CIVILIZATION 3

Genre	Turn based strategy
System	P II
Year	2002
Developer

CIVILIZATION 3

HISTORY

If you've read the Civ2 review, you'll know the story so far. Since it was published in '96, there has been a series of sequels of various types, including the Call to Power series and Alpha Centauri. Problems with the ownership of the Civilization name held things up, until, at long last, Sid Meier's Firaxis got the go ahead to produce the definitive next instalment.

SO WHAT'S NEW

The aim and basic mechanics of the game have remained unchanged. Indeed, in some way the latter have not only failed to improve over Civ2, but have actually got worse. More of that later. You still have to build and maintain a civilization over the period 4000 BC to mid 21st century. There are still rival civilizations vying with you for space and resources and you still improve your cities and armies through the discovery of new technologies. There are, however, two highly significant new game concepts which have profound effects on the gameplay and a host of more minor changes.

On the little stuff first, there are now many more races to choose from, both to play and as opponents. Each race, as before, has distinct characteristics and while they have more effect on both the way you play and play against them, they are not as well or deeply implemented as in SMAC, which is a pity. You can also choose to play against more than the standard seven rivals, though things get pretty crowded, even on the largest world. As for the units, not a whole lot of changes from Civ2, aside from on the graphical front, with fully animated models which actually point in the direction you want them to go, as per SMAC. Each race now has a unique unit which supposedly provides a big advantage over their contemporaries, though I remain to be convinced. For instance, the British have the Man 'o War sailing ship, which should rule the waves in the middle game. Unfortunately, there is a serious impediment to the development of naval power and overseas adventures, which I will cover later, so I have had little opportunity to test the ships out. On the subject of military power, Civ3 has gone the way of SMAC and disposed of the "one dead, all dead" stack rule, which has to be good news. Instead, the best defensive unit takes point and if it loses, the remainder of the stack takes collateral damage. Also, mobile units (those with more than one movement point) can, under certain conditions retreat from a battle once it has taken over 50% damage. Good for softening up a strong defensive position. All in all, the new rules and balancing of the units make for much better warfare.

In the cities, there aren't many changes at all. The improvements all do pretty much what they have done since the original Civ, with a few minor tweaks in the interest of balance. Some improvements have disappeared, such as the excellent Supermarket, while the Wonders have had a major overhaul. In addition to changes to the results (and requirements for the Great Wonders), there is now a whole bunch of Minor Wonders. These can be built several times, though only once per tribe and provide some important new abilities. The most important has to be the Forbidden Palace, which acts as an additional centre to your nation. This is vital in that it gives you another zero corruption point and properly positioned, it will have as major an effect on your progress as anything else in the game.

CORRUPTING INFLUENCES

Talking of corruption, this is, for my money, the game's greatest weakness. Whereas in Civ2 you could do away with it entirely in a couple of Political systems, now it remains proportional to distance from your capital (or Forbidden Palace) and even with all the appropriate improvements, cities on the edge of your civilization will remain largely unproductive. This means that establishing far flung outposts is no longer really worth it, and if you go on the rampage, there is seldom any point in keeping captured cities, so you end up razing them and taking the population as workers.

THE BIG STUFF

The most important changes are the introduction of the Culture concept and of strategic resources. Culture first.

Certain improvements, such as temple, library, colosseum etc., add culture points to their cities each turn. At steadily increasing totals, the radius of the sphere of influence of the city increases by a square. Thus a city can only produce from its immediately surrounding squares until it has acquired ten culture points and, other than the capital, this means it needs a temple. The effective production radius tops out at the two square radius as per all the other Civ games, but the steadily increasing sphere of influence has other effects. Firstly cities of rival civilizations can exist within the influence of each other and where one's culture greatly overshadows the other, there is a chance of the latter rebelling and converting to the other tribe. Culture borders also define national borders. Generally speaking, rivals will treat each others' borders with respect (other than in war) and won't try to build cities within them or hang round too long with military units. Furthermore, operating units inside someone else's territory comes with a couple of restrictions. Until you have built the minor wonder Battlefield Medicine, your units won't heal over time while within enemy borders and they won't be able to move as quickly, even on roads and rails, making it much more time consuming to invade and vanquish an enemy. All told, it is vital to keep your Culture points increasing and makes the Temple one of the first three buildings you must have in all cities.

However, the most significant change is in the way special resources work and in particular, the introduction of Strategic resources. The old special squares (extra food etc.) are still there, but now there are also luxury resources (wine, spices, ivory etc.) If these latter exist within a city's radius, then all you have to do to benefit from them is to run a road to them. All cities connected with it then accrue the luxury output of the square, adding to your citizens' happiness. However, should the square lie beyond your boundaries, then you can establish a settlement with a worker (now a separate unit from a settler, as in SMAC). This will need defending with a military unit, or else you risk losing it to raids from rivals or barbarians. The more luxury squares you have working for you the better, though having each additional repeat item produces less of an advantage, so if you can trade duplicates with your rivals, all the better.

Talking of trade, it's all change. Gone are the caravans of the earlier games. Now the only trade you can do is via the diplomacy screen. Thus no quick injections of research and gold and, more importantly, no acceleration of Wonder building. Now the only way to speed this up is with Leaders. These are created occasionally when an elite unit wins a battle. You can then either use this leader to build an army (up to four units working as one) or on getting it back to a city building a Wonder, you can complete it in a single turn.


Where it really gets interesting is with the Strategic resources. Firstly, these only become visible when you have appropriate technology. Horses appear once you have discovered the wheel, while iron turns up after you've cracked iron working. The trouble is, there is a good chance that there won't be a square within your borders, or indeed anywhere near. Unless you can lay hold of one, you won't, in the case of horses, be able to produce chariots or horsemen, and in the case of iron, anything more fearsome than axemen. Should your nearest and only available resource square be inside a neighbour's territory, war may be your only option, especially as there is likely to be a narrow window of opportunity before your rival uses the resource himself to improve his army. As the game progresses, you gain access to rubber, oil, saltpeter (for gunpowder), aluminium and uranium. Each is vital to your progress and without access to all, you will stand next to no chance of finishing in winning position.

NATIONAL DIFFERENCES

Another interesting new feature is the notion of nationality. Each of your citizens is held to be of your nationality, likewise those of rival nations. Thus, when you capture enemy workers, or cities, they retain their sense of nationality, which can lead to instability in the latter, and slower working in the former. A captured city will initially fall into unrest, with one or more citizens rebelling, requiring you to garrison forces there until the rebels have been quelled. In extreme cases, particularly with enemy capitals, the city may spontaneously revert to its original loyalties, taking with it all the units you put there to fight the rebellion. Gradually over the years, your own citizens will grow to outnumber the originals and loyalty will be guaranteed.

SUMMARY

This is a much more complex, demanding and difficult game than Civ2. Gaining control of and protecting Strategic resources; controlling and eventually minimising corruption; maintaining a steady increase in your culture; building Wonders without the benefit of caravans; fighting in enemy territory, all these make the game much trickier than before. Only on a couple of occasions have I been so far ahead of my rivals that I have been able to relax in the end game. Usually you are either fighting for your life or having to divert such resources to defence that you will find it very hard to build your spaceship before the game ends. Talking of the end, it is rather disappointing that there is no victory movie, not even of your spaceship setting off. Just a rather bare dialogue box informing you that you've won.

There were some bugs on initial release, but with patches up to 1.29, most of the main snags were ironed out.

Overall, I have to say that I am a little disappointed in Civ3, in that while it introduces some excellent ideas, the little things have been neglected. Why, for instance, does the GoTo order produce a large, unordered list of cities, when in SMAC you could select your destination based on any one of four criteria? Why no Fundametalist system, which would allow you to wage war at will? Why have we lost the ability to spot cities celebrating President's Day from the Cities window and why can't we now see what your total population is? Simple things, but bearing in mind Firaxis' attention to detail in their other games, I suspect that the polishing was left to the junior Joes, rather than Sid and Reynolds. It's still a must for Civ fans, but it could have been a little better, especially considering the wait.

PC ZONE	Can't say I agree with the score, but ...
GAME CENTRE	Part of their Top 40 games of the millenium!