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Sid Meier's Civilization III
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Graphics & Sound:
In the late 1980's a turn based strategy game named Sid Meier's Civilization was released for MS-DOS and it turned strategy gaming on its head. It took awhile for the Amiga version to be released, but when it finally was, I just couldn't stop playing it. By the time the follow up, Civilization II, was released, I had switched to using the Wintel platform, but that version just didn't have the charm of the original. With Sid Meier's Civilization III, though, the charm is back. And I'm hooked again. The graphics are definitely much nicer in the new Civilization. Units are richly animated, so when two units battle, or a worker or settler performs some task, you get to see an appropriate animation. Sound for battles and other activities is good, and the music is very well done. Scrolling the main map can be slow, at least on the hardware this reviewer tested the game on, but a mini map is provided that allows you to easily move to anywhere in the game world. Also, a patch has been released that seems to have helped scrolling speed somewhat. The program provides numerous settings that allow you to show as much or as little animation as you prefer, as well as hiding or showing informational icons, or streamlining the offered help or other prompts. |
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Gameplay:
Civilization III has that amazing quality few games have, where you have to take just one more turn in order to see what's going to happen next. The basic premise of the game is simple: Discover the world, research new technology advances, and use the resources at hand to dominate the world. Or, if you'd prefer, you can try to be the first civilization to reach Alpha Centauri. And this sense of discovery is what is so compelling and will keep you coming back game after game. When you first start a new game, you have only one unit: a settler. You use the settler to establish your first city. Once founded, a city can produce other units, and it can contribute resources like food, shields, and gold. Food is used to feed the city's inhabitants, as well as to add new population to it. Shields contribute directly to production, and allow you to build units, structures, and wonders. Gold is used to fund research, which allows you to invent new units, wonders, structures, and even systems of government. Gold also pays maintenance for the units and structures you build. As you progress through the game, you attempt to found as many new cities as there are wide-open spaces. Neighboring civilizations often thwart this, so quickly spreading out is important. You build units like warriors and phalanxes to protect your cities, workers to improve them, and more settlers to expand your burgeoning empire. You also build structures like barracks and granaries to impact your population in sometimes subtle but important ways. Lastly, you build wonders to produce larger effects on your population. For instance, the Hanging Gardens make three citizens happy in the city is it built, and one happy in all other friendly cities. As the game progresses, keeping your citizens happy is often difficult, so picking and choosing the right structures and wonders is important. You can win at Civilization III by eliminating all of the competing civilizations, but the game offers another aspect of game play, where cities in your civilization produce culture. Culture can attract and influence cities belonging to rival civilizations, as well as greatly aid in your negotiations with them. And as you take over the other civilizations' cities, if your culture is more valuable than theirs, the rival's former citizens will be less likely to revolt, and more likely to want to become a citizen of their new country. Certain aspects of previous versions of Civilization, such as having to move caravans all over the map in order to establish trade routes, have been eliminated altogether. Now, it's simply a matter of connecting cities and civilizations together in order to share or trade resources. There are other changes that have been made that streamline the game, and make it much more enjoyable.
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Difficulty:
The game offers six difficulty levels, and you can customize and tailor new games to your particular taste. Like previous incarnations of Civilization, when you begin a new game you can choose from various landform layouts and sizes, and from 16 different races for your civilization. You can also customize an existing race, providing it with your own name. You can configure the number of rival civilizations you will encounter, and choose how you'd like for barbarians to factor into the game. Barbarians are sort of a civilization without a home. They randomly occur in the game, but you can customize how big a problem they really are. Since Civilization III offers numerous ways for you to win the game, most people should be able to find a comfortable playing style, and should be able to enjoy the game without too much trouble. |
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Game Mechanics:
Installation of Civilization III is painless, and once the game is up and running, the disc can be safely removed from the CD-ROM drive. Unlike previous versions, the game has a sparse though complete user interface. Gone are the large toolbars and imposing floatable panels. The majority of the display is taken up by the main map, with the needed icons available along the bottom, or in the upper left-hand corner. In the bottom left-hand corner is a small map of the entire world, and opposite of that is a status box that shows you information on the selected unit or terrain. The keyboard is fully supported, and most of the one-letter accelerators available are the same ones previous versions offered. The Civilopedia, an online encyclopedia of all things Civ, accompanies Civilization III. From just about any screen in the game, you can view entries on units, advances, structures, wonders, or game concepts. The included manual is exhaustive, although it doesn't duplicate the Civilopedia. It covers every screen of the game, and describes all of the game's features in great detail. Civilization III includes an editor that allows you to create your own maps and scenarios. Considering how popular this feature was in Civilization II, there should be lots of user created mods available for this version, which extends its playability for the foreseeable future. Civilization III really doesn't offer anything new, but it does return to the original game's addictive game play, and it offers solid graphics and sound. Advisor's and rival civilizations are not necessarily any smarter then they were in the first Civilization or in Civilization II, but they prove adequate for the task. What this game does offer is endless replayability, since you can customize the game in so many ways, and no two games play out exactly the same. You can create your own scenarios or download them from the Internet, which extends game play even further. All in all, this is the greatest Civilization ever created. You'll be hard pressed to take just one last turn. |
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-Gordy, GameVortex Communications AKA Gary Lucero |
Minimum System Requirements:
Win9x/ME/2000/XP, P2 300 (500 recommended), 32MB RAM (64MB recommended), 500MB HD Space, 4x CD-ROM, DirectX 8.0 compatible sound and video card, keyboard, mouse. |
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Test System:
Windows XP Professional, 450Mhz Dual Pentium III, 256MB RAM, GeForce with 32MB RAM, SoundBlaster Live! Value, 32x CD-ROM. |
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