Civilization 3 Goes Gold

Grabbing the chance of Infogrames and FIRAXIS Games announcing that Sid Meier's Civilization III has gone gold, we invite you to come with us and find out what goodies are promised by the new epic in 3 pages of revelations. The game will ship to retailers October 30th with games reaching store shelves soon after.

The most highly anticipated game of the year, Civilization III embodies all of the elements of its predecessors that have made it a four-million-selling franchise and many new and improved features that will make this the greatest Civ experience ever.

Sid Meier created the original Civilization computer game in 1990. Civilization instantly set the standard and defined a new genre of empire-building strategy games and is still recognized as one of the greatest games of all time. The game is an addictive blend of building, exploration, discovery and conquest. Players match wits against some of history's greatest leaders as they strive to build the ultimate civilization to stand the test of time. The legacy of this incredibly fun, addictive series continues today with the development of Civilization III.

So what has changed and what new features are introduced? Here is the man himself (Sid Meier)
"Focusing on your military strength is always a lot of fun and a very successful strategy in the Civilization series. It's a concept we have a lot of great new ideas for in CivIII and we'll be telling you more about them as time goes on. In addition, we're focusing on new concepts that will provide players with more interesting pathways and directions to explore. In CivIII players will be able to build powerful civs by creating a strong cultural and art base, or by developing and protecting trade routes that can carry precious resources to cities, or by being a savvy and respected diplomat. These concepts all played significant roles in shaping and defining some of the greatest Civilizations in history and will now be an integral part of the gameplay in Civilization III.

We're also working on easy-to-use customization tools that will provide players with many options to create their own individual and unique civ games and share them with other Civ fans. We're excited about the possibilities to build a stronger online Civilization community - one that promotes and rewards cooperation as well as competition.

Civ has always been intuitive and easy to understand for strategy fans. Weâre now working even harder to make Civ a game that can be easily played and enjoyed by both casual and avid gamers. We're streamlining some of the more complicated information screens and simplifying the interface so that everyone can easily and effectively manage their civs. Civ III will continue to offer an experience that is easy to get into but provides as much depth as a player would like."

Great changes have also been implemented in the way a civilization can progress, according to Jeff Briggs (co-designer)
"One of the most noticeable differences between Civilization III and its predecessors lies in the Technology tree. First of all, a fully interactive tech tree can now be found in the game. The tech advances have been re-structured, with new technologies (free artistry, ecology, integrated defence, etc.) added, the requirements for research for many advances altered, and in some cases the benefits dramatically changed. The "age" that a civilization has reached is now closely tied to the tech tree, with certain advances required before that civilization can move into the next age; so, portions of the tech tree will be closed until the player can reach the appropriate age. Since Civilization III is a tightly integrated design, this revamping of the tech advances brought some significant changes for the wonders. There are now two types of wonders: great and small. Great wonders are those that can be built only once; once one civilization has built it, no other can construct that wonder. Many of these great wonders will be familiar, however, some have been removed (such as Marco Polo), others added, and many have somewhat different effects. The Small Wonders like the heroic epic, Wall Street, Pentagon (news - web sites) and Apollo Program, can be built by each civilization and are available only when specific non-Technology requirements are met (battlefield medicine, for instance, requires that a civilization have five hospitals built before it can be constructed). While each of the Wonders is an advantage, players should be highly selective as to which of these they commit resources, since each one represents a considerable production investment. Some radical improvements have been made to the units. At the very start of a game of Civilization III, players will notice that there are now workers and settlers, separating the functions of settlers in the previous games. Now, settlers settle and workers work. The values of most of the combat units beyond the basic Warriors, Spearmen and Swordsmen have been altered. And now there are the special units … "special" in the fact that each of these (such as the Greek Hoplites, Japanese samurai, English men-o-war, and German Panzers) is unique to a specific civilization. In effect, these special units are upgraded equivalents of combat units that other nations can build. "

Whatever happens one thing is certain, the new Civ game is bound to sell big, all through the holiday season.