Civilization III

"The Most Disappointing Sequel I've Ever Played"

In probably as long as I've played video games, there has not been a sequel that I had more looked forward to than Civilization III. I had loved both of the first two installments and there was so much hype surrounding the release of the third version that I could literally not wait for the release of the game. As soon as it hit the shelves, I was sure to grab it, and, at first, I liked it a lot. The more I played it, however, the more I realized that this game had such serious faults that it simply was no fun at all.

Before I get ahead of myself though, I should probably say that the overall goal in Civilization is to found a civilization in the dawn of time and develop it into thriving, modern state. In Civ III the focus has shifted somewhat from a goal of complete global dominance (as in the earlier installments) to one of becoming first among many relatively equal competing civilizations. This isn't necessarily a bad idea, but the alternative to domination victories are decidedly lame. Accumulating enough culture value in a single city can now trigger what is perhaps the most anti-climactic victory in gaming history. The "diplomatic" victory requires your civilization to construct the UN wonder and then have friendly enough relationships with enough enemy nations to be voted the organization's leader. At least you won't win accidentally in this manner, but it still isn't as satisfying as colonizing another planet or conquering the world.

World conquest, for its part, has become much more difficult to achieve. Regardless of difficultly level or appropriate city structures, cities that are too distant from your capital will always suffer from crippling corruption, no matter what government you choose to use. If you happen to be conquering a large city, it is almost imperative to raze it after your victory, or else the local population will more than likely overthrow your army, no matter how large, and revert back to the original nation. I can't describe how many times I've wanted to break my keyboard after having this happen to me. For the life of me, I can't understand how an unarmed population can just overthrow my garrison of tanks. Supposedly, some of the game's patches have addressed these issues, but not to the point where they have been sufficiently solved.

This version of Civilization has also substantially mucked up unit combat. I had a good chuckle when I read something in the manual that said, "Combat between units has been improved, so there is no longer any need for a firepower stat." The health bar has also been replaced by a system of hit points that range from one to five. The end result of this overhaul, however, is that battles are incredibly random. I have seen warrior units (the most primitive unit there is) with 1 hit point destroy 4 or 5 hit point tanks. It really isn't even an anomaly; I've seen it several times in one game. I can't understand how anyone can consider a combat system improved when a unit armed with wooden axes and hide armor can destroy a WWII era tank. Again, Firaxis claims to have addressed this issue in patches (just about every one, I think) and yet it still happens.

The addition of war-weariness also drives me close to insanity. The premise behind this idea was to create a new way for the peaceful nature of republics and democracies to become a factor in gameplay. If you think back to Civ II, you'll remember that this caused unhappiness whenever a unit was stationed outside of a fort or a city. This has been replaced by war weariness, which is a general unhappiness that builds gradually whenever your republic or democracy is at war with another power for a time. At first, this seemed like an improvement, but it becomes exceedingly frustrating because you have almost no way to effectively control it.

An example to illustrate this: In Civ II, if my state were a democracy and attacked by a rival power, I could fight a very defensive, "good" war, by keeping most of my units stationed in domestic cities and bases, and thus control unhappiness due to the war. In Civ III, however, if I am attacked, war weariness begins to build no matter what I do. It also doesn't go away until I either switch governments or sign a peace treaty. So if someone attacks me, I begin to lose the war, and the enemy refuses to sign a peace treaty, I can't do anything to control the massive rioting that will develop over time, short of changing governments. Since the time period for changing governments has been extended for every civilization without the "religious" trait, even if I attempt to switch governments, I will have to fight for another 5 or so turns under anarchy, where I can't even build any new units to defend myself. In short, the only real solution when your government is a democracy is to avoid war altogether, because fighting under it essentially will be your doom. Imagine the Japanese attacking Pearl Harbor and the Americans simply bowing down because of anti-war pressure and you will quickly realise how absurd this is. I really can't stand combat in Civ III.

On top of this, several units have lost melee range attacks in favor of being able to bombard from a distance. This works in some places, and not at all in others. Catapults, for example, have become almost completely useless because their bombard ability is so weak. No bombarding unit can kill an enemy unit, but early ones (like catapults) rarely even inflict one hit point of damage. Later units make up for this, however, by inflicting more damage and having the ability to destroy enemy structures. You need to buy a lot of these units and keep them concentrated, however, if you want to be effective. It's an interesting way to add some strategy, but one that could use a little tweaking.

Really the only improvements that came to the combat system are the removal of stacking and zone of control rules. No longer will a large stack of units be defeated if a single unit is attacked and killed, and no longer is movement of most units impeded by lame zone of control rules. Units that do move through squares adjacent to certain enemy units face a bombardment that can inflict a small amount of damage, which manages to maintain at least some of the flavor of zone of control but with added realism.

Diplomacy has also undergone a major change since the second installment. Gone are caravans, since trading is done through the diplomacy screen once there are roads connecting the capitals of rival states. This is both good and bad, since it makes trading resources much more convenient but also allows for the questionable diplomatic AI to hamper it. For some unethical reason, the computer will almost never trade equally with your civilization, instead demanding ridiculous compensation for small concessions. Why is their one luxury only tradeable for three of mine of equal value? It seems as though the computer is more out to hassle you then to reach mutually beneficial agreements.

The computer civilizations also trade rampantly with each other, presumably on equal terms. This means that if you are playing in a very large map with many other civs you will have to go to the diplomacy screen just about every turn with just about every rival civ to ensure that you don't fall behind technologically. And if you do, it is very hard to catch up, because the computer will rarely trade you technologies fairly.

I must admit, however, the designers have massively improved the AI from the second installment. The computer armies are generally always deployed in concentrated, effective groups, as opposed to civ 2 where enemy units would trickle towards your cities one at a time only to be killed. The computer rivals also use diplomacy to their advantage and will seek allies in the fights against you if you are not careful to quickly win neutral parties to your side. This makes for much more challenging games.

Another positive addition are civ specific traits and units. Different civilizations have different inherent natures, such as militaristic or religious. For the most part, these are balanced reasonably well, so that most civilizations are relatively equal. It also adds some replay value, since you can always try playing as another civilization if you feel you have mastered the game with a particular style of play. Espionage exploits (such as rampant bribing of cities in Civ II) have thankfully been removed by virtue of making them far too expensive to ever become practical. Unfortunately, now there is also no real role for espionage at all, so it could probably use more tweaking.

Graphically, the game has enjoyed a major overhaul since the Civilization II days. All of the units now have fluid animated motion (which you can still toggle on and off). The videos for wonders have been removed, but I never really watched those anyway - good riddance to bad rubbish. Although the game has a rather large install (something like 700mb), I had no problems really at all with slowdown or lag, running a p3 766mhz 128 ram. Menus have largely been removed, which makes for an overall more streamlined display.

The game's music is also fine. As your civilization develops through different ages, the music changes appropriately, from tribal sounding drumbeats to soft piano tunes. Sounds for units have been improved and now match up almost all of the time correctly with the graphics' motions. Really, the sounds in this game are just about perfect.

I really wanted to like Civilization III. There is simply just too much wrong with the gameplay that has still not been addressed in any patch, and, now that the game is getting older, very likely never will. What aches me the most about this game is that every now and again I'll want to give it another chance, so i reinstall it, but it always ends up disappointing me. The fact of the matter is that Civ 2 is a great game, so I always end up hoping that the aspects of Civ 2 that have survived in Civ 3 will also make it a great game, and that just isn't the case. Civ 3 has received great reviews from magazines and other readers here, but I would wager that if they had played it longer, those reviews would very likely have been much lower. This is a game that can make a great first impression, but will always end up disappointing and very mediocre.

If you are a big fan of turn based strategy, have never played civ 2, and have nothing better to play, maybe civ 3 would give you something to do. Really though, you are better off passing on this one.

6/10 - Mediocre

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 09/06/04