Where's My Life Gone??? (Civilization 3 (PC))

Member Name: jatkinson100

Product:	Civilization 3 (PC)
Date:	13/03/05 (362 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Addictive., Easily the greatest strategy game out there., Stops you doing that boring stuff like talking, sleeping, going out, eating, etc.

Disadvantages: Very, very addictive., You may well lose your pertner and job.

Civilization III is another great improvement on Sid Meier’s original, and classic, Civilization. The basic premise of the game, for those of you familiar with the game, is just the same, but has new and disparate ways to win. For those of you who are about to be talked into loving this game, the aim of the game is to make your civilization the most powerful economic, cultural and / or armoured civilization on the planet.

Getting Started:
First of all, you need to decide on the world your going to take over. You can choose from tiny to vast; the larger the game playing area, the longer the game will take. You can also choose on conditions, such as weather (arid to wet), age of the planet (how mountainous will it be) and the types of landmass, with vast continents, small archipelagos and islands, strips of land connected by narrow land masses, or anything in between. As with most of the getting started section, you can choose to make it a surprise for yourself by choosing [random] in some or all of these areas.

Now you can choose the tribe or civilization that your going to take from a small, tribal village to, you hope, a world superpower. Civilization III has some new and some old civilizations; you can choose from: England; Germany; Russia; France; Rome; Russia; Greece; the Zulus; Egypt; China; Japan; India; the Aztecs; America and Persia. You can even make up your own civilization creating a leader, race and name of your own choosing; I love to make Yorkshire take over the rest of the world! Once you have developed your skills, take a look at some of the civilization specialities; certain tribes have their own special units, like the Aztec Jaguar Warrior, which moves further than ordinary units in one go, or the English Man O’ War, a formidable fighting ship.

Of course, you need someone to beat. You can choose the computer players that will take you on individually, by choosing their names from a drop down menu, or, again, clicking random to let the computer decide who will fall beneath your mighty armies. You can play against all of the other civilizations, or just a few; it’s up to you.

The Dawn of your Civilization:
You begin the game on a, mainly, black screen. Right there in the middle is you! You begin with a settler, scout and worker (new for Civilization III). Your first aim is to find a place to begin your conquest. You do this with your settler. Move your settler to an area of the map with access to fresh water, traceable goods, like dyes, incense or furs, or fertile grasslands and get them to build your capital. There you can begin to learn new skills, choosing what civilization advance you want to concentrate on, like learning about the alphabet, religion or seafaring.

Once you have a home, the worker can be asked to make certain improvements to your city’s area; you can get him to build roads, irrigate farmland or mine for minerals. I really liked the Civilization III improvement of getting them automated (the computer decides what your workers will do) rather than having to get them to do each job yourself.

Your scout will now be busy searching out these new lands, trying to find, or avoid, attention from other tribes near you, sneaking past or away from rouge barbarians, and taking a look at the many small villages, the inhabitants of which may give you maps of their area, some money or teach you new skills. Meeting other civilizations will give you a chance to buy or trade. Initially, until you have got a road or sea link with them, you can only trade knowledge. As with the special units, each civilization starts of with a certain number of skills. In the previous incarnations of Civilization, it was luck as to what knowledge you got at the start of the game, but here each tribe starts with the same two or three skills each time, so Americans always begin with the alphabet, etc. Once you meet another race, you can go to visit their leader and see if you can buy or trade knowledge with them. A little guy, the Trade Advisor, in the corner of your screen will help you, letting you know how realistic your demands are; he’s great for getting the very best deal you can.

Building an Empire:
Each city can build various buildings and units, the amount of which will increase as you learn more, for instance, once you have discovered literature, you can begin to build libraries in your cities. The most basic units are warriors; slow and not particularly powerful, these are the bottom rung of the ladder in offensive and defensive terms. You do need to have units in your cities or they may be easily taken by the opposition, and military units keep the population happy and safe. To build another city, you need another settler, and swifter improvements to the road network require extra workers; all of these are built in cities.

As your Empire expands, look at the stuff you can build inside the cities. As your knowledge grows, look for the importance of the buildings and what they do. Once you have discovered pottery, for instance, you can begin to build granaries, which help your cities grow more quickly. You may also be able to build wonders, which will help your civilization no end. An example of this comes with the discovery of bronze working; once discovered, you can build the Colossus, which will increase the trade revenue from the city in which it is built. These may become obsolete with new discoveries, but are always very, very useful for a long time.

As your cities build settlers who found new cities, your civilization will quickly grow. You must bear in mind several things when founding cities, however. You can check, with a click of the right mouse button, what the ground will give you. For instance, mountainous terrain will help you build quickly (by producing many blue shields), especially once your worker has put a mine there, but won’t give you much, if any, food, so your city will not grow quickly. Cities founded on a river or lake will tend to grow quickly as they tend to have lush grasslands around them, but a floodplain or jungle may cause disease, making your population drop.

Spreading Out:
Your cities are creating cities and all players, old hands at or new to Civilization will see something new. Your cities are surrounded by a small line showing your cultural influence. Everything inside this line rightfully belongs to you and it your culture which is dominant inside it. However, you can make this line expand. By building certain buildings, like temples and libraries, as well as wonders, the amount of cultural output increases. Once this reaches 10, 100, 1000 and so on, your cultural influence expands; this makes the line get farther away from your city, bringing in extra lands, and, if your are close to the city of another race, you can take some of their cultural influence and make your empire larger. If you build temples, libraries and, later, cathedrals and universities in cities next to opposing cities, the citizens of these cities may overthrow their masters and become one of yours; of course, not enough culture in one of your towns and the opposite can easily become true.

Economics:
Each building and unit you create costs money to maintain; the bigger, better and more advanced it is, the more maintenance money it needs. However, by trading within your cities and mining for gold, you do get a steady income. Also, once you have road trade routes and, later, trade routes by sea and air, you can sell off some of your surplus luxuries (like dye, ivory, etc.) and resources (like iron, horses, etc.) to neighbours. In return you’ll get knowledge, money (lump sum or per turn) or return luxuries. The more luxuries you have or import, the happier your population, and the more you export, the more cash you have. You can you this cash to hurry production of buildings or units, or you can increase your spending on learning, making your knowledge of new skills come quicker.

Special Citizens:
Inside each city, you can choose to stop some of your citizens from working in the fields and change them into special citizens, with the responsibility to entertain (making your city a happier place), tax (increasing your money) or develop knowledge (making your discoveries come faster). If you have just invaded and taken a city, entertainers will help the newly acquired populace happier with the new regime, tax collectors will help you get through lean times, and scientists are a must if you are to stay ahead of the game scientifically. These special citizens are helped by buildings, so a tax collector collects more if there is a marketplace or bank in the town, entertainers are less necessary if there is a temple, coliseum or cathedral to keep the populace happy, and scientists become truly useful with the help of libraries, universities and research labs.

Getting Good:
The only tip I can truly recommend is to practice, practice, practice! You’ll learn all about which units are good against others, when to absorb another town and when to burn it to the ground, and how best to make allies and enemies.

Civilization III is all about getting the strongest army, the strongest culture and the strongest economics. This is tough! You must make decisions about when to expand and when to consolidate, how quickly you build or how slowly you dare take it. By starting off on the easier levels, your confidence will build until you dare take on the might of foreign powers on a more even playing field.

Winning the Game:
There are several ways to win the game, some new and some old. The most obvious way is to build an army a kill the opposition. This is pretty difficult as it’s not all about killing but making sure that your offensive units are aided by defensive units to hold the newly taken cities; quite a logistical task!

The new way is a cultural victory, and is probably the easiest! By having a war here and there, building quickly and taking other cities by force or cultural means, you can quickly take over the world by having 66% of the land within the borders of your culture. However, if this gets too easy for you, and on the lower difficulty levels it soon will, you can choose turn this victory off, giving you a longer game and more difficult challenge.

Improvements on Predecessors:
The graphics are far superior to any of the other Civilization games, and a million times better than the little squares that moved around the board on the original! However, they are poor compared to most other games, but Civilization III is all about the strategy and enjoyment of the game, not marvelling at how realistic and blood curdling the explosions are!

The larger number of variables on the terrain map do help you to decide on what playing field you are best at, and, if you decide to randomise the selection process, can give you a far sterner test.

The greater variety of weaponry, buildings and special units has really helped the game play and interest level, and makes you more attached to the civilizations for some reason.

It is far more interesting, with a greater number of options, discussing trade and peace treaties with the opposition!

Where it could be Improved:
As noted earlier, the graphics are still not the best; this may not be the point of the Civilization game, but a little more could take it a long way.

Taking away some of the civilizations and replacing them with others could alienate some: I’m not sure which Scottish and Welsh dooyooers would fight for England now that the Celtic option has gone, and who will the Scandinavian countries go for without the Vikings? I’d also love to see an option whereby you could personalise your opposition in the same way you can personalise your own tribe; I’d be drooling at the proposition of my Yorkist Empire defeating the South and Lancashire!!! Also, you can no longer change the sex of your leader, so if you choose to personalise the English, you are always a woman as the default leader is Queen Elizabeth, and Americans are always ‘he’ as Lincoln is there’s.

Overall:
Civilization III is addictive! I play it for hours at a time; with a ‘vast’ game play area, my conquests can and do last for weeks, with a couple of hours ‘wasted’, as my girlfriend would say, here and there. Civilization is the only strategy game I would recommend to anyone, and this third offering is, by far, the pinnacle. Especially with the personalisation, you can really get into the game and care about your unhappy citizens, your cities under siege, and your armies out on a limb fighting for King and Country. In short, I love this game. In truth, I believe you will too.

GET. THIS. GAME! and say goodbye to early nights, talking with your partner and doing that extra bit of work at home.

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