You will have to forgive my late review of this game. For Civilization 3 came out about 2 months ago, but it has taken up virtually all of my time, and not just my free time. My current mantra is “just one more turn”, with a look in my eye that is probably similar to a crack addict’s who is swearing that he just needs one more little hit in order to start going straight. There have probably been twenty quality games released since I got Civilization 3, this Christmas season, yet I cannot seem to stop playing Civilization 3 long enough to even try their demos.

Hopefully writing this review will help me break the habit cold turkey.

For those of you who haven’t heard of Civilization 2, much less played it, you don’t know what you are missing. The original Civilization was written by Sid Meier, who might be the only celebrity computer game programmer. Like Steven Spielberg is to movies, Meier has written a wide range of games that have succeeded both commercially and critically.

The first Civilization came out in 1990, and at first glance one might think it was just a slightly more advanced turn-based war game like Empire. It can be treated that way, but this is only one way to enjoy these games. It is the ultimate example of what is referred to as a 4X game. This usually stands for Explore, Expand, Exploit & Eliminate. You start off in ancient times with a settler and maybe a warrior with a club. You found a city, build up it’s improvements, create soldiers, research new technologies, meet your neighbors, and eventually try to surpass your neighbors accomplishments. You can play the game as a war game and try to eliminate all the other races from the map, or else you can try to build up your culture so that you accomplish something like colonize another planet (Alpha Centauri).

Civilization 2 came out around 1995 and succeeded in every possible way over Civilization 1. It added new units that greatly improved gameplay, new technologies, and a vastly improved combat system. One problem with Civilization 2 Meier felt was that the game worked so well as a war game, that few people ever beat the computer through culture, or colonizing another planet. I was not one of those people. I never liked treating the game as a war game, and instead played it defensively, and with a desire to reach perfection. Once I had secured my borders the game really appealed to my perfectionist nature where I tried to build up my culture as efficiently and rapidly as possible.

When I read that Civilization 3 was going to make it easier for people to win without relying on combat, I was surprised, since I hadn’t realized that this was really a problem. It was clear however from the early previews that the new game was only going to be designed after extensive research into what worked and didn’t work with the last one.

For those of you familiar with Civilization 2 and Alpha Centauri, you will recognize some of the improvements from the later game. There is now a zone of control for each civilization that wraps around each city and will spread over time, and by building improvements. Some units have bombardment capabilities instead of regular attacks. Diplomacy takes on a very strong role where mutual protection pacts and alliances can make all the difference with your overall strategy.

There are also various descriptions behind each starting race so that the differences are more than just your image in the diplomacy screen. Industrial races have more efficient workers. Military races can build barracks cheaper and have a greater chance of producing a great leader. Commercial races will have a strong end game advantage of extra income and cheaper marketplaces and banks. These differences aren’t as great as the faction differences in Alpha Centauri, but they will compliment or hurt your playing styles.

Each race now has a ‘special’ unit that only they can build. Some come late in the game like the German’s Panzer tank, or the American’s F-15. Others come right away like the Egyptian’s War Chariots or Greek Hopilites. These give the owners an advantage, but only for the brief time period that they are so important to be used. Another hidden ability that really takes some strategy to use right is the fact that the first time your special unit wins a battle, you will experience a golden age that will last for 20 turns. This means that every square for every city will produce one more each of food, production and commerce. This is really powerful when it happens at a time of peace, but can be limiting during war when all you are producing are units.

Rivers now are no longer ‘free roads’ or mere bonus boosters. Rivers flow In between squares and make a huge difference to where and how you use them. They increase trade on both squares on either side of the river. Also, now roads don’t cross them until you’ve traveled some distance up the research tree. And when being attacked across a river, the units defending get a 50% bonus. The importance of founding new cities on a river can not be understated. I’m certain now that cities that start on a river will be three times stronger than one started in the middle of grasslands. Without a river, your city cannot grow larger than size 6 without an aqueduct. For cities with low production and high food, there will be lots of wasted turns waiting for an aqueduct to be built. And having your starting city planted near a river will also make a huge difference for the extra commerce produced!

Another major change to the game are special resources. These are on the map when you begin the game, but no one can see them until you have discovered certain technologies that make them visible. It can be very interesting when you see that your neighbor has a very valuable Uranium supply next to one of his cities, but you can’t even trade him for it because he doesn’t know what it is. If you wait until he has the technology to use it, most likely he isn’t going to give it willingly so you may have to try and increase your culture to ‘absorb’ that city square, or else start a war just to gain that border town. Gaining access to more of the eight luxury resources is exponentially beneficial so the demand to want to trade with your neighbors is very high.

The Wonders of the World are still there, but most have had their power diminished. For example, Leonardo’s workshop doesn’t automatically update all of your units, but instead halves the cost of upgrading later. However, there are now multiple ‘small’ wonders that EACH civilization can have one of in their cities. For example, after you have five banks built, you can build the Wall Street small wonder which gives you a 5% return on your gold. After you’ve had an army win a battle you can build a wonder that lets you create more armies without leaders.

Speaking of leaders, combat is now somewhat different. Units have an attack and defense strength like before, but now have a set number of hit points based upon their ranking. 3 points for a regular troop, 4 for a veteran, and 5 for elite. You can also have a conscript (a member of your population converted into a soldier) that only has 2. Every time they win a battle they have a small chance of going up to the next level. If you upgrade your units, they lose a ranking. If an Elite unit is promoted then he becomes a leader who is a special unit, easily captured, but if brought back to a city, can be used to create an army, or to speed up the building of a wonder. These are very powerful, but very rare. For all the games I’ve played, I’ve only ever seen two, but then again, I don’t play the game very militaristically.

Another nice change is the fact that enemies cannot use your railroads and roads anymore! It is pretty cool being able to build a railroad right up to your fortress in the mountains at the edge of your border without fear of the enemy riding your railroad down to your cities.

The artificial intelligence in this game is easily the best I’ve ever seen for this type of game. The Call to Power games were jokes, and even Alpha Centauri’s AI couldn’t manage intelligent offensive strikes. Civilization 3’s computer opponents will expand ruthlessly, start wars just when you aren’t ready for them, and out diplomacy you at every turn.

Another factor that limited the cultural win of the old games was the fact that any new citizen created after a certain number had been made would be unhappy initially. What this meant was that you didn’t want to have city after city dotting the landscape. Now this isn’t a problem, but the corruption levels are primarily based upon distance from your capitol city, which makes having your culture spread out on two continents almost impossible.

An old ‘cheat’ technique with the old game was to save the game right before any battle, and keep reloading until you win. The same would go with any of the random ‘goodie’ huts that litter the virgin landscape. This won’t work any more because the game now has a random seed generator that is calculated at the start of any game as opposed to rolling the dice with each decision. This means that it is pointless to try and cheat this way. Reloading the game will just give you the same result each time. However, I have reloaded the game and have seen the computer make different diplomatic decisions with what seems to be under the same circumstances.

Another trick that let the average person easily surpass the computer opponents in the old game was to crank up the happiness for ‘We Love the King Days’ which could raise your population at incredible speeds. The effect of these extra happy cities is barely noticeable now, under any government.

The game also comes with a very detailed editor that lets you change to the game to suit you. You can make historical or fictional scenarios to play, or you can just modify units or structures to what you think they should be. These options add to the game's already limitless game play.

Graphically speaking, the game is good, but not great. It is a turn based, game based on a grid, rather than a real time game where the units move by the pixel. All of the animations and units look pretty good, but it could have been just a little bit better. I wish the mines didn’t look so bad, and cover up the resources underneath as easily. The roads and railroads look much better, but it isn’t always clear where exactly the rivers are going to and from. It is hard to tell the coast from plains, forest from jungle, and often grassland may look more like the neighboring square than grass. The units are easily identifiable, but the special resources aren’t.

Also many have complained that there aren’t any special videos for any of the wonders, which is pretty normal for games like this, including the prequels. I’m not complaining since it really is fluff, but it was nice fluff. However, at the end of the game, when I’ve lost, I did see a great little mocking animation. There is a picture of my leader’s head in a medical halo and there are suction dart hits all around my head. Surrounding my leader’s picture are the pictures of the other leaders in a circle and they all take turns making wisecracks like “We have seen you crushed, and hear the lamentations of your women”.

The sounds are good, and usually help to tell what is happening. However, I am very annoyed with the music, and the background sounds. Fortunately, I can turn off the music, but I can’t seem to get the birds to stop chirping, the wolves from howling, or lower the volume of the ships moving at sea.

The game used to be controlled by lots of drop down menus, which worked pretty well. Now there are a lot of right clicking and buttons. These work pretty well, but I do think there are some design issues with the interface that should have been worked out. It is very annoying that we can’t bring up multiple windows when playing for our advisors. When we are making trades, it would be helpful to know what certain items we already have, or at least to consult the Civilopedia (the in-game help) about various science items.

Civilization 3 does have some problems that make the game a little frustrating, but overall it is clear that this is the finest game of this sort yet. Some of these problems have been dealt with by the first patch, but some still remain. Even on fast systems, the computer players have very long turns when fighting wars against other computer opponents on huge maps, and especially when cities are lost or gained, and the culture zones have to get redrawn. Corruption, even with small empires is so high that the game is nothing less than frustrating when trying to deal with cities on other continents. And I still don’t like a lot of the choices that the city’s governors make for you after a project is finished. But in it’s defense, this is very configurable. I just haven’t played around with it much.

Some people complain about there not being any multiplayer capabilities, but I can’t imagine how this could ever work out well. Single player games take so long that I can’t imagine a single player game taking any less time than a year to play.

I do also want to mention the fact that the game comes with a large 200 page manual that describes most of the game in great detail, but you still have to consult the in-game help a lot for the statistics and features of many of the units and buildings. So few games come with a complete manual that I was very impressed to find this here.

Overall, if I could give half stars, I would give it only 4½ instead of the 5 stars I gave it. But, I realize that the little quirks will be handled with further patches, and that this truly is the best 4x game designed yet. I feel so addicted to it that I think the game has stolen my soul, besides all my time.

And here is my Epinions review of Civilization 2:
http://www.epinions.com/content_23465397892




Recommended: Yes