History

8 Civilization 3 pages in History.

• Civilization 3 vs 2 and 4Civilization 3 (2001) added culture and borders, strategic and luxury resources, unique units, two traits per civilization, Great Leaders and armies to the series and dropped Civilization 2's caravans, engineers and unit bribery; Civilization 4 (2005) then replaced Civ 3's corruption with city maintenance and added spreading religions, civics and Great People. Critics scored Civ 4 a little higher, and which is better is a matter of taste.
• Development HistoryFiraxis Games made Civilization 3, designed by Jeff Briggs and Soren Johnson; Hasbro Interactive and Firaxis announced it at E3 on May 17, 1999, and Infogrames published it in North America on Oct 30, 2001.
• Jeff BriggsJeff Briggs cofounded Firaxis Games with Sid Meier and Brian Reynolds in 1996, was its president and CEO, and was the lead designer of Civilization 3, which he designed with Soren Johnson after Reynolds left; he is also a composer.
• Patches and UpdatesThe last official patches for Civilization 3 are v1.22 for Conquests (Apr 5, 2004) and v1.27f for Play the World (Mar 3, 2003); the base game's v1.29f came out in 2002 or early 2003, and 2K's two Steam updates of 2015 moved online play from GameSpy to Steam. Fixes since then come from fans, chiefly the C3X mod for the Conquests executable.
• Reception and AwardsCivilization 3 scored 90 on Metacritic, 9.2 at GameSpot and 9.3 at IGN, won the PC Strategy award at the 2002 Interactive Achievement Awards, and was the best-selling game in the US in its launch week; critics faulted its corruption, endgame micromanagement and missing multiplayer.
• Release HistoryCivilization 3 came out for Windows in North America on Oct 30, 2001, followed by a Mac version on Jan 6, 2002, Play the World on Oct 29, 2002, Conquests on Nov 4, 2003 and the Complete edition in Sep 2004. It reached Steam on Oct 25, 2006 and GOG on Nov 30, 2016, and its online play moved from GameSpy to Steam on Mar 16, 2015.
• Sid MeierSid Meier created Civilization and his name is in the title, but Civilization 3 was designed by Jeff Briggs and Soren Johnson; Meier is credited with the original Civilization design and, in Conquests' credits, as Director of Creative Development.
• Soren JohnsonSoren Johnson co-designed Civilization 3 with Jeff Briggs and wrote its game and AI code, working at Firaxis Games from 2000 to 2007 before leading Civilization 4; he has since called Civ 3's bargaining table a big mistake and its corruption the number one complaint.

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