Discovering mathematics, for example, lets catapults be constructed, and allows research into currency.Ī new development for Civ III is the strategic resources that appear on the map. Each discovery enables the construction of new units and city improvements, and reveals further avenues of research.

by the end of the game, you'll be researching nuclear power and space flight.

Early on, discoveries like pottery and currency are important. Each starts with slightly different knowledge and units, and each has its own special unit that can't be built by the other civilisations.Īs the game progresses, your civilisation's scientists will research whatever you tell them. Each civilisation has certain, vaguely historically accurate strengths - the Chinese, for example, are industrious and scientific, while the British are expansionist and commercial. luxuries for your population expansion vs. Playing Civilization is a thoughtful, slow matter of balancing countless factors - your scientific development vs. The winner is declared when one of the six victory conditions is met these now include cultural, territorial and diplomatic victories as well as the traditional military dominance and construction of a colony ship to send to Alpha Centauri. Gameplay proceeds from here in a turn-based method not too far removed from a great many strategic boardgames, Risk being probably the most familiar example. Broadly, the objective of each is to be successful: to expand their populations, to develop new technologies and to spread around the globe. A number of fledgling civilisations, comprising just a band of settlers and a military or exploration unit or two, start in different locations around the globe. The game starts on an empty planet in 4000BC. Still, some kind of brief resume is needed. Never played a Civ game before? Seeing as total sales for the series number around four million, that's probably not true of too many gamers these days. Since Civ 1 was first released in 1990, and counting expansion packs, the Alpha Centauri games, and re-releases, there have been no less than nine in the sequence Civilization III (or as the box would have it, Sid Meier's Civilization III) makes it round ten.

Few strategy series have been longer running or bigger selling than Civilization.

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