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Sid Meier's Civilization III
Developer(s)	Firaxis Games
Publisher(s)	Infogrames (Win) MacSoft (Mac)
Director(s)	Sid Meier
Producer(s)	Michael Gibson Jeffrey Kennedy
Designer(s)	Jeff Briggs Soren Johnson
Writer(s)	Paul Murphy
Series	Civilization
Engine	Custom
Platform(s)	Microsoft Windows, Mac OS
Genre(s)	Turn-based strategy
Mode(s)	Single-player multiplayer

Sid Meier's Civilization III, commonly shortened to Civ III or Civ 3, is the third installment of the Sid Meier's Civilization turn-based strategy video game series. It was preceded by Civilization II and followed by Civilization IV, and it was released in 2001. The game offers very sophisticated gameplay in terms of both mechanics and strategy. Unlike the original game, Civ III was not designed by Sid Meier, but by Jeff Briggs, a game designer, and Soren Johnson, a game programmer.

Civilization III, like the other Civilization games, is based around building an empire from the ground up, beginning in 4,000 BC and continuing slightly beyond the modern day. The player must construct and improve cities, train military and non-military units, improve terrain, research technologies, build Wonders of the World, make war or peace with neighboring civilizations, and so on. The player must balance a good infrastructure, resources, diplomatic and trading skills, technological advancement, city and empire management, culture, and military power to succeed.

Gameplay

The game map is composed of square tiles on a grid. Each city, terrain improvement, and unit is located in a specific tile, and each tile can host any number of units, land tiles can contain a transportation improvement (road or railroad) and a land improvement (farm or mine) or a city. Cities must be built a minimum of two tiles away from each other (no two cities can be touching). Each tile is made of a particular type of terrain that determines, among other things, how much food, production, and trade it produces when "worked". Each city's citizens have a certain mood (happy, content, unhappy, or resisting). If there are more unhappy than happy citizens in a city, the city falls into civil disorder and all production ceases and no food is stored. Buildings enhance a city in some way and cost maintenance. They require financial maintenance each turn, and can be destroyed by many means, including bombardment. Buildings types include granary, barracks, temple, harbor, university, bank, hospital, factory, recycling center, and SAM missile battery. Only one of each type of building can be constructed in each city. As in previous installments of Civilization, there are unique Wonders of the World that can only be built once per game. Wonders provide a variety of major benefits to a specific city, all cities on a continent or to an entire empire. Civilization III also added Small Wonders, which can be built once by each civilization. Small Wonders have, for the most part, a sociological requirement to construct them, as well as a technological requirement. Battlefield Medicine, for example, requires that five of the player's cities have hospitals before building, and Wall Street requires 5 banks in the player's cities in order to begin building.

One of the major features of gameplay is scientific research. Completing the research of a new technology will make available new units, city improvements and wonders of the world, as well as special bonuses and abilities that are related to the technology. The technology tree is divided into four ages (Ancient Age, Middle Ages, Industrial Age, and Modern Age); each age requires the research of specific technologies to advance to that age. Additionally, there are technologies that are not required to advance to the next age, but which provide useful bonuses that are often essential for good empire management, or may provide different alternatives to it. A science slider is used to allocate money from the economy to scientific research. City improvements such as libraries, universities, and research labs also increase scientific research, as do some wonders (such as Newton's University). Technologies can also be traded to and from other civilizations in return for money, resources, luxury goods or other technologies.

Citizens are the people who work in a city. There are four kinds in Civ III: Laborers, Entertainers, Tax Collectors and Scientists. All citizens are created as Laborers. Laborers work the land tiles within the city radius to yield food, production, and commerce. A Laborer changed into a specialist reduces yield by removing a Laborer from working a city tile, but increases luxuries, science output, or tax revenue. If there are more citizens in a city than available tiles to work, the extra citizens automatically become Entertainers. The second expansion, Conquests, adds two new types of citizens to the game: Policemen (reduce corruption) and Civil Engineers (enhance building and wonder production).

Citizens have a nationality based upon the civilization under which they were 'born.' Citizens have a 'memory' of their nationality and will consider themselves members of their previous civilization until they are assimilated into their new civilization. Combat is an important aspect of the game, and, although not required to win, it is nearly impossible to go through a full game without experiencing warfare at least once. Bombardment can soften a target before it is attacked, and, if attacking a city, may kill some of the population or destroy certain city improvements. Certain units have the ability to kill other units through bombardment (known as "lethal bombardment").

There are several ways to win the game, some of which recur from the previous Civilization games. A Conquest victory is achieved when no civilizations besides the player's exist, a civilization being eliminated when its last city is captured or destroyed. A player wins a Domination victory by controlling two thirds of the world's land and population. 66% of the world's land area must be within the civilization's cultural borders, and 66% of the world's population must reside within the civilization's cities. By having a culture so powerful that its civilization controls the world through others' longing to be a part of it, a player can win a Cultural victory. By building the United Nations wonder, a civilization opens the possibility of a Diplomatic victory. The civilization that built it will be periodically offer the opportunity to hold elections for U.N. Secretary General. To be eligible for election, a civilization must control 25% of either the world's population or its territory, although the civilization that actually built the UN is always automatically a candidate. The civilization with a majority of the possible votes wins the election, and therefore the game. Because the player's reputation matters a great deal to the voting AI civilizations, it is of paramount importance to a player seeking a Diplomatic victory to maintain a trustworthy status throughout the game. Just as in the previous two games, a civilization not seeking domination through world conquest can build and send a colony spaceship to Alpha Centauri to win the game. The histograph provides a relative indicator of each civilization's score, power, and culture at any given time. When the game timer runs out (at the year 2050 AD by default) if no civilization has met any of the other victory conditions, the civilization with the highest score wins the game.

Reception

This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (June 2012)

The initial release of the game had some bugs and glitches. Some of the features that Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri had but were not included in Civilization III (at least initially) included elevation, a working UN system, a social engineering system and a 'group movement' command to simplify managing units on the map.

The first patch came very soon after the game's initial release and other patches were released subsequently, improving gameplay significantly. The patches also added certain features, such as the group movement command noted above. There were complaints about the addition of features and bug fixes after initial release.

Upon release, the reaction to Civilization III was very positive. It won several "Game of the Year" awards such as the Interactive Achievement Awards 2002 Computer Strategy Game of the Year.

Expansions

Two expansion sets have been published for Sid Meier's Civilization III: Play the World, and Conquests.

Play the World added multiplayer capabilities, eight new civilizations and some new units to the original release.

Conquests offers nine more historical scenarios, ranging from Mesopotamia to WWII in the Pacific. Many of these scenarios have resources, improvements, wonders, music, and even government types that are specific to the scenario, especially the Mesoamerican and Sengoku Japan campaigns.

The stand-alone version is Civilization III: Complete Edition, which includes the two expansions and several patches. (This version came after Civilization III: Gold Edition and Civilization III: Game of the Year Edition.)

References

1. GameInformer.com: CIVILIZATION GIVETH
2. Civilization III review for the PC
3. Civilization III for PC Review - PC Civilization III Review
4. IGN: Civilization III Review
5. PC Gamer: Sid Meier’s Civilization III
6. ^ "Civilization III Official Website Features Page". Civilization III Official Website. Retrieved 5 December 2014.

External links

• Official Civilization III website
• Civilization III on MobyGames
• Civilization III on the Civ Fanatics website

• 2001 video games
• 4X video games
• Civilization (series)
• Firaxis Games games
• Interactive Achievement Award winners
• Mac OS games
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• Video games with expansion packs
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• Turn-based strategy video games
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• Sid Meier games
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