Civilization III: Play the World - Expansion Pack

 

 

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Whether you're a Civ addict or... (there's an alternative?!) ...then you'll love Civilization III: Play the World, which is the first official add-on for the incredibly successful strategy game Civilization 3.

You get eight completely new tribes to play, headed by great historical leaders like Genghis Khan of the Mongols and Queen Isabella of Spain. Not only that, but each leader (including the existing leaders from Civ3) are now able to be represented in the game with their own unique King units; 24 in total.

With the new "Regicide" victory condition, your goal is to bring down the demise of your opposition by eliminating their King units -- so you have to keep them safe and secure, or lose the game! But there's also other new victory conditions too, including "Capture the Princess" where your goal is to capture a number of new Princess units from the hands of your enemies. With the "Elimination" victory condition, if you lose just one of your cities the game is over for you, or your enemies. This new victory condition allows for faster and deadlier multiplayer games. I've found this to be the perfect fix for when I'm craving to play Civilization, but not prepared or able to spend hours on one game.

Arguably the most important part of Civ3:PTW is that multiplayer and play-by-email modes are finally being added to Civilization 3, but with a very innovative and unique twist. You can now play standard turn-based Civ3, or choose from new modes such as Simultaneous and Turnless.

In Simultaneous mode, every tribe takes their turn at the same time rather than one after the other as in the normal game mode. Both this and the normal game mode still allow for waiting at the end of your turn, especially in Simultaneous mode if you're a quick player.

But in Turnless mode, there's no waiting at the end of each turn at all. Instead every unit and city has its own timer clock, and the game just keeps on going without pause. When the turn clock finishes one cycle, the unit is able to be moved again and the city adds another turn of production too. Everyone moves their units at once, and the action is non-stop, with no waiting for slower players to make their move. This makes Civ3 feel almost like a real time strategy game, and you need to develop new strategies to survive if you're a die hard turn-based fan like myself. One downside of Turnless mode is that when you're in diplomacy mode with another tribe, all your cities and units are still on the map, waiting for your command. This forces you to get straight to the point when you're trying to make deals with other leaders, which isn't such a bad thing sometimes! Both of these two new victory modes are completely optional.

As well as those already mentioned, there are a mass of new enhancements to the game including loads more automation abilities and commands to give to your units. These are presented with new but discreet icons on screen, for those of us who hate having to look up keyboard shortcuts in the manual.

In total there are 88 new units are in Play the World. There's the unique unit for each new tribe: Explorer-replacing Conquistadors for Spain, the coast-invading Beserk unit for the Vikings and the gunpowder-powered Hwacha for the Koreans. And that's just a few of them! There's also two complete sets of themed units: a Medieval Japan Unit pack and a quirky pre-historic set which features dinosaurs which replace standard units for a completely different experience.

As if all this wasn't enough, there are also two distinctly different terrain art sets including an icy Winter world, and a "European-style" terrain set too. And to top this off they've even conveniently included loads of great scenarios, units and terrain sets made by dedicated Civilization fans. Some of these are fantastic; including them with the expansion makes it so much easier than trawling through the Internet trying to find and download them all individually.

I am sure I've missed loads of other reasons why I love this expansion pack. But alas, I don't know if I can keep my eyes open; where's my coffee?! Just one more turn! ;)

Do not buy this expansion. Buy the conquest expansion because it has the play the world already included with the expansion, for exactly the same price.

After 5 patches for the original CivIII, there will still issues with that game which I hoped would be addressed in the expansion pack. These were:

adding eras
setting diplomacy between civs for scenarios
events timeline
AI scripting

None of these are in CivIII, and they're not in PTW either. So you if you want to create scenarios, e.g. for WWII, you're scuppered.

But let's look at what the XP does bring. You ge 8 new civs, each with an era-specific, animated leaderhead and their own Unique Unit. Unfortunately, it looks as though the new leaderheads are based on the same 2 or 3 stock models, with only skin-deep differences. The Celtic, Viking and Mongol leaderheads, for example, all have the same facial bone structure and their faces move in the same way for the different facial expressions. A bit cheap, if you ask me. There are 2 new terrain sets, one for winter terrain and one for european terrain. However, you will find yourself not using them. They are somewhat specific, and seem more suited to scenarios. Ironic really, when historical scenarios are impossible (see above).

Multi-player doesn't work. It's as simple as that. There have been 2 patches released already, with a 3rd released in the US and about to be released here soon. Owners of the European copy can't use the US patches because they use different CD protection schemes (SafeDisk and SecureROM respectively). Even after the 2nd patch for PTW, multi-player still wasn't playable on anything other than 2-player games. I dislike duels, because there's no cut 'n' thrust diplomacy, which is what Civ is all about. Not only that, but even with just 2 players, the lag after only a few cities were built was 6 seconds, which is rediculous - particularly for games with a ping of only 290. And this was after 2 patches - out of the box, you can't even get a multiplayer game to start up. Which is all a bit pathetic. Incidentally, you can never have more than 8 players in a MP game, be they human or AI. Not only that, but the specialist game types are rubbish, they never leave you enought time to do what you want, and you will always go back to good old turn-based.

The biggest benefit of Play The World is the mod-swapping capability, called the Search Scenario Folders. This lets you install total conversions of CivIII without havig to rename your original files. Absolutely essential for modding, as I'm sure you'll agree. It's this feature alone which pushes this review above 2 stars.

Play The World also installs an Extras folder in your CivIII directory, which contains various WWII infantry and tanks, as well as Feudal Japan units. The Japan units are great, and you'll use them a lot. The WWII units are perhaps less useful, often being flavour units of each other. So you have American, German and Japanese fighter planes, American, German and Japanese infantry, etc, etc.

Play The World also contains fan-made content, such as a reduced-graphics version of the Double Your Pleasure mod, TETurkhan's Test of Time scenario, SnOoPy's terrain graphics, etc. However, these can be downloaded free of charge from varous websites - so don't buy this product for them.

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4.0 out of 5 stars A money saving hint.
Civ is a great game
Although, with the release of Conquest's expansion pack this expansion is useles. (conquests has multiplayer built in)

Published on 24 July 2005 by -eagle_1-

5.0 out of 5 stars WOW
This is single handedly, the best game i have ever played, no other stratagy games even come close to this awe inspiring, i have never played a game like it and i am very proud to... Read more

Published on 11 Feb 2004

3.0 out of 5 stars More Civ
If you already have the Civ III original version just download the latest patch and you will have the same AI. Read more

Published on 22 Sep 2003 by Mr. Salvador A. Patuel

5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic Expansion to the Greatest Strategy Game of All Tim
Most would not deny that the Civilisation series (plus Sid Meier's spin offs such as Alpha Centauri and Colonisation) have been the most revolutionary and most influential and... Read more

Published on 21 Sep 2003 by Jonathan

5.0 out of 5 stars Best Brain Game Ever!
You wish for a game that offers joy and logic in one?, A game where the hours will fly by? This is the game for you! Read more

Published on 5 Jun 2003 by Kristhopher Bradbury

5.0 out of 5 stars Civ 3 Play the WOrld
...I have being playing this for the last two days. I have only played a standard game (not mulitplayer) playing as the Celts against most of the new Civs. Read more

Published on 6 Dec 2002

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