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CIV rules! Civ 4 is even better, but this game Rocks!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: March 14, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I love all of the Civ games! They are addicting, but what a deep great strategy game. It's a modern version of chess but WAAAYYY deeper. The turnbase gameplay makes this the best game ever made for PC.

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.

Hard to improve on this one.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: December 30, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I've been playing this game for a long time, I put it aside but keep coming back to it as It's hard to find any more enjoyable game that compares to it. I have civ 4 and while it's a good game I think this one is more enjoyable.

Great game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: July 28, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Conquests is the best civ version so far. All the added features are a wonderful improvement on the other 2 versions of Civilization III. The game is tons of fun and madly addictive. I recommend this game to everyone who owns a computer.

Improving a good game

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 4
Date: November 01, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Take a first rate game and add lan and internet ability and you get a game that you can test yourself with players from all over the world.

For myself the ability to play in local lan parties or with pals out of state make it a real winner.

I'm not ready for part 4 right now so I'll just keep enjoying this.

A great game but still room for improvement

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 9 / 11
Date: May 01, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I think Civilization III is a fantastic game and I especially love this expansion pack with all the new civilizations, new wonders, technologies and the two new forms of government.

One big improvement I find in Conquests over the original is that trade is better. the AI is more willing to trade their surplus fur/iron etc than in the original. that really bothered me about the original cause I remember one game when my neighouring AI civilization had a surplus of four fur and still wouldnt trade any with me. Another improvement I like is the option to make the AI civilizations more aggressive. This is good as I have played one game in the original civ3 on Monarch level which I completed without a single war occuring in the whole history of the game. That's just not realistic. thankfully now u can make all the AI more aggressive which is good. also conquests allows new civs to be created when one is destroyed which is good.

However I think there are still faults in the game that I'm sure will probably be rectified in Civ4. The latter part of the game is very slow and can get annoying especially when pollution keeps occuring on every go and u have to keep sending your workers to a new pollution spot to clean it up. Fortunately civ4 has promised to eradicate this. another major problem is the military side of the game. the "stack of doom" tactics that u use to defeat an enemy is simply not realistic. fortunately again civ4 has promised to correct this problem also. the final fault i can find with civ3 in general is the way every civ starts at the same year 4000BC. i think it would be nice if u had maybe only 3 or 4 civilizations starting the game and then a few more randomly start up over the next few thousand years. also it would be cool if factions of your civilization broke off or rebelled to become independent civilizations later in the game especially if they were located on a seperate island or continent from your mainland.

to sum up i say buy conquests if u already own civ3 (its only $14.99). if not i think ur probably better off not get addicted to the game at this stage and simply wait for civ4 to come. that promises to be a much better game to get addicted to.

Wow!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 5 / 48
Date: February 19, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Who thought that Civilization 3 could get any better after Play The World? With the conquests expansin, computer games are taken to a whole new level. Its almost too realistic. Its imposible to imagine how so much alterenatives of how to play a game you have in only one.

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!

Awesome, Addictive & FUN!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 2 / 9
Date: February 03, 2005
Author: Amazon User

This Game ROCKS!!! I spend almost all of my spare time playing this game, there are some bugs and annoying little things, but it's got good graphics and replayability is very, very High! The civilization variety is good, the map style variety is good, the Conquests are pretty cool. Did I mention good graphics? The AI is ok, but then again, I've only played on the two easiest out of Eight different difficulty levels. You can spend a lot of time playing this game.

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.

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