Civilization III: Play the World Review

Hopefully, Play the World's wretched online performance can be fixed in a patch.

When Civilization III was released, developer Firaxis hinted that it had special plans for multiplayer support. The assumption, which Firaxis didn't deny at first, was that it would be available as a patch. But time passed with no sign of a multiplayer patch, and the feature eventually became the cornerstone for Firaxis' Play the World expansion pack. The game has some single-player additions as well, but there's no denying that the most important addition to the game is multiplayer support. Unfortunately, the multiplayer is also an unmitigated disaster.

One of Play the World's gameplay modifications adds...dinosaur barbarians?

Play the World's multiplayer is almost unplayable. In online games, the amount of lag is intolerable. With ping times that would be reasonable for even the most graphics-intensive first-person shooters, Play the World still lags. Even in turn-based modes, where your computer shouldn't be sending or receiving much data during your turn, the game can suffer from excruciatingly slow performance. Simple tasks like opening a city or making a selection from a menu can cause delays in mouse movement of a few seconds. Don't even think about scrolling the map unless you've got some time to kill.

Then there are the crashes. It's not a matter of whether the game will crash, but when it will crash. When you try to play online games with more than just two players, the chances increase exponentially, which makes for some pretty short games. Try joining Civilization III's multiplayer lobby, and you'll find that it's full of irate players in a cramped chat window. You're not going to be playing the world with this game, unless you can get it set up on a LAN or by cramming all your friends into one room and taking turns on a single computer in hotseat mode.

Another modification adds new terrain with richer colors.

LAN and hotseat work better than online games. However, the hotseat mode, which also works as a play-by-email option, is disappointing. There's no replay of the other players' turns. If an enemy unit scoots in and out of your viewing range, you'll never see it. If you lose a unit, it just vanishes and you have no indication it was ever there. If a city falls, you can't see who attacked it. If a unit is lost in a pitched battle, you don't know how damaged the enemy was as a result of the skirmish. There are no special provisions for diplomacy or negotiation, which are drawn out over several turns. File saving and management can be confusing for e-mail games. These problems aren't game breakers, but they indicate that the developer may have just tacked on hotseat and e-mail play without much thought for how well they would work.

prev

Civilization III: Play the World Quick Links

Summary | Reviews | News | Previews & Features | Images | Videos | Downloads | Answers | Hints & Cheats | Forum

advertisement

Player Reviews

Critic Scores

*The links above will take you to other Web sites and are provided for your reference. GameSpot does not produce or endorse the content on these sites.

Civilization III: Play the World Boxshot Enlarge the boxshot
Civilization III: Play the World

Game Stats

Full Game Details »Close

Games you may like…

Users who looked at content for this game also looked at these games.

See More Similar Games
advertisement