What’s New?

Change is good

This section is on what’s significantly different from Civ II as compared to the other Civ games – it may not make sense if you’ve never played Civilization games before - feel free to skip to the next page if so. For everyone else let’s take a look at the major differences in the third installation of Sid Meier’s private Iliad.

Culture: Cities now have culture points based on cultural city improvements like Libraries, Temples, and Wonders. These points translate into a sphere of influence on the map (more culture, more influence). Add the influence of all your cities and you have your empire’s borders. This is easily my favorite addition to the Civ series. In previous Civ games you could only claim the area directly surrounding your cities. You had to setup military units in a line to create a border, but if you didn’t anyone could establish a city in the middle of your empire. Now in Civ III cultural borders are like a fence around your house – pesky neighbors can’t poke around where they’re not wanted.

Culture is also a good addition because it allows you to take over cities passively. That is, if one of your cities has high culture, neighboring foreign cities will be in awe of it. If the grass looks green enough on your side of the fence they’ll switch loyalties – with no military action on your part. This pays off spending cash on improving cities – you can actually expand your empire without lifting a finger.

Setting up a game

You can never have too many Workers

Wonders give you high Culture

Resources: Want to build a knight on a horse? That’s hard to do if you don’t have a horse. In Civ III you now need to have access to a resource before you can build units that need it. This is a huge strategic change in the gameplay. Now as you build new cities and deal with other empires you need to balance resources found on the map. So even if you don’t like the nasty Romans, you may have to grease their palms if the only way to get horses is by trading with them. If a resource is just out of reach of a city, you can build a colony to harvest that resource, saving you from overlapping cities.

Trade:No more camels and no more trudging across a continent to setup a trade route. Personally, I never liked all the work involved with setting up trade in previous Civ games. Finding a city that produced a desired trade good, finding a city that wanted it, building a Caravan, and walking the caravan to the second city was way too much work. In Civ III you just need to make sure your capital city is connected to the capital city of the empire you with to trade with. Not just by roads, but through a network of roads, harbors, and even airports. Contact the leader you wish to trade with, shake hands, and you have a trade and a source of additional income.

Japanese have control over Cuba

Copernicus in 1505

Cruise Missile

Leaders: The most significant change in combat is the Leader unit. When an elite unit wins a battle, there’s a chance that a Leader unit will be produced. This Leader can do two things, create an army and hurry production. Armies are vital in winning wars – they’re groups of units that attack together, with cumulative hitpoints and increased attack/defense. Hurrying production is another huge change – by sacrificing the leader, you can finish a building in any city in one turn, even Wonders. So if the Pyramids normally takes 200 turns to complete, a Leader could finish it in only one turn.

What does all this mean?

Compared to the previous Civ games, Civ III feels streamlined. Everything is easier to control since you can access the command options quickly. Long menus are replaced with command buttons and right-click menus. The game feels more focused since redundant units and options are gone. This also speeds up the game considerably. All together, Civ III is a spit-shined version of an already spectacular game.