Sid Meier's Civilization III

aka: Civ3, Sid Meier's Civilization III: More Civ Than Ever, Sid Meier's Civilization III: Più Civ che Mai, Sid Meier's Civilization III: créez le monde à votre image, Sid Meier's Civilization III: das beste Civ aller Zeiten!, Sid Meier's Cywilizacja III, Wenming III
Moby ID: 5289
Windows Specs

Description official descriptions

Sid Meier's Civilization III is a turn-based strategy game where the objective is to rule the planet with the civilization of the player's choice. Players control one of 15 historic civilizations (Aztecs, Egyptians, Russians, etc). Each civilization has its own particular strengths and weaknesses -- some are more scientific, for example, while others have stronger cultural or military attributes; also, each civilization has its own unique unit, and is more prone to certain forms of government while shunning some others.

Like in the previous titles in the series, the point of the game is to expand the influence of a civilization through resource management, conquest, or trade with other civilizations. As game time progresses from ancient times through the modern era, a civilization will acquire new technologies, which in turn enable interesting new abilities and enhanced power. Since there are several ways to win (military, diplomatic, or cultural), it is up to each player to determine how best to manage the division of labor.

The game includes some mechanics and features which were introduced in Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, such as borders between civilizations and the aforementioned differences between each civilization's statistics. The advisors are now present in the upper right corner of the screen in relevant menus. Diplomacy has been expanded, with the ability to trade and even slightly haggle with other civilizations in a more detailed way. Other new additions include the great leader mechanic, war weariness amongst the population, and small wonders.

Spellings

  • 文明III - Simplified Chinese spelling
  • 文明帝國 III - Traditional Chinese spelling

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Credits (Windows version)

139 People (124 developers, 15 thanks) · View all

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 86% (based on 39 ratings)

Players

Average score: 4.0 out of 5 (based on 134 ratings with 7 reviews)

You call this a game? It's a MASTERPIECE!

The Good
The delightful simplicity even with the complex nature of the game. The Civilipedia is very insightful, and helps you a lot when playing the game. Graphics is good (although not excellent) and music is catchy. The way that it makes me THINK like no other game EVER managed to do is remarkable!

The Bad
Slowness of AI turns during the latter stages of the game was a bit bad, but not bad enough to prevent me from becoming a total addict.

The Bottom Line
All I can say is that if you don't know about this game yet, you're missing out on the most important of all computer games EVER. You probably use your computer only for word processing...

Windows · by Kobus Myburgh (1) · 2005

Another classic - but it''s got some flaws

The Good
"Civilization" and "Civilization II" remain the landmark classic in strategic gaming, so it must have been hard to improve on them. Nonetheless, Civ III does add some very nice changes; cultural borders add an immense amount to strategy, the new resources system is a tremendous upgrade, and diplomacy is much improved.

What can you say? It's Civ, but they fixed a lot of the problems with AI and tactical frustrations. It's still a remarkably addictive game, the sort that will keep you up all night with JOMT disease (Just One More Turn.)

The Bad
Unfortunately, Civ III has one huge, gaping hole in it; there's no multiplayer mode. No Internet, LAN, hotseat, nothing. This may seem like a bizarre oversight, and it is, but in all likelihood Firaxis's plan is to release multiplayer as a separate product you'll have to buy, despite the fact that Civ III was first marketed as a multiplayer game and the "no multiplayer" announcement wasn't made until AFTER all the preorders were made! This is a remarkably unethical business practice even by the dismal standards of the gaming industry, but more to the point it takes a HUGE amount out of the game; Civ III would be terrific in multiplayer, but as a single player game it's more limited. With multiplayer it might have been the best game of all time. Without it, it's not.

There are a few other play balancing issues, but nothing major, and they'll doubtlessly be fixed in a patch. The music is pretty boring, too.



The Bottom Line
A great game... as long as you don't want to play it multiplayer.

Windows · by Rick Jones (96) · 2001

It's good... it's very good... but it's not more than that, unfortunately...

The Good
It's Sid Meier's Civilization. That alone means it's a really good game. You know the drill - you play a human race from the stone age to modern times and try to use diplomacy, force, science, etc. to beat the other races in varying levels of difficulty. The game is turn-based and very in-depth, while maintaining an excellent in-game tutorial and learning curve. City management, funds allocation, scientific breakthroughs, wonders of the world, diplomacy and more are part of the game, and depending on your choice of game settings, require an incredible amount of micromanagement. There's nothing that's not to like about this game...

The Bad
...except that it's nothing new. It's Civilization I all over again with a few (albeit good) additional features and, of course, better graphics. I haven't played Civ I in years, never played Civ II, never read the manual to Civ III and STILL managed to play the game flawlessly the first time I played it, THAT'S how similar it is. I know, sports coaches always say "never change a winning team", but come on.

I own - and love - Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri an awful lot... in my eyes, perhaps the best game of it's kind ever. And it's four years old. Now, Alpha Centauri has a lot of features that Civ III does not have - awesome mini movies when you build a wonder, a background storyline, voiceover whenever you build a city enhancement for the first time, better unit experience system, customization of units, etc. etc. As a matter of fact, if I showed both Alpha Centauri and Civ III both games to a person who has never seen either, he'd likely guess that Alpha Centauri is the never, more developed game. That's not a good thing, folks.

The Bottom Line
If you don't own the original Civilization, Civ II or Alpha Centauri, go buy Civ III. Buy it now. It's THAT good, but it's nothing new if you own any of the older Sid Meier games. If you are a Sid Meier fanatic, still get it, the additional features will likely be worth it for you.

Put it this way. I work at a CompUSA and got the game at cost for little over $20. I'm happy that I got it. If I had paid the $59.95 or whatever when it first came though, I would likely have been disappointed since it's not really a new game. Perhaps they should have done it like Microsoft - pay the full time if you're a first time Civ user, or a fraction of the cost if you already have the older Sid Meier Civilizations.

Remember Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace? It was a fun, decent movie... but many people were disappointed. Not because it was bad... but because, goshdarnit, it was Star Wars, and it was supposed to be groundbreaking, not just mere "good". That's the same way I feel about Civ III. It's Sid Meier, it's Civilization III, it's supposed to blow me away instead of just having me say "that's a good game".

Windows · by Gothicgene (66) · 2003

[ View all 7 player reviews ]

Trivia

German version

Because they didn't want to wait for Firaxis to release a German version of Civilization III, some German fans started to translate the game. They were about halfway through when they were forced by Infogrames to stop distributing their translation with an injunction, citing copyright infringement. The reason was not so much ill will, but Infogrames' responsibility towards the game's developer Firaxis on the one hand and commercial aspects on the other -- Infogrames wanted to sell its own localized version. As a sign of goodwill, Infogrames payed for the injunction's legal costs, so the fan project came away unharmed.

Music

You may notice that some of the original themes from previous Civ/Sid Meier games have made their way into Civilization III. For example, the Middle Age music for Oriental Civilizations is the Chinese theme song and the Middle Age music for North American Civilizations is 'Tenochtitlan' from Colonization and Civilization II.

References

The game's initial advertising campaign featured Gandhi and Abraham Lincoln wrestling. This is a reference to a comment made by Brad Pitt after filming Fight Club about the two people he'd most like to see fight each other.

References: Music

1) Let the credits roll through and right at the end, after Shakespeare's quote and after about two or three seconds of the credits screen being blank, a picture of Elvis Putnam appears.

To view this picture manually: Find folder: Infogrames\Interactive\Civilization 3\Art\credits

Then one of the pictures there is called "Elvis Putnam" obviously an Elvis joke of some kind.

2) Access your computer's clock by double-clicking on it, and change the date to January 8. January 8 is Elvis Presley's birthday.

Play any game with either "Regicide" or "Mass Regicide" mode on, and notice that your King unit looks like Elvis! If your Elvis gets into a fight, he will just stand there and say things like "Thank you, thank you very much!"

3) In the screen where you talk to your domestic advisor, you have the option to change your form of government. She will ask you, "You say you wanna revolution?" And you can select either "Yea, you know it's gonna be alright," or "No, you can count me out." Both are lines from the Beatles song Revolution.

Awards

  • Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences
    • 2001 - Strategy Game of the Year
  • Computer Games Magazine
    • 2001 - Game of the Year
    • 2001 - Strategy Game of the Year
  • Computer Gaming World
    • April 2002 (Issue #213) – Best Game That Didn't Win an Award
  • Gamepen
    • 2001 - PC Strategy Game of the Year
  • Game Revolution
    • 2001 - PC Strategy Game of the Year
  • GameSpot
    • 2001 - Best Single-Player Strategy Game of the Year (Editors' Choice)
    • 2001 - Best Single-Player Strategy Game of the Year (Readers' Choice)
  • Gamespy
    • 2001 - PC Strategy Game of the Year
  • GameStar
    • Issue 02/2002 - Best Game in 2001
    • Issue 02/2002 - Best Strategy Game in 2001
  • Wargamer.com
    • 2001 - Strategy Game of the Year

Information also contributed by -Chris, Indra was here, Itay Shahar, phlux, Rambutaan and Zack Green

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by berksneighbor.

Macintosh added by Jeanne.

Additional contributors: nullnullnull, Kasey Chang, Unicorn Lynx, Xoleras, jean-louis, Paulus18950, SGruber, Patrick Bregger, Plok, Danfer.

Game added November 5, 2001. Last modified March 23, 2024.