Civilization III

9.1
Excellent

Gameplay	10	"A fantastic game with some real awesome interface decisions really..."
Graphics	8.5
Sound	9.0
Value	9.0

By Contributor

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You've heard of it, you've bowed your head in reverence, you know if you let it, it will consume you entirely it can only be Civilization.

Civilization is a bit of an enigma, in that it has no main game or story line. Instead you set up a map and play away, there is no story mode to follow. Lucky thing is you wont find yourself wanting a story line, so it doesn't matter. But if you have to have a story then this is it. Match Wits against the greatest leaders of the world in an all-out quest to build the ultimate empire and rule the world. That's the story, is it enough? Yes it is.

Civilisation III will be automatically familiar to Civilization I/II players but with more of everything, but for those who are new to the franchise the game comes with a hefty manual that explains everything very well. The basic premise of the game is to build a civilization, which sounds much easier than it is. Over the course of building your civilization you will have to fend of Barbarians, other Nations, Pollution and Civil Disorder, and sometimes all at the same time.

Your city is built via a settler you can then produce armed units or make more buildings to develop the city. At first your town will be small and it will take many rounds to build things, anywhere up to 200 rounds for a building, but as time passes and you develop the land around your city the development time drops until things only take between 5-10 rounds to build, and 1-2 rounds for units.

Units are broken into 2 types, Armed Forces and Non-Armed Forces. At the beginning of the game you are given 1 settler who is used to establish your first city, in the first city is a worker who can then be used to develop the country side of your town. Only your first town comes with a worker, every other town established afterwards you will have to make your own.

As mentioned you can make armed forces, at the start depending on your nation you will most likely only have Warriors available, who are represented by a bulking man with a club, they will be used to defend you until more units become available.


Wonders make a return, but this time around they are more strategically important and can make or break a nation. Also you can no longer rush or instantly complete wonders, you have to let them build alone.

Wonders as mentioned are critically important now, some wonders will enable every city on the same continent (under your control) to have a library or barracks, which cuts down building time as you do not have to build them, and also makes that city instantly more powerful as it has more shields that it normally would without the extra buildings.. The effects may not sound like much but they can influence your nations power greatly if you have them.

In Civilization II you could launch a rocket into space in the 1500's if your civilization was advanced enough, the chances of doing that in Civ III are extremely slim as the upgrade times are no longer and there is a far greater amount of technology's to research for the advancement of your civilization. Also you can now upgrade units in cities with barracks, so no longer will you have a reason why you have warriors running around in the 1900's with riflemen. Upgrading units cost around 20-100 gold depending on the upgrade. An upgrade from Musketeer to Riflemen is less than a Cannon to Artillery.

War is still done the same, you move units into enemy units squares and they battle, but new to Civ III are Leaders. Units also have more ranks, they are Regular, Veteran and Elite. Sometimes in battle, when your Elite units when a round they may produce a leader, this happens rarely but when it does it is time to a joyous dance of some form. Leaders give you the ability to create true armies, so instead of having 10 knights, you can group them under a leader to create an army, doing so means that you can attack with multiple men at once and an army has a large amount of hit points, if your army has 3 regular warriors its hit points will be 9 instead of 3 for each individual.

Civilization may sound like a war game, which to most degrees it is, but the thing is you don't have to build a single attacking unit in the entire game if you are smart and lucky enough. Not building any units may sound bad, but because you do not have to kill your enemies to win its not, also most of the time the enemy will be more than happy to align with you.

Winning the round can be accomplished by just sending a spaceship to Alpha Centuri before anyone else, or if you become the leader of the United Nations. You can also win by controlling 2/3 of the world, or crushing your enemies, so the means to victory are plentiful and not just there to take up space on the box like a lot of games.

Civ III is a nice looking game, but isn't amazing, but this franchise was never made from its graphics. At best the graphics are an updated Civ II. The views are the same, almost everything pertaining to graphics are the same but they just look better. It is a bit sad that the developers didn't give such a wonderful game a bigger facelift but the graphics get the job done.

Something that is missing from the game is voice acting, this is even more of a shame. Civ III would have shone even more brightly if your units talked or made a sound, and even more so if when communicating with other nations they talked back. A reason that replies from units is missing may be due to the fact that they would get repetitive fast, and in the end having you tear your hair out wanting to make them shut up, so it might have been a wise choice to go without. The games music is very quaint, it isn't shoved down your throat or very load and vibrant. Some of the score is very similar to the tunes played in Age of Empires 2, which is a good thing. All the musical scores are very nice and never get repetitive. Everytime you go into a new ages a new piece of music plays. Out of them all the most irritating set of music is for the modern age, which sounds kind of like techno and seems out of place.

The sound effects are also very withstanding and hold up well, each unit type has a different sound and of different strength. The difference between a Galley and a Galleon is very substantial, a Galley makes a small amount of noise sailing the sea where as a Galleon makes a much loader sound representing its size and prowess very well.

The last-ability of this game is hard to grade, firstly it has no multiplayer at all, and also you may find yourself giving in prematurely for many reasons, but the fact stands it is a very last able game. A single round on a medium sized map can take anywhere from 5 to 20 hours to complete, and even more if the map size is larger. That may not sound like much but it is very substantial.

Also Civ III is a game that will stand the test of time, in a few years you will still find yourself playing this game even if it is on an odd occasion, so the last-ability is there just not in the usual manner.

System Requirements - Operating System 95/98/ME/2000/XP. Processor: Pentium II 300mhz (Pentium II 500mhz recommended). Memory: 32MB RAM (64 MB recommended). Hard Disk Space: 500 MB free hard drive (+50 MB for swapfile) CD-ROM Drive: 4X Speed or higher. Video: Direct X 8.0-compatible sound card Direct X: Direct X version 8.0 (included) or higher.

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