Make war, not love (Civilization III (PS))

Name: hogsflesh

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Product:	Civilization III (PS)
Date:	24/04/02 (298 review reads)
Rating:

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A bit low on inspiration right now, so it's time for an overlong game review.

Sid Meier's Civilization (1990) was epic, a 'god game' where you had to build up a civilisation from scratch, starting with one city and eventually growing until you either conquered the entire world or colonised space. The 2-D graphics were fairly basic, but the game itself was unbelievably compelling and frighteningly addictive. A few years later we got Civilization II, which offered all kinds of small improvements, and was even better. After which we had to wait several years. Sid Meier went off to work on other projects. Eventually two new sequels appeared, each produced by a different company, Call To Power and Test Of Time. They weren't very good, somehow lacking the magic of the originals.

In 2001 we finally got the sequel that we'd been waiting for. (I say 'we'. I actually mean 'I'. It would be presumptuous of me to assume that you share my silly obsessions.) Civilization III, made by Firaxis, is the real thing, with Sid Meier back on board. And it rocks.

As in previous versions of the game, you choose your civilisation (from a list of 16 - Romans, Zulus, English, etc). You build cities, explore the landscape, try to keep your cities growing, build things in them, and eventually build mighty armies to smite your neighbours. Because yours isn't the only civilisation, otherwise it wouldn't be much of a game, there are others that you have to interact with through trade and diplomacy and war. You don't have to go to war, but you'll do better if you do. It gets boring if you don't. Let slip the dogs of war, don't play the pipes of peace. (And besides, if you've discovered the secret of making nuclear bombs, then you'll want to use them. Trust me on this. You will.) You also have to keep your economy healthy and ensure that your rate of scientific advance is good.

There are man
y, many features to the game, and for me to try to list them all would be entirely futile and deeply boring for you. The interface itself is very neat and intuitive, it doesn't take long to pick up the basics, but to get good at it you have to learn an awful lot. The instruction manual is about the same length as an Ian McEwan novel.

The game starts in about 4000 BC. If all goes well, by about 1964 AD you should have an enormous civilisation taking up most of the world, with hundreds of cities, hundreds of workers scurrying between them like ants, and a large army of tanks advancing on the pitiful remnants of the last of your opponents.

There are various new features in the game, compared to Civ II. Probably the most important is culture. Your civilisation now has borders, rather than just being a large clump of cities. In order to expand its borders you need to build its culture. You do this by building 'cultural' things in your cities, like libraries, cathedrals or Wonders of the World like the Pyramids. If your culture is strong enough, then cities from other civilisations will opt to join you, which is always nice (although it works both ways - build your culture up and make sure you stay ahead of all your opponents, or your cities will desert you).

Trade has been made slightly more complicated, as you can now trade pretty much anything you possess with other civilisations. Of course it tends not to work that way, as the other civilisations are usually unwilling to trade with you at all, and when they are they make ludicrous demands. 'What's that, Emperor Tokugawa? You want me to give you 250 gold pieces, the secret of Chivalry, all my reserves of iron and the city of Birmingham? And in return you'll give me a map of your territory? Hmmm. Let me think about that for a moment.'

Communications are much more important now. You can't trade anything physical with another civilisation unless you have
a road that connects your capital city to theirs. Nor can you derive the benefits from having, say, uranium next to one of your cities unless it's linked to that city by a road. This can be deceptive, of course. Just the other night I found myself shouting 'Where the bloody hell are the Russians getting saltpetre from? They haven't got any!' as my valiant cavalry were butchered by their evil riflemen. They didn't seem to have saltpetre near any of their cities - they must have been trading with another civilisation. Which was regrettable, as my planned blitzkrieg sweep through their wretched, decadent nation ground to a halt pretty damn quickly.

One of the things I like most about the game is that it's morally highly dubious. For instance, one way to keep your people happy is to gain access to luxury items. One such item is ivory. If you see elephants in the landscape, and build a city next to them then you have ivory. This keeps your people happy. The only possible way for that to work, of course, is if you're killing the poor old elephants. And then of course there is war - you are frequently encouraged to build your armies, and once you've built them then you have to use them, otherwise it was a waste of time building them in the first place. Aside from the rampant aggression and terrible animal cruelty, the game is damned cynical. If your people are unhappy then build them a temple or cathedral and they'll all stop rioting, as the opium of the masses dispels their rage. And don't even think about not being a Capitalist. Communism is fine in principle, but in practice you soon find your civilisation falling behind the Capitalist ones.

Sometimes the game is hugely annoying. If you build cities that are too far away from your capital then they won't be able to build anything, as local corruption eats up all of their resources. This can be maddening. Also, some of your cities take on minds of their own
. When you suddenly find that a city which was meant to be building an aqueduct has in fact been building some kind of boat, you're going to get pretty mad. Once you have a certain amount of experience of the game, it can be pretty obvious by about 1500 AD whether or not you're going to be able to achieve all your goals, and it's fairly pointless carrying on the game if you know you can't. Even when you think you've accounted for everything, you can still find some unforeseen factor that shatters the plans you've been laying for the last 500 years. Which means you have to start again, usually, as it's too slow-moving a game to be able to recover from any major reversal of fortune.

My only other complaint is that you can't choose who to be within each civilisation. If you choose to play as India, then you're going to be Gandhi, if you choose France you're going to be Joan of Ark etc. You can change your name, but you still look like Joan of Ark. Civ II gave you a choice of two leaders for each civilisation, so playing as the English you could be either Henry VIII or Elizabeth I. Now you can only be Elizabeth. I tend to play as the English, which means that I have to be Elizabeth I. I don't really want to be Elizabeth I (well, maybe for a few hours, just to check out the anatomical differences and all that, but not permanently).

As with other versions of the game, the graphics aren't fantastic. The detail is better this time round, and there is some animation in the various little people who run around your world, but it's still fairly basic. It doesn't matter, graphics aren't particularly what the game is about. Likewise the sound. It's better than in Civ II, but it isn't great. There is music, but it's dreadful, so I switch it off. Horrible plinky-plonky world music pastiche does not inspire me to go and eradicate my enemies, so I won't listen to it. Why is there no martial
music?

You can create your own worlds and units to play customised games. I haven't tried this feature yet, which is just as well, as I'd no doubt spend most of my time trying to create continents that look like genitals. There isn't a multi-player version, although I expect they'll get round to it eventually.

You need a 300mhz processor and 32MB RAM (although those are the minimum, not the recommended specs - I play on 450mhz with 256MB RAM and it's still quite slow between turns. This may be because I always play on the largest world size, though). You need 500MB free space, and I play on Win 98. I don't know if it works on later versions of Windows, a lot of games have problems with them. The game has a fair few little bugs in it, and I found that having forked out £30 on the thing I then had to spend half an hour downloading an 8MB patch from the official web site.

All in all, though, this is a fabulous game, the second most addictive that I own (after Championship Manager). It has more than enough to keep me busy for anything up to 16 hours at a time, and can be played over and over again. I'm quite happy to let it swallow up most of my free time for the next month or so, even if my interpersonal skills suffer terribly as a result.

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