released for it.
The Conquests expansion contains everything found in Play the World, but adds a few more new civilizations, gameplay elements, units, editor functions and scenarios once again.
Overall, the reaction to Civilization III has been positive. It's won many "Game of the Year" and "Strategy Game of the Year" awards and continues to win fans and followers.