Civilization III: Conquests

"A-conquering you *might* want to go!"

Lets get something straight: Civ 3: Conquests is a meatier expansion than the content-deficient Play the World but it still fails to fix some problems that will make you bang your head against your monitor in frustration.

With that being said, assuming you enjoyed Civ 3 you will love this expansion. If you didn't, then start reading my review of FF7, if you really have nothing better to do, since this game really has nothing that new or innovative to make you change your mind.

Graphics: 4/10

After some 2 years on the market, a game starts to look outdated. Things get even worse when that game looked outdated to begin with. Unfortunately this is the case for Civ 3 and its expansion packs.

With the exception of a few new animations and a bunch of units this expansion pack really offers utterly nothing new in graphical terms. Hell, it actually REMOVES some things that were found in the last expansion pack, like the user-created graphical packs. And really, they could've at least thrown in a higher resolution or an updated tileset… but this is not the case here.

Sound: 5/10

I could easily copy and paste the paragraph on graphics in this section and few would actually notice the difference. Firaxis didn't do A THING with the sound effects and music in Conquests, and that's not fine at all to be quite honest. The Civ series has some of the most annoying "tunes", in the early ages that I can think of. Endlessly looping drum beats and tribal "orgasms" are not my idea of music.

To be fair however, they did add new sounds and music for the scenarios but since they hardly represent the focus of this game that can hardly be considered a “major” improvement.

Gameplay: 5/10

Conquests doesn't do much for Civ 3's gameplay but what it does is pretty much in the "more" category, rather than "better" or "fix" categories.

Let's start with the "more" part. Conquests features a lot of great new things that you might never be able to live without. There are new units, ranging from a prehistoric boat call the Curragh to an ultra-modern infantry unit called TOW Infantry which should (technically speaking) do wonders with tanks. From my playing experience however, I've come to one conclusion: The units are useless. The Curragh can't carry ANYTHING and suffers from most of the early ship problems (i.e. little movement, it sinks faster than a fat man in a bottomless lake), as for the TOW Infantry... well, it just straight up blows. If it's caught in a crossfire with anything but a tank it will get blown to bits. Oh, let's not even begin to mention the new flak and Mobile SAM units since they drive me nuts. The AI seems to build these EXCLUSIVELY since they become available, meaning that you'll have to change build orders several dozen times a turn just to stop the AI from building this junk.

Conquests' other, much more useful units are actually part of wonders. The Crusader and Ancient Cavalry are units produced by two wonders (the Knights Templar and the Statue of Zeus, respectively) and are not only free but they are spawned often enough to be very useful in their respective periods.

And speaking of wonders, Conquests features TONS of them. The much sought after "7 Wonders of the Ancient World" appear, for the first time ever, in a Civ 3 game. And they're all pretty damn good. In addition you get the Knight's Templar which is there for the sole reason to pump out burly looking crusaders.

Of course, besides wonders and units you get a slew of things that we've all come to expect from a Civ expansion. 7 new nations join the game (including more North/South American tribes); there are 2 new traits that nations can now have (seafaring and agricultural) which actually makes more difference than you might think, and a few other negligible additions.

There are also 2 new government types: Feudal Monarchy (which does utterly nothing) and Fascism. Fascism might become your best friend or your worst enemy since it might be the most unbalanced governmental system since Fanaticism in Civ 2. You get a huge number of supported units, negligible corruption and 200% worker efficiency. In other words, if you're going for a conquest or domination victory your new best friend has just arrived. Hell, in fact, whatever you're doing, this government is IDEAL for it. It's so grossly powerful that there's really no reason to use Democracy anymore, unless you think of this as “exploiting the game”.

The real draw of the expansion pack is the Conquests Scenarios. They're great! They make for quick games that can be finished in less than 3 hours and provide you with something other than the standard sandbox mode which might take days to complete. Some of these scenarios also feature their own soundtracks, resources, units and inventions giving you a wealth of options and approaches to Civ 3 without requiring you to even go out and download them. Assuming you do decide to go out and download additional scenarios or mods for your game you'll be pleased to know that Conquests has made their implementation much easier, as now it doesn't force you to limit yourself to one mod. Most mods can now be activated at your choosing from the "Civ-Content" menu, which is a great feature to say the least.

This all sounds great, but it's not quite as it seems. Conquests doesn't make so basic, DESPERATE, changes that are needed to make Civ 3 a perfect game and that's where problems really begin to surface.

For beginners, spearmen can STILL beat tanks. It doesn't happen often to actually get "beaten" by a spearman but it still remains a mystery to me how exactly the hell an ancient age pointy stick can decimate my aluminum/steel-alloy-tank.

Furthermore, the game's AI still cheats like there's no tomorrow. And by this I don't mean the ungodly advantages they get on higher difficulty levels but instances when my army of medieval infantry will attack a town guarded by a musketman and will get decimated while the computer can go ahead and obliterate me with an archer in the exact same conditions. Really, Conquests doesn't give a rat's ass about the quality of your troops, its only quantity that matters since you can overflow a city with warriors until you eliminate all resistance in it.

Other favorite pet-peeves of mine also reappear here in the form of horrendous starting locations or unbalanced races which pretty much either force you to restart (if you begin on an island the size of your fist you're guaranteed a hard anal rape by the computer) or to battle through overwhelming odds before even making some progress. Oh, and there's also the so called “intelligence” of your cities. Your cities will pump out units, most of them useless, unless they get babysitted by you. Using the governors is just about AS useless as they'll just be harder to disable when they'll start building Flaks with no purpose whatsoever… if for no other reason than that you're the only guy who has ****ing FLIGHT! (NOTE: This really pisses me off).

Multiplayer: 4/10

It says it improves things on the box, but really, Conquests does NOTHING for multiplayer. It's not laggy, but who cares? You can't find PEOPLE who will stay with you though a 20 hour game so the whole idea of “multiplayer” Civilization still applies only to small groups of people interested in Civ 3 and not to the mainstream gaming public in any way.

Overall: 7/10

Despite the score, Conquests is not quite a decent expansion pack... but I must confess I have a soft spot for Civ 3 and like most of you who'll be reading this review, I still enjoy this game. It gives you more and that's fine by my standards... at least until Civ 4 ships.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 10/07/05