User Reviews (21 - 31 of 57)

Show these reviews first:

Highest Rated
Lowest Rated Newest
Oldest Most Helpful
Least Helpful

Buggy like you wouldn't believe

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 9 / 16
Date: July 28, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This game was released way to soon. It is buggy and missing many graphics files. Even the very large patch cannot fix it. I wouldn't recommend this. It was a lot of fun but invariably something would go wrong. For example in one game It would add 500 gold per turn to my tally regardless of howmuch my civ was actually spending. Sounds good, well in another game, I was in the negative no matter how much I stripped down the expenses. This appeared to be related to the corruption calculations, but I'm not a programmer so don't take my word for it. The game is just unpredictable. In another very frustrating episode, I could not load a certain saved game, for no apparent reason.

Stay away. Save your money. Civ 4 is coming and this is not worth the waste of time.

wrong changes

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 25 / 66
Date: August 19, 2004
Author: Amazon User

All additions and changes to CivIII are useless until they do something about the 2 major shortcomings of the entire Civ series: the stupid movement system (moving each unit individually even when a whole stack wants to go to the same place); and the stupid combat system (where each unit attacks and defends seperately no matter how many are involved in the same battle). Leaders, as defined so far, dont really help much. As it is, I almost never finish a game because it bogs down into endless turns of moving and attacking one unit at a time. Boring!

Another major problem is that there are never enough resources, even at the easiest level of play; forcing you into wars, even if you would like to be peaceful. Their availability should be adjustable, the same way the size of continents and other items are.

A minor irritation is that I can't choose the color of my units.

Excellent expansion to an incredible game!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 9
Date: February 12, 2005
Author: Amazon User

How many times have you waited for an expansion pack to come out to improve the few things that you find wrong with a game that you really enjoy, only to be disappointed? Well this time, things are different. I cannot say enough good things about the original Civ 3, and the Conquests expansion pack has fixed the minor problems, and added a lot of new gameplay excitement.

If you've never played Civ 3, buy the original and the Conquests expansion. If you've played the Civ 3 game, buy the Conquests expansion today!

Missing Bonus Disk

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 20 / 57
Date: November 12, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Did anybody receive the promised Bonus Disc? It seems Amazon is denying its existence and Atari says that Amazon should have it. The link on the Civ III site is gone and it isn't in the google cache.

My .02

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: February 06, 2004
Author: Amazon User

caose's review is pretty much correct. I'd only add a couple of things, its possible to mod using the editor & allow tribal government in a normal game.

Is also possible to add the Austrians (Charles V) to the game. Austria is a hidden civ that comes complete with all the leaderhead files. Unfortunately the editor is hard coded to allow only 32 civs. So in order to add a civ, you need to cut someone.

Highly addictive game, especially once you start modding.

Civ 3 redeemed

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 8 / 17
Date: March 08, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This game has got me back interested interested in the Civ series, after a long year of waiting, the make or break game in the series came out, and it made it.
I first got interested in the series when I bought Civ 2. This game was awsome (the best strategy game of the century). It wasn't like anything I had ever seen before, with nearly unliminted and addictive game play, and the coolest scenarios I have ever played.
When I heard that Civ 3 was coming out I got excited. Once I bought the game, I was initialy unenthused with some of the features, the bugs, the lack of any scenarios, and the lack of a cheat menu (was the best thing to cut down a learning curve). Once I got the patch I got excited again, with bugs fixed and I got an aquired taste (the cheating problem went away once I got past the learning curve). I still had a problem with the no scenarios, but I downloaded some online that were alright but noting compaired to the other games.
Then came a disaster that could have ended the series, Play the World. This game compounded the problems with Civ 3, including adding a laundry list of new bugs, and a silly multiplayer that was seriously lacking playableity. They did make some gameplay adjustments but all together it hurt the game more then it helped it.
With the anouncements of Conquests, Civ 3 would either become the greatist game of this century, or end the series. It was the former. They totaly reamped game play and added in a ton of new features, and made the multiplayer very good.
But I was most happy to see the biggest thing Civ 3 was lacking, scenarios. Not just 2 like civ 2 but 9. And these wern't just regular average joe scenarios, these where true historic scenarios done in perfect detail with the objectives shifting from map to map. You can play (the most memerable scenario in Civ 2) World war 2 on a gigantic map totaly realistic with riged deplomicy and focusing completly on military. Or you can play the constantly shifting alliences in the napolianic wars that consentrate on depolmacy. Or even the famed rule changes in the Mesoamerican Scenario.
All in all this expansion not only elivates Civ 3 to the status of Civ2, it easly serpases it as best scenario game ever.

Half a rocket ship.

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: March 09, 2007
Author: Amazon User

The CONQUESTS expansion pack for Civilization III can be looked at two ways - a souped-up version of the classic PC strategy game, or as an overpriced and underachieving CD-ROM patch cynically masquerading as a whole new product.

Rocket ship half full: CONQUESTS addresses brings many small but much-needed improvements to the Civ III engine. For starters:

It is now possible to move large groups of units as a stack rather than individually - this is a huge benny for gamers who got fed the F up with the "one at a time" system on the original Civ, which could make gameplay extremely tedious when big armies were involved. There are also added commands for the units - "explore", "sentry" and so on. Certain units also get an upgrade. Armies, for example, can attack twice a turn and move much further, much faster, than previously. Primitive artillery units are more accurate. Workers can construct outposts and barricades in addition to fortresses.

There are a fairly number of new elements to the game itself - extractable resources such as stone, sugar, citrus fruit, silver, olive oil, are added to your resource base, new terrain features (wetlands, active volcanos, etc.) appear, and several dozen new combat units of both the civ-specific and general type make an appearance. Certain aspects of the graphics are also improved, and there are some new musical scores. You now have scientific Leaders as well as military ones. There are many new wonders and city improvements, new civ characteristics and two new different forms of government - feudalism and fascism. Finally, there are numerous new civilizations to play - Mongols, Spanish, Celts, Scandanavians, and so on.

The big tweak, of course, is the "Conquests" feature. This has eight or so prepackaged and highly detailed scenarios from different time periods - "Rise of Rome"; "Napoleonic Europe" etc. - that allow you to take various historical eras and see if you can do better than Caesar, Hannibal, Tojo or Wellington did. Several of these scenarios are highly addictive and feature add-ons like locked alliances, multiple civ-specific units, and victory conditions that force the player out of his or her strategic comfort zone. The game's AI, while not threatening Brainiac by any means, is also somewhat improved.

Rocket ship half empty: CONQUESTS is really two games. The souped-up Civ III and the Conquests, and for reasons no one seems to be able to explain, the features of the two do not necessarily carry over. For example, in "Rise of Rome" the Roman player has three different types of legion and his galleys can take four units or an entire army. If you play Rome in the regular game, however, you get only the generic type of legion from the original game and your galleys are the old, lame two-seater. Having multiple civ-specific units is the order of the day in Conquests, but they don't exist in regular civ. Also, many of the civs in the Conquests feature (Prussia, for example) do not exist in the regular game. This is a giant tease, and makes the transition kind of a letdown.

The new game also has some of the old, annoying habits of the original. Raising the difficulty level doesn't make the AI more intelligent, it just makes your own units perform more incompetently. Preposterous outcomes to engagements still occur constantly (regular spearmen defeating elite Roman legions; whole full-strength armies being wiped out by a single ordinary enemy unitl; unarmed troop carriers sinking cannon-laden ships of the line, etc.). Naval warfare before, say, the age of the steam engine is still an exercise in mass suicide, and the computer is extremely reluctant to let you sink ships that carry enemy soldiers. Negotiating economic deals is much harder than before, and peace negotiations are a nightmare even when you are kicking the hell out of your opponent.

Overall, I would say that CONQUESTS, while smoothing over many rough spots in the old version, should come with the following warning to gamers: it IS worth having, and for Civ III addicts probably even qualifies as a must-have, but not necessarily for the full asking price, and only if you understand that you are not getting a new game so much as an improved version of a classic.

Don't get this expansion

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 7 / 17
Date: May 24, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I played the game Civ 3 and the game works very well. I have not had any problems with the program crashing at all. I then buy this expansion pack and the first time I play the game with the expansion pack, the game crashes on me! I have tried loading the auto saved games at different save points but it does nothing for me, it still crashes. I then downloaded the April, 2004 patch for this expansion pack and the game still crashes! I wish I could return the expansion pack to the store and get my money back and just play the Civ3 game without any expansions. Hopefully they will iron out more of the bugs in the future, until then, I won't play this anymore. There is no point to playing a game that I can't finish.

Good, but kind of boring

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 4 / 7
Date: May 24, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I'd say it was better than the original with new civilizations, units, wonders, conditions for victory, and city improvements. There are 15 new civilizations each with a special unit. The best thing in my opinion is now in this expansion you can customize your victory conditions, but not for the conquests. My favorite conquest map is the on in Japan where there is a almost constant action. So in conclusion this game is pretty darn good.
(If only there was a four and a half.)

A trustworthy addition...

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 3 / 5
Date: January 30, 2004
Author: Amazon User

A terrible thing happened a while back; I got bored of Civ3! How could this be? A game that can be played in so many different ways. What was missing? Well I think "Conquests" has the answer. It provides above all, realsim. Realism is what I was missing. The novelty of the Zulus building ICBMs was wearing thin and I wanted to take part - Civ-style - in a grand event of history that I knew was REAL. What "Conquests" boils down to, neglecting the fact that the "Play the World" expansion comes with it, is a collection of excellently made scenarios ranging from the fall of the Rome to the building of the Great British Empire and the Napoleonic Wars. This last one being notable for the chance to play as arguably the greatest empire ever (The British Empire) and the chance to kick French ass! A self-confessed geek for history, I love re-living these golden ages on Civ. Any fan of the series will welcome these scenarios and be able to appreciate the quality of them; even those who favor playing sprawling epcs on random maps will want a change sooner or later (just like me) and this is perfect for that. So get to it. Give our friends, the British a hand at Trafalgar and see if you can better the glorious empire they had. Difficult? Yes.

Review Page: 1 2 3 4 5 6 Next 

Actions