The Civilization Legacy

                     From www.civ3.com

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.

SID ON CIVILIZATION

SimCity inspired Civilization in a way. The first prototype of
Civilization that I did was a real-time game like SimCity, in that
you placed cities and moved things around, but cities grew without
you. You basically seeded the world in a kind of SimCity-esque
way. Instead of zoning, you seeded things, and you said I want a
city over there, and why don't you do some farming over here. What
I didn't like in that version of Civilization is that you did a
lot more watching than you did playing. So SimCity, Empire,
Railroad Tycoon, and the Civilization board game were the
different ingredients that we stirred together to get to
Civilization.

SID ON CIVILIZATION II

Civilization had been successful and it had never, even initially,
been a technological marvel. The feeling was that we could do a
significantly better job with presentation. We also had gotten so
much play out of Civ. People had come up with new ideas. We had
come up with ideas. So between better graphics and adding some of
these gameplay things that people had come up with and we had come
up with, there was really a need for a new game.

I think that the look of Civ II was certainly an improvement. My
skin is thick, and people can tell me, "Sid, Civilization looks
like an EGA game" and I accepted that criticism. But we tackled
that with Civ II. A lot of the new gameplay things polished and
built on some of the ideas that we didn't have a chance to follow
through on in Civ. I think the diplomacy system in the original
Civ was a little weak and the economic system - caravans and
things - was cool, but I know that we added those towards the end.
We didn't totally exhaust what we could've done with them.  Those
systems were flushed out a little bit. Most of the games I've done
have been somewhat new stuff, so what you're getting is some new
ideas, but not all of them are totally polished or finished. Civ
II was a chance to go back to Civ and polish and finish up some
things.

SID ON CIVILIZATION III

When people write to us or tell us about their most memorable Civ
experience, they usually talk about the first time they built up a
powerful military force or built a really cool unit and crushed
another civ. 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. We're 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.

It's been a lot of fun for the team at Firaxis to take a fresh
look at a game that has been very successful and to build on it
with a lot of new interesting gameplay ideas and concepts, along
with updating the look and feel of the game with a completely new
graphics engine. We've got some of the best talent in the industry
working on the game, including many of the people who helped
create Civ and CivII, and we've been greatly assisted and
energized by the support and suggestions from the gaming
community. We look forward to giving you the most fun Civ game
yet!

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