The last exceptional 2D TBS.
Graphics: 9/10
The graphics in this game can only upset those that play FPS games exclusively.
As expected, all units and combat is animated, the mug shots of the leaders have different emotional statuses, such as a grin when happy or a dark stare when angry. Of course, the city view is as impressive as it was in Civ 2 and then some, with houses and skyscrapers dotting the city's skyline.
This gets me to another enjoyable part of the graphics: The terrain. The detail given to the terrain is impressive and is, of course, dotted with forests, resources, jungles and more.
Sound: 8/10
Sound is a mixed bag, with mostly good components.
The music is my biggest issue with the sound. In the ancient ages (the music is structured by age and nationality of the civilization you picked) is irritating some times, because it's not that much more then just a repeated banging of drums. However, the music in the later ages of the game is AMAZING, part techno and part symphonic it's a truly amazing creation.
Another nice plus is that all the tracks are available in MP3 formant, so you can use them in your MP3 player, for example.
The sound effects are what you can expect from this type of game: sword fights, tank sounds, bombing sounds, and civil unrest are some of the sounds included. Again, nothing special, but nothing bad either.
Gameplay: 9/10
By far the most important part in any game is the actual gameplay. That being said, the gameplay in Civ 3 does not fail to impress.
The basic premise is to lead your nation from ancient times to one of 6 victories. Yes that's right, this game has 6 ways to win, including: domination, conquest, space race, diplomatic victory, culture victory and histograph victory, so there is a great deal of things to keep you playing. Before choosing your path to winning however, you need to set up your world or pick a premade scenario that you would like to play. Of course then you pick one of the 16 available nations, but unlike in Civ 1 and 2, these nations are different as they each have their own special attributes (out of the 6 available) and their own special units.
After you've picked a civilization and a world for you to start playing in, you can continue towards your goals of world domination or tree hugging. Most of your time in the game is spent building cities, improvements, wonders of the world, armies and/or researching technology. However mundane these tasks may seem they’re not. The game combines all those tasks in a likeable experience that makes it a blast to play.
Of course the game is chuck full of new features. There are now 2 types of wonders, Great and Small. Small ones can be built by any nation, on the flip side, Great ones can only be built by one nation. There are also many improvements to the units in this version. First off you now need actual supplies to build units (that are connected to your cities via roads), like iron for swordsman or horses for horseman. Second some your units like catapults, cannons, planes and ships no longer attack cities, they bomb them, using the new bombing ability, a nice new touch which makes the game far more realistic. Of course all of the old rules still apply, units on hills get a defense bonus and so on, but there are also tons more new features that I simply cannot describe without making a FAQ-sized review.
Units are not the only part of the game that has been improved, cities, for example, can only maintain city walls up to a population of 6 (in other Civilization games they could keep city walls throughout the game). After the city reaches a population of 6, walls are destroyed and replaced by defense bonuses that cities with a high population now receive.
Diplomacy too has received an improvement, now allowing you to trade with your allies much more efficiently than in the previous versions. Diplomacy also allows you to sign pacts and alliances more efficiently than in other games. However, probably the most important improvement diplomatically is the fact that you can now actually use the trade maps feature (which was all but unusable in Civ 2).
Trade has also been changed, now that you don't use caravans or freights anymore. Instead you use your trade networks (roads, harbors, airports) to trade with other civs. Another nice new feature to trade, are luxuries, which provide happiness and can be traded with the AI for exorbitant prices.
Combat itself has suffered both and uplift and a crushing blow. First of all now you can actually observe the difference between Regular and Veteran, and the new level, Elite in combat. Furthermore, the Elite units have the ability to spawn Leaders which can hurry the production of a Wonder (as you can't use caravans or money to buy wonders). Armies, which can also be created by leaders, on the other hand are like a transport: They can be loaded with 3 troops (4 if you build the Pentagon small wonder) and have cumulative HPs of all of the units in the army, but they sacrifice their ability to move of the fastest unit, since an army can only move at the rate of it's slowest unit.
However there is a big problem with combat in Civ 3. Actually… I'd say 2 big problems. A problem is the fact that combat is WAY too random. In one of my games I attacked a regular spearman (3 HP) with an army of mounted warriors (14 HP) and lost all but 1 HP form my whole army. How very annoying!
The second big combat mistake Firaxis did was remove firepower from the game. That means that now spearman can defeat tanks, granted they have enough HP and defense bonuses, and that alone makes me take one point off Civ 3’s other wise flawless gameplay.
The final change is in the AI department, which has also been improved considerably (mostly by his absurd cheating of the AI). However, this makes Deity AI a true hardcore player’s dream.
Multiplayer: N/A
This game has no multiplayer. It was later added in its expansion (Play The World), but it turned out to be very laggy over Gamespy so it was primarily a Hot Seat and Play By Email affair.
Overall: 9/10
This game is great, and truly one of the best examples of how a TBS game should be made.
Complex, simple and accessible to almost anyone willing to try it Civ 3 is the modern poster child of the TBS genre.