Civilization III: Play the World Preview
The expansion pack to one of last year's greatest strategy games is almost upon us. Read our impressions of an early build of Play the World for more details.
About one year ago, the great game of Civilization was updated with enhanced features and graphics for its third installment. Yet, the designers felt that there were a few details and excellent ideas that could have made the game even better but that failed to make it into the release of the original Civilization III. So naturally, Infogrames and Firaxis started work on an expansion pack that would add even more gameplay to the full game. The result is the add-on, Play the World, which should hit store shelves within a few weeks.
Civilization III: Play the World is a well-stocked expansion pack that offers plenty of added gameplay to the original game. An enhanced interface, a streamlined espionage system, new units, new technologies and improvements, additional victory conditions, and new civilizations are among the many new features in Play the World. But the biggest addition to Civ III delivered by the expansion pack is multiplayer gameplay. Apparently, the precedent was set with CivNet many years ago to always add multiplayer support after a Civilization game ships and always in an expansion pack; never in the original game. In all seriousness though, it is a welcome feature and well supported. Civilization games will always be time-consuming marathons, but there are Civ fans who relish the thought of beating up on their friends and family, and Play the World lets you do that.
While the expansion pack offers no real graphical improvements to Civilization III, you will notice a few changes as soon as you boot up a new game. Aside from the new interface, once a game starts, you'll see enhancements to the graphical user interface. Militaristic players will appreciate the new ability to move units in a stack, allowing coordinate army movement. Using this order creates a "go to" order for all units in a square. You can also move units of a type so that you needn't hobble horsemen, for example, by moving them with spearmen.
Previously, the common orders for all units, such as disband and go to, were displayed at the bottom of your screen, but orders unique to a unit, such as build a city for settlers or the various functions of the worker, weren't. You had to press the hotkey to access those tasks. This isn't too much of a problem for Civ veterans, but it didn't take into account new players who would have to fumble for their manuals to find the hotkeys each time they wanted to irrigate a square or build a mine. Now, all these special commands are displayed as buttons above the common suite of options. For workers, the orders displayed fluctuate depending on the terrain they are standing on. If a worker is on a mountain, he gets the build mine button, but not the irrigate button, and when he steps onto a plains square, the build mine button goes away to be replaced by an irrigate button. The hotkeys still work, but at least now all the orders are displayed for easy mouse access and as a guide for those who don't know the hotkeys. Even better, when you mouse over a command, you are now told how long a task will take, such as how many turns it will take your worker to clear a forest or build a road over a mountain.
Other interface enhancements are a combined screen for espionage and diplomacy, which you can access by hitting the hotkey E; hotkeys for moving units in a stack and moving units of a type; and new hotkeys for the new commands in the game. Some of those new commands include automatic bombardment for artillery units and bombing for planes. Rally points have also been added to the game (curiously they were in previous Civ games but left out of Civ III), which let you automate sending newly created units to far-off regions.
Civilization III: Play the World Quick Links
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- Atari
- Firaxis Games
- Historic Turn-Based...
- Release: Oct 25, 2002
- ESRB: Everyone
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