What's Unique about Civ III

This guide talks about some of Civ III's features and changes which make it different from the other games from the series.

What’s Unique about Civ III?

What’s Unique about Civ III?

If you’re not intimately familiar with the different iterations of Civilization, this is a series which has done a fantastic job of carrying its core gameplay over with each successive game. However, there are still enough differences to make each game unique. It has been said: “If you play Civ 4 like you’re playing Civ 3, you are bound to lose.”

So with that said, I want to detail some of those differences.

-Government Selection
Civ III’s Government selection system is completely different from it’s successors. Government options are unlocked through research. A new government can be implemented when its unlocked with a short period of anarchy to follow. Civ 4 replaced this with a civics grid. Civ 5 featured a social policies tree.

-Palace View
The palace view is a small peripheral feature in which the citizens of a civilization would grant an upgrade based on performance. The upgrades were seemingly random and ultimately only served to alter a photo which was accessible from menus. This feature was available in Civ II as the throne room but was gone from the later games.

-Corruption Mechanic
This is a big one. Corruption is a figure of wasted production and income from each city. Some of the things that effect corruption levels are government selection, distance from capitol, and buildings present in the city. (Courthouses reduce corruption.)

-Movement
This was the last game where movement orders were given with the left click. Civ 4 and 5 both instituted a right click movement order system.

-No Unique Buildings
Each civilization works with the same available building pool. Unique buildings weren’t featured until later games.

-Colonies
Workers build colonies on resources to use them if they are not within your borders, for example tobacco that's nowhere near any of your cities.
Thanks to Megatronism for this info

-Map Size & Max Cities
The max cites possible to control is 256; more than most Civ games. The map size is also massive compared to later games.
Thanks to Greengoo for this info

-Early Ocean Exploration
You can choose to explore ocean maps from the very start of the game. Every time you end a turn with an early tech boat out at sea you risk having them be destroyed. This introduces a risk/reward tradeoff of trying to cross an ocean and establish a colony before anyone else get's there that is not present in other iterations of Civ.
Thanks to eggsome for this info

-Here are even more changes provided in the comments by user innadiated

• Civ3 has very unique border management. Nothing prevents opponents from entering your territory even if you ask them to leave.
  
• No strategic resource limit: Once you have iron you can build as many units needing it as you want.
  
• Roads earn you money, while in other Civs they cost you money.
  
• Has flood plains/marshes which will make nearby cities sick (and can even end up being your starting location!). Health was reused in Civ4 in addition to happiness, but flood plains and marshes were removed.
  
• You start with a settler and a worker, future games start with a settler and a warrior.
  Thanks to innadiated for this info

Here is a small list of other changes I found on Civ Fanatics

• Fewer great people (only Military and Scientific). And they are random.
• There is a four turn minimum to learn any tech via research.
• There are four distinct Ages. Civ 4’s ages function completely differently.
• Fewer special resources. And no special building needed to use them.
• Larger empires (100+ cities).
• Come from behind wins are possible and fairly common.

External Resources

Civ III: War Acadamy - http://www.civfanatics.com/civ3/strategy

This is a page from CivFanatics which goes into great detail about how to be successful in Civ III.

CIV III Section of the 2k Website -
https://civilization.com/civilization-3

This is the official webpage of Civilization III. As you can probably imagine, it’s dead now. However the downloads are still intact. Consequently there are a couple mods and maps that may be worth a look.

CivFanatics -
http://www.civfanatics.com/
This is the central cultural hub for fans of the Civilization series. The forums are extensively broken down by game. If you check the Civ III section of those forums, there is a place dedicated to playing online. This is a great place to look for getting that elusive online multiplayer game going.

Change Log

Edit 6/14/2013: Changed the Throne Room section to the Palace View section.
Edit 1/1/2018: Original homepage link was broken. Replaced it with the Civ III section of the 2k website.
Edit 8/8/2018:Added the bit about Colonies Megatronism mentioned in the comments. Thanks again for that!
Edit 9/11/2019: Added Greengoo's comments.
Edit 9/11/2020: Added eggsome's and innadiated's comments.
Edit 9/27/2022: Made sure the links still work.

[willhernandez02]

i cannot Opern my game in windows 11 it only opens half of screen

[ZapparN]

You can't build a colony on tobacco since it's a bonus resource just like cattle or wheat. You can only build a colony on a luxury or strategic resource.

[Ζephir]

Worth it for the Soundtrack alone

[Camcam]

@Cryogenius
Civ4, Civ2, (and I'm guessing Civ1) all allowed unit stacking. The biggest difference is Civ3 has no penalty whatsoever for stacking. Civ4 has collateral damage from siege units and flanking damage from cavalry which can damage other units in the stack. Civ2 eliminates the entire stack if the primary defender loses. Civ3 stacks have to be killed one unit at a time, making the stack of doom truly dominate.

[Cryogenius333]

Think you forgot the biggest one:
The unit stack.
Civ IV onwards disposed of this feature, using a different style grid system, and units were no longer allowed to be stacked. The only "stacking" was the ability to place a single worker and a single artillery unit on top of a military unit. Battles end up being wonky games of tileslide, where you cant maneuver large numbers of units past one another and the playing field gets crowded.

In Civ 3 you can stack as many units as you care to onto a single tile, and they will move and fight together. It is perfectly plausible to deathstack 150 modern armor units on top of one another and wheel out the pain train.

[TigerMommy]

Small addition, but one I've always noticed; you can walk on mountain tiles in this game, whereas you cannot in most of the other ones

[Mom's Wi-Fi]

Some corrections:
– strategic resources providing an unlimited supply isn't unique to III, as it's also the case in IV;
– IV also has flood plains and they too are detrimental to a city's health;
– IV also starts you with different units, depending on your civilization (usually it's a toss up between a scout and a warrior);
– as far as I'm concerned roads do not cost upkeep in IV or VI; quite the contrary, having a road in IV is among a few ways in which cities can instigate trade.

[eskewneil]

the game at times will not launch

[Kaoz]

The maximum number of cities is 512, not 256 (as in Civ 2). The maximum of units on the map is a pool of 4096, shared between all civilizations.

[MEAT-BASED HOMINOID]

You forgot the leaderheads change with each era.