John Gillooly discovers the best way to spend 12 hours with a close friend.
Multiplayer has never really been done well in the Civilization series of games. Inherent to the turn-based strategy genre are long periods of waiting around and games that take umpteen times longer to finish than their realtime cousins. Civilization 3 was released without any multiplayer support, the missing piece of the puzzle that is provided in the new expansion pack Play The World.
The very thought of an expansion pack is enough to strike fear into the hearts of the bravest of gamer. Whenever such a beast is announced, you just cross your fingers and hope that the end result will enhance the game, rather than just add a couple of new units and maps. Thankfully Play The World enhances Civilization 3 across the board. Be it single or multiplayer, there are changes designed to destroy even more hours of your spare time.
As a starting point, Firaxis has added eight new Civs for you to control, each bringing its own special units to the table. Thought has gone into creating Civs that offer a unique experience, rather than a different leader graphic. For example, the Scandinavians have a Berserker unit that bears the same amphibious quality as the Marine, which allows it to attack from ships to faithfully represent classic Viking-style combat.
Other major unit changes have been designed to stop the upgrade dead ends that units such as swordsmen and warriors eventually become. Included now are medieval infantry and guerilla units to help your basic fighting units keep up with advancing technology. The same comprehensive unit commands are still in the game, however in the original these commands were hidden deep in the Civilopedia as a list of hot keys. Firaxis has now added icons for these commands, that are changeable through the preferences menu, which helps mediate the need to memorise extensive shortcut key lists.
Tech has been slightly tweaked, making new wonders and improvements available. New wonders include the Internet, which puts a research lab in every city. You can also now build airfields, outposts and radar towers out in open terrain to further strengthen your nation’s defense. Espionage has been revamped, and now all actions from building embassies to sabotaging production are accessible from one simple menu interface.
All these enhancements work beautifully, integrating into the game seamlessly and making it different enough for the time-sucking Civ 3 addiction to set in once more. And in order to fuel that addiction, and complement the newfound multiplayer, Firaxis has not only enhanced the game editor, but created sample scenarios and new tile sets for the community to play with. Also included is a set community created scenarios, finally supplying Civ 3 with a decent Earth map right out of the box.
Multiplayer is a peer-to-peer affair, where one person hosts and others join the game from the start. In order to shorten game time Firaxis has created a turnless mode, in which the turn counter resets after a specified period of time, and gets longer as the game progresses and civilisations get more complex.
It is a tradeoff though, as the timer does force everyone to make their moves quickly, but in the early building stages of the game, when all you want to do is wait until the next unit is built, the wait can seem interminable at times. Thankfully, there are many game modes designed to facilitate faster multiplayer gaming and get around these problems.
Many are variants on games popular in other multiplayer realms. Capture the Princess is unsurprisingly reminiscent of Capture the Flag, the goal being to nab the opposition’s princess unit from their capital and get her back to yours. Regicide is another mode, which makes for varied gameplay. In this mode you have a few low stat king units that must be defended. You can choose how you defend them, be it gathered together in one stronghold or hidden in cities throughout your empire. This not only makes for tactically different games, it increases the role of things like diplomacy and espionage as you search for kings in your opponent’s cities.
Play The World is indeed an expansive expansion. Firaxis has taken one of the finest turn based strategy games of all time and made it even better. New units; new tech; new maps; new scenarios; new game modes; new multiplayer – it’s all there. It is rare for an expansion to deliver such comprehensive enhancements, but Play The World manages to make Civilization 3 even more amazing than before.
Issue: 137 | June, 2012