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, a game designer, and Soren Johnson, a game programmer.

Civilization III, like the other Civilization games, is based around building an empire, from the ground up, beginning in prehistoric times and continuing through the modern day. Your civilization is centered around a core of cities, which provide the resources necessary to grow your cities, construct city improvements, wonders, and units, and advance your technological development. You must balance a good infrastructure, resources, diplomatic and trading skills, technological advancement, city and empire management, culture, and military power to succeed.

Gameplay

Empire Management

The game focuses around a core of cities that provide the necessary prodution to advance your empire. The cities contain a certain number of citizens that draw production from the surrounding land. Shields are used to build improvements, units, and wonders. Food is used to grow your cities. Each citizen requires two food per turn to survive, and excess food is stored in the storage box. Once the box fills up, it is emptied and the city gains a citizen. Commerce is used to allocate money to your treasury. You can take a certain percentage of your money and allocate it to scientific research or to the happiness of your citizens. Your citizens have a certain mood (happy, content, unhappy, or resisting). If you have more unhappy than happy citizens, the city falls into civil disorder. All prodution ceases and no food is stored when a city is in civil disorder, and if a city remains in civil disorder for too long, improvements may be destroyed. Any commerce that does not go into scientific research or your happiness slider is placed in your treasury. The worker unit is used to improve the land. Mines increase shield production, irrigation increases food, and roads increase commerce, in addition to tripling movement speed of all allied units using them. Later in the game you can build railroads, which provide instantaneous movement for all allied units.

Scientific research

Another major feature of gameplay is scientific research. The technology tree is divided into four ages (Ancient Age, Middle Ages, Industrial Age, and Modern Age) and each age requires that you research specific technologies to advance to the next age. There are several technologies that are not required to advance to the next age, although they provide useful bonuses that are often essential for good empire management, or may provide different alternatives to empire management. A science slider is used to allocate money away from your treasury and into scientific research, and can be set at 10% intervals. City improvements such as libraries, universities, and research labs also increase scientific advacement, as do some wonders (such as Newton's University).

Culture

Each city in Civilization III has a cultural rating, which is the city's influence over local terrain. When a city is created it has a culture rating of 1, which allows influence over the closest 8 squares only (a sphere of influence 1 square in radius). As the city's culture rating increases, so does its sphere of influence, bringing more territory under the player's control.

In addition to influencing territorial borders, culture serves two other purposes. One is allowing the peaceful takeover of nearby foreign cities by influencing its citizens through your culture. Conquest through culture is preferable to military conquest due to the fact that it does not lower your reputation in the global community. In addition, there is a cultural victory condition which can be met by either increasing a city's culture rating to 6 (25,000 culture points) or by having a collective societal culture point total of 100,000+ points.

Culture is increased turn-by-turn based on what city improvements and wonders, such as a Temple or the Hanging Gardens, have been built in that city.

Civilizations

Every civilization starts with certain special abilities. Every civilization has two traits that give them bonuses that help in the corresponding area of gameplay. This also determines what two technologies you begin the game with. Also, Civilization qualites determine different abilities that a civ has. For example, a militaristic civ's units gain combat experience faster. Each civ also has a special unit that was specific to that civilization in history.

Wonders

Like in Civilization II, there are Great Wonders that can each be built only once during the entire game for just one civilization. They usually provide a major benefit your entire empire. Civilization III also added Small Wonders, which can be built once by every civilization. Small Wonders have, for the most part, a sociological requirement to construct them, as well as a technological requirement. Battlefield Medicine, for example, requires that five of the player's cities have hospitals before building.

Ethnicity

Every citizen has a ethnic background that is not changed by conquest. For example, if Persia captures a city from America, its citizens, although under Persian control, are still American, though subsequent citizens are Persian. Also, with time, existing citizens can be naturalized into the culture of the ruling civilization, their ethnic background shifting to represent this.

Foreign citizens become unhappy if their ruling country is at war with their country of birth. This gives recently-captured cities a high potential for rebellion.

Armies

If a Great Leader has been produced (through a victorious Elite unit) it can be used to form an Army. Once you have had a Leader, and Military Tradition has been researched, a city is able to build the Military Academy, which allows that city to produce more armies without the need for battle. The advantage to having an army is that the army consists of several units (three under ordinary circumstances, four if your civilization has built The Pentagon). The best unit in the army will always be used in battle situations, and this is extremely advantageous because it allows for maximum unit effect. The one drawback of the army is that units in the army no longer receive battle experience; it is advisable to level the units up to elite before forming the army.

(Note: This last point seems to have been changed in Conquests with units in armies now gaining combat experience. It is still however impossible to upgrade units in armies or remove them once added. Also new to Conquests, an Army still uses the movement of its slowest-moving unit, but it adds one to that number. For example, an Army of Legionaries (1 movement point) will have 2 movement points.)

Resources

In Civilization III, there are three types of resources. Each type of resource can be found only on certain types of terrain and can provide a bonus to shields, food, or commerce if found within the city radius and worked by a citizen. Bonus resources exist specifically for this purpose, while luxury and strategic resources provide other benefits as well. Luxuries and strategic resources may be traded, while bonus resources may not.

Luxury resources make your people happier when they are brought into a city via a road or railroad. Each luxury makes at least one content citizen happy. The effects of luxuries do not stack. For example, if you have two wines connected, only one will provide a bonus; the other would be available for trading. Building a marketplace greatly increases the effect of luxuries on that city beyond the second luxury. Keeping citizens happy is important lest the city fall into civil disorder.

Strategic resources are resources required to train certain units, or construct certain city improvements or wonders. A certain technology is required to unlock these resources, and are often necessary for good empire management. Perhaps the most important resource is iron, which is useful from the moment it first appears on the map until the end, as it is a prerequisite for constructing railroads along with coal.

Corruption

Though corruption existed in Civilization I and II, it has been made much more severe in Civilization III. The productivity of a city is measured in 'shields'. Shields are converted into units or structures, with each unit or structure costing a certain number of shields. Shields can have two colors: blue or red. The blue shields represent actual production, while red ones represent production lost to corruption. In general, the further a city is from the capital, the greater the corruption will be. It is not uncommon for far-flung cities to have red shields that far outnumber the blue. The level of corruption is also dependent on the system of government of a civilization. Uniquely, in the communist system, corruption is spread equally amongst all cities.

There are a number of ways to combat corruption. These include building city improvements such as the courthouse and the police station. Connecting a city to the capital through a valid trade route (e.g. roads, a harbor or an airport) also helps to reduce corruption to a certain degree. There are also two small wonders that can be built that reduce corruption. They are the Forbidden palace and the Secret police. They eliminate all corruption in their host city. Originally these wonders functioned as second palaces in the cities in which they were built, but subsequent patches removed their function as a second pole for corruption, and merely made them reduce overall corrupion in every city. Corruption will never reduce shield production to zero, but one shield per turn is virtually useless.

Reception

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 strategic resources that could be monopolized, adding another twist to gameplay. The game is subject to a never-ending series of changes, leading users to be very demanding. The developers have publicly mentioned that fan input plays a strong role in development of new features.

The initial release of the game had some bugs and glitches. Some players complained that gameplay was poor for various reasons. Some criticized Civilization III for its lack of features found in other Civilization-like games, most notably Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri (SMAC). Some of the features that SMAC had but were not carried forward included elevation, a working UN system, a social engineering system and a 'group movement' command to simplify managing units on the map. Others were upset by underpowered features, such as the game editor, which could not be used to create customized* scenarios, something that was possible in Civ II. Another serious concern regarded the new corruption system, which rendered cities far away from the capital almost useless. Many players who were used to dominating the game by creating massive empires called the corruption penalties too harsh. Others saw them as a good way to increase the game's difficulty, to make the game both more challenging, and realistic for players with far-flung empires.

The first patch came very soon after its initial release and other patches were released subsequently, improving gameplay significantly. The patches also managed to add in certain features, such as the aforementioned group movement command.

The Play the World expansion included many features fans wished to have included in the original game, including multiplayer gaming and new gaming scenarios. The multiplayer mode had significant problems and most users were never able to get it to work without the later patch released for it. Most complaints about features that were added later, however, are countered by the fact that including all the bug fixes and features that were included later would mean the game's release would be delayed by months, if not years. Civ III, like many games, exemplifies the dilemma of game developers who must balance an early release of the game with a more polished product.

The Conquests expansion contains everything found in Play the World, but adds a few more new civilizations, gameplay elements, units, editor functions and scenarios.

Overall, the reaction to Civilization III has been positive. It has won many "Game of the Year" and "Strategy Game of the Year" awards and continues to win new fans.

Expansions

Two expansion sets have been published for Civilization III. These are Play the World and Conquests. Play the World adds multiplayer capabilities, and it adds eight new civilizations and some new units to the original release. Conquests offers eight historical playable scenarios, ranging from Mesopotamia to WWII in the Pacific. Many of these scenarios have resources, improvements, wonders, music, and even government types that are specific to the scenario, especially the Mesoamerican and Sengoku Japan campaigns.

Mods

Some fans turned to so-called "mods" ("modifications" of the original game), to add features they would have liked to see in the original release. A popular one is the Double Your Pleasure mod (DYP), which doubles nearly all elements of the original game in quantity: technologies, civilizations, units. Several themed mods have sprung up, focussing on one period of time or fiction, such as The Ancient Mediterranean mod (TAM). Since the Play the World expansion, mods can be installed without actually modifying the original game. Fan websites such as Civfanatics, Apolyton, Civ3 Maps and Mods*, or CDGroup offer the platform for developing and distributing mods in a way that few games have seen to date.

• Civ 3 maps and mods also has a "units" section which lets you submit or download units you or other people have created.

External links

• Official Civilization III website (http://www.civ3.com/)
• MobyGame's entry on CivIII (http://www.mobygames.com/game/sheet/p,3/gameId,5289/)
• Civilization Fanatics' Center (http://www.civfanatics.com/)
• The Gogf Civilization Forums (http://s4.invisionfree.com/The_Gogf_Civ3_Forum/index.php?)
• Apolyton Civilization Site (http://apolyton.net/)
• CDG Civ3 Site (http://www.cdgroup.org/forums/tbs/civ3/)
• Strategic Command Center (http://www.stratcommandcenter.com)

Modpacks

• Double Your Pleasure mod (http://civ3.bernskov.com/)
• The Ancient Mediterranean mod (http://www.tam.info.ms/)
• Rhyes of Civilization Expanded (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=111977)
• Warhammer Fantasy Mod (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=66060)
• Master of Myrror Fantasy Mod (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=79607)
• Pentagenesis Modpack (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=102263)

Terrain Graphics

• Snoopy's Terrain Graphics (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=68702)
• Warpstorm Watercolor Terrain (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=27787)
• Rhye's Terrain Graphics (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=69369)
• Womoks Terrain Graphics (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=21248)

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