The game is an addictive blend of building, exploration, discovery and conquest. Players match wits against some of history's greatest leaders as they strive to build the ultimate civilization to stand the test of time. The legacy of this incredibly fun, addictive series continues today with the development of Civilization III.

GAMEPLAY:

For those of you that haven't played a previous incarnation of a Civilization-type game (do those people exist?), here's a short synopsis of the game: In the dawn of time (4000 BC), you start on a world with a local tribe of people. You build and manage your first city, and expand your empire from there. On a micro-level, each city has a population, each of those people has a job. That job van be either as a worker who produces hard-needed food, resources and/or gold by working on a map square in the neighborhood of the city, or (mostly in larger cities) as a specialist who produces money, science or entertainment. Each of those people also is either happy, content or unhappy. Also, you have to decide what the city should build next - a unit or a building, if so which one, etc. On a macro-level, your empire also needs global decisions: the gold "harvested" in each city can be converted to money (taxes), science or entertainment. You need to keep your people happy, otherwise they will stop working, you need money to maintain your buildings and you need science to advance in the world (I mean, what is a group of spearman going to do against a tank?). Another global matter that you need to keep your attention focussed on is the expansion of your empire; you can build more cities as well as improve the map squares around them by irrigation, mining and/or building roads. All of this might be quite boring if it were not for your opponents: of course there are other civilizations in the world. At some point in time you will meet them and you'll have to decide what to do - do I form an alliance, wage war, maintain cool relations?

The game is turn-based - each turn you determine what all your units do with ample time to think things through - no quick decisions are needed, since the opponents will not do anything during your turn. However, you will have to anticipate their moves since you can't do anything in their turns either.

This is not an open-ended simulation game - there certainly are victory conditions - even several of them to suit your style of play better. If you're a militaristic type, you can win the game by conquering all opponents on the planet. Are you more peaceful? Then have yourself elected to be the world leader and win the game thus. If you fancy yourself scientific, win the game by winning the space race and launch a ship to Alpha Centauri before anyone else can. The expansionist types can win by a domination victory - control two thirds of the planet's area and the game is yours as well. Lastly, you can also win by overawing the other civilizations with your achievements. The game always ends after a set couple of years - whoever has the most power on the planet then, wins the game.

In comparison to Civilization II, lots of things have changed - and I'd say all of those are for the better. For instance, each civilization now controls an area of the map, based on your culture value. Culture is a new concept in Civilization 3, and can be loosely described as a tourism value. Each turn, a city gains culture for some buildings that are present - for instance a cathedral. That cathedral becomes more and more valuable as time passes since it gets older, and thus the area the city directly influences grows. Also, a city always influences the squares that are adjacent.

Also, diplomats and caravans have been eliminated from the game. All diplomatic functions are now performed by establishing an embassy in the capital city of another civilization, and choosing them from there. This is a much more elegant solution than continually building a diplomat for each function you want to perform and also much more efficient. Caravans have been replaced by specific trade agreements - you now actually pick what you're trading. Since the diplomacy (i.e. the agreements you can make with other civilizations) is much better now, it has become possible to integrate these two.

A radical new idea is the change of the resources on the map. One change is that it's not possible anymore to place your cities optimally in the beginning of the game - in Civilization 2, all resources (including for instance oil) were visible on the map from the beginning, even though you had no idea yet what oil was. Now a resource becomes visible once you actually discover it. Another thing is that the resources have been split in two categories: on the one side, you have luxury items (wine, gems, etc.) that will make your citizens happy. On the other side, there are strategic resources, which you need to build certain things in the game - you cannot build a swordsman anymore without having iron to forge his sword. Of course, these resources can be traded between civilizations, or fought over in wars.

The last thing I'll mention is that the civilizations are now really different to play - while you would for instance play the Romans in Civilization2 to prevent them from expanding very aggressively on the map (all civilizations had a different AI), now your choice is more difficult. Each civilization has two attributes which can for example be Religious, Scientific or Militaristic. These attributes give you a bonus on those types, and your empire will tend in those directions.

Gameplay gets 5 out of 5 stars.

AUDIO:

Of course, sound isn't that important in a game like this. There is good background music that fits with the theme: warlike if you're at war, "ancient" in ancient times, modern once your civilization fancies such marvels as computers, etc. Unit sounds are limited to the (appropriate) sounds they make in battle.

Audio gets 4 out of 5 stars.

GRAPHICS:

What to say about the graphics? Civilization 3 retains the original flavour of an isometric map since that concept works really well - being able to rotate the map will only confuse you. However, the unit animations are much improved and really enhance the feeling of the game - you actually see workers irrigate or mine the map squares, and in a battle a (short) animation of the fighting units is displayed. Also, the (wonder) movies were removed from the game since they actually took you out of the game and thus detracted from the feeling of the game.

Graphics gets 4.5 out of 5 stars.

OVERALL:

It is always difficult to make a good successor to a game that was a huge success. However, I think that Sid Meier and his team succeeded at this not only once but twice - Civilization 3 is even better than Civilization 2 was. The game has (among other things) gained the good innovations of Alpha Centauri, and some annoying unnecessary overhead has been removed from the game. Just one advice when you buy this game: take a week (or more) off, you won't do anything else but play this!

Overall Game gets 5 out of 5 stars.

SCREENSHOTS:

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