Graphics and Sound

A Massive Chessboard

The graphics in Civilization III have no bells or whistles, figuratively. You won’t find a bit of 3D accelerated, “let’s throw this in here to look hip,” junk that many developers add. Sid Meier and Firaxis know from experience that a good game doesn’t need fancy graphics if the gameplay is exceptional. This doesn’t mean that Civ III is ugly; quite the opposite in fact.

All of the graphics are high in detail. For example, you can see the belt and buckle on the hat of a Rifleman (think civil war era soldier). All of the units, buildings, and terrain have this level of detail. I can imagine an artist pushing pixels for hours on each image until it’s just right. It’s tough working on a small canvas, but Firaxis performs admirably.

That's a lot of railroads

Always mine mountains

Fighting over gold

Initially the map doesn’t look like more than a pretty picture. As you play more and start analyzing what you’re looking at, you’ll realize that there is a ton of information right in front of you. For example, when you’re scouting areas to build a new city it is very important to choose proper terrain for the type of city you want to build (if you build a city surrounded only by plains, you can have a huge population, but very little production). You need to pick apart what the map tells you about the terrain – this is easy to do with Civ III’s graphics. The information is all there, and is so elegantly presented that it doesn’t get in the way of the aesthetics.

The only animations in the game are units moving, working, and fighting. All of these are functional as well as fun to watch. Workers have several tasks, each with its own animation so you can tell what a worker is doing without pulling up any menus. It’s also neat watching units fight – you can see Archers load their bows and fire, Spearmen stabbing their spears, Bombers fly bombing runs, and units falling apart when they lose. A far cry from the original Civilization where you would see two tiles bump into each other, with the loser vanishing.

One thing you should note is that Civilization III requires a lot of RAM for optimal performance. I upgraded from 256MB to 1GB of RAM (extravagant even only a year ago, but an investment of less than $75 nowadays) while I was playing this game, and it made a huge difference in the speed. Simple things like scrolling around the map and waiting for opponents’ turns to end were a lot faster. RAM is cheap nowadays, and playing Civ III is a good excuse to upgrade.

Americans in Spain

The lists are back

Canada sucks for building cities

Sound

Firaxis nailed the sound effects in Civ III. I like that every unit has its own set of sounds – an M1A1 tank doesn’t sound like a guy on a chariot. I can see many a game company cutting corners and using the same sound effect for several units, but Firaxis has its act together.

Music isn’t quite as good as the sound effects. It’s only there as background music to building an empire. It does change depending on which era you are in, so you’re not listening to the same three songs all of the time. The music doesn’t do anything for me in particular, but it’s nowhere near annoying either.