User Reviews (101 - 111 of 369)

Show these reviews first:

Highest Rated
Lowest Rated Newest
Oldest Most Helpful
Least Helpful

Kinda disappointing...

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 11 / 20
Date: November 17, 2001
Author: Amazon User

In purchasing Civ 3, I was hoping for something far advanced over Civ 2. Simply, computers and computer games now are significantly better than they were 5 or 6 years ago. However, this game is extremely similar to Civ 2 in a lot of ways. So, then, I hoped, at least the game would be refined, completly without annoyances. Again, not so. 1) For whatever reason, it took me until around 1990 to discover evolution, and by 2050, I was the only civilization that even had planes. In Civ 2, I advanced too quickly. In Civ 3, now, I advance too slowly. Perhaps I need to practice more, or perhaps the creators overadjusted that aspect of the game. 2) As my cities grew, there were no technological advances I could make in order to increase my food production, so I started having a lot of starvation towards the end of the game. 3) Extremely slow towards the end of the game. 4) Silly that one does not have the option of moving all pieces from one space to another. 5) Dude with a spear should not be killing guy with tank. 6) In real life, people typically rally behind their countries in war...In Civ 3, they refuse to produce anything and destroy city improvements. 7) Commodity trading needs to be far improved. Occupying half a continent and having no access to oil whatsoever isn't much fun. 8) When a plane attacks an army in the open, the army isn't typically left nearly unscathed.
These are all minor points, but there are several more like them, and they really add up to quite a bit of irritation. The replay value of this game isn't very high for me....I'm more annoyed than anything.

Awesome, unless you never played Civ 2

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 9 / 15
Date: August 18, 2001
Author: Amazon User

Civilization II is like the best strategy game ever made--IF you get into it. I got into it a lot and I still play it from time to time. If you've played Alpha Centauri it's a lot like that, except it's earth-bound, and historically accurate. It sounds dumb, but playing Civ 2 is a reason I did well in social studies class--you remember the historical figures, geography, major events in history.

BUT! This game probably won't be exciting to those of you who are new to the game. It's not like you jump right in and it's all exciting--it will be exciting when you are at war and you actually know what you're doing (which units are best for what situations, how to target the right cities, etc). But don't think you'll get into the game on the first day, that probably won't happen--friends have asked me what's wrong with me playing this game that looks so dull where all you do is move pieces like a board game. But once you're into all the units, technologies, opponents, etc, this is the most addictive game around!

I'm not meant to run the blender, let alone a civilization

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 9 / 15
Date: December 19, 2001
Author: Amazon User

Truth be told, I have only logged a few hours of Civilization 3 but it's enough to decide I really enjoy this simulation. However, I don't think that I'm meant to succeed at ruling an entire nation.

To give an example, I first started playing as the Americans. I had a prosperous though modest nation built up with cute Christmas themed cottages and even a boys choir singing in the town's square. Then the unthinkable occured at the first sign of the upcoming harsh winter, the simple townsfolk turned to cannibalism. The women of the village stewed their children and the men resorted to eating each other. It was a ghastly sight and I realized these crazy people were never going to survive to see the Spring. Next I decided to play the English and I built dense cities to leave enough room for farming. I was doing much better until the townspeople decided to make rats the official family pet in the already crowded towns. Sure enough I found myself hopeless as most of my villagers died of the Black Plague. Next I tried my luck as the Spartans. I didn't get very far due to such a low population growth (and there were plenty of women, if you know what I mean). I did get far enough to invent disco and leather pants though, ironically.

I haven't had all bad luck with Civilization 3. In my latest game I'm playing the American Indians and I've got a vast nomadic and happy empire. Just before I started writing this review, I was blessed with visitors from across the oceans bearing gifts!! These white skinned men seemed so nice, I'd venture to say that they will help my simple people flourish and grow.

Best Version of Civ yet!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 8
Date: May 03, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I'm not sure what the rest of these reviewers are talking about. I've played every version of Civ and its expansions and Civ3 is the most playable and enjoyable. The AI is much better than the previous versions (who always got annoyed at you by the end of the game) and the diplomacy options really make it more than a building/war game. The addition of culture, cultural boundaries and various ways to victory give you many ways to play. Yes the Persians attack you, but thats what the Persians do. With solid diplomatic tactics, you can actually get them to attack someone else.
All in all, this is the best version of the game and I think some of these other reviewers just haven't figured out different winning strategies.

Lame, Lame, Lame. What a disappointment! (Zero stars.)

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 6 / 8
Date: November 19, 2001
Author: Amazon User

Clearly, this game was released too soon. Instead of rambling on too much about my own hellish installation/compatibility issues, I'd recommend you check out... and peruse the multitude of horror stories. Surely, you'll find a hopeless scenario describing a system like yours.

Tech support was useless (basically, they tell everyone to update drivers, firmware, etc., when the real problem is the buggy copy protection.) BTW, my system is an AMD 1.2/512 RAM/ATI Radeon/SB Audigy. Compare my specs to the minimum requirements. In addition, all my drivers and firmware are current.

I'll also add that the user manual is horrible. Useless unless you read it cover to cover... like you usually do.

And they quietly dropped the multiplayer feature. (Which becomes less irritating after you realize that most people can't even play by themselves.)

Lame copy protection, greedy rush to market, poor QA and documentation, have robbed us again. The graphics are pretty.

Save your money. Or at least wait for the patch...

The rebirth that could have been the dawning of a new era for this epic game, sadly, seems more like an end. A bitter end, if you haven't already discerned that.

Think twice before buying this game

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 6 / 8
Date: January 28, 2002
Author: Amazon User

There are a few improvements with Civ 3, like resources and allowing a larger map, but overall Civ 3 is very annoying.

As many reviewers have already stated, corruption is a major problem. This makes it difficult to build a large empire. Also, unlike in Civ 2, there is no government with zero corruption, and even "minimal" corruption is extremely high.

One HUGE problem that not many reviewers have noticed is that war weariness under republics and democracies is exhorbitantly high, even on the "low" level. In Civ 2 and the Call to Power series, I could have an offensive war while using a non-dictatorial government and be able to manage any unhappiness problems due to war, but this is simply not possible in Civ 3. If you have a republican or democratic government, you MUST be at peace or unhapiness will get to be out of control in a few turns. Even if someone else starts the war and conquers one of your cities, your people will find it unacceptable to conquer that city back or conquer any of their cities. What's worse, the enemy will not even go to the negotiating table at that point, so the only choice is to allow unhappiness to go out of control (it can't even be controlled with a very high luxury rate after awhile) or switch to a ... dictatorial government (and suffer anarchy for several turns, which means continued unhappiness and civil disorder). Also, rioters can destroy major city improvements in addition to halting all production, so its not like you can just let cities stay in civil disorder.

There are some good things about culture, but it also creates major problems. For example, a conquered city can revert back to its original civilization, and take any occupying force along with it. This is EXTREMELY annoying and also historically inaccurate. I cannot think of a single time in history where a large occupying force has switched loyalties to the original civilization when there is discontent rather than fighting back against revolutionaries.

Diplomacy is also horrible. The AI teams give each other good deals while they expect you to give them much more than they are willing to give you in return.

Combat is also a problem. All civ games give an advantage to large, low-tech armies over small, high tech ones to some point, but I think that this is something that needs to be fixed and it certainly wasn't in Civ 3. In Civ 2, I often lost stealth bombers to archers, and unfortunately there are similar problems in Civ 3.

Overall, Civ 3 has too many problems. Unless there is a patch that fixes all or most of these problems, I would suggest that you don't buy Civ 3.

NO MORE LIFE

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 8
Date: March 01, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Not really just kidding. This game is freaking awesome. I'm like totally addicted to it. And playing it took me off the online gaming circuit for a bit. Which after a few months is starting to save me money from those monthly payments.
This game is running just smooth even though my machine is ancient as heck. running it on a 400 mhz amdk. with a rage fury pro and a soundblaster. this thing runs smooth as ice once i set it up properly.

An 'OK' update on Civilisation 2

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 5 / 6
Date: February 22, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I thought this game was mainly just an updated Civ2; If you try to play on a warlord or higher level of gameplay, it really seemed to me the game was just 'cheating' whenever you engaged in combat with enemy units. The Opponents didn't get 'smarter' or use better strategy, it just seemed like suddenly all of their units were much better than yours, even if your technology was superior and you also had the better choice of battle terrain. It's just very irritating to see your tanks destroyed by enemy knights on horseback armed only with swords. The aircraft, artillery and other projectile units not being able to kill enemy units was also frustrating. I hope that they do a better job of eliminating these detracting factors in Civ 4. The overall concept is one that I enjoy, it's just that some aspects of the game are missing the mark. You will get some joy out of playing the game on 'Chief' setting, but the flaws will reduce a lot of the game's replay value. I really hope they do better on the next one.

A good money waster

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 5 / 6
Date: December 15, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Civ1 and Civ2 were always my favourite games and I bought Civ3. It was horrible! The developers have tried hard to destroy everything. Such as:
Absence of Zones of Control (ZOC) makes available only 1 strategy in the battle: Brute force
"Reality" means that many units (Catapults, Cannons, Artilleries etc.) cannot kill the enemies but only damage them. The same with air bombardments and bombardments of naval units. Furthermore one can capture enemy's catapults etc. and as result these units are useless.
Diplomacy has been enchanced by some new features but the artificial intelligence which should support it is really poor. Also the new features in many cases are inadequate. For instance there can be no negotiations in order to cancel or modify an aggreement. War or 20 rounds is the only ways to cancel an agreement.

Except of that there are many other "improvements" with the result that the player has fewer options than in Civ1/2. Examples of that are the technology tree, the way a wonder can be build, absence of spies and caravans etc.

Because of such "improvements" all the games are looking similar despite the randomly created maps and rival civilizations (as in previous releases). If you can acquire Civ1, Civ2 or SMAc don't waste your money with Civ3.

Boy, did I buy it when I bought this stinker...

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 12 / 24
Date: January 29, 2003
Author: Amazon User

After wasting hard-earned cash on this awful excuse for a strategy game, I have vowed NEVER to indulge in impulse buying when it comes to this stuff...

Being a fan of the genre that CIV3 absolutely fails to live up to, I'm always on the lookout for good "pure" strategy games, without what I consider to be boring first-person shooter scenarios (call it an old addiction to those insane Avalon Hill games I used to play in college). Give me a global arena, unit-size movement, and chess-like game play any day.

I've played CIV3 a total of three times (if you include the demo) since I purchased it. After my third game, which I thought was ridiculously easy to win, I uninstalled the software and seriously contemplated pitching it in the trash.

Where to begin? OK, so the theme is pretty cool (otherwise I wouldn't have bought it), but the execution is uninteresting, unchallenging and unfun--if not downright idiotic:

AI that still allows you and your opponents to build primitive units into the future. Makes perfect sense that a city in the 21st century would have BOWMEN defending it. Yeah, right. What makes strategy games work are their verisimilitude, or at least (like any good game construct) internal logic and consistency.

You never seem to go broke. Let your economic adviser complain about income--if it every reaches zero, so what? Nothing happens. (Try playing Europa Universalis2 and you'll understand how critical, challenging and fun it is to try to keep your treasury intact.)

Diplomacy is non-existent: After a few attempts, I gave up on using it at all because it really didn't matter what my relations were. And just to make it remotely interesting (a stretch) I would often declare war for the hell of it. Zzzzzzz.....

Unit combat is completely inane: have your tanks battling a spearman on a horse (oh and it's the year 2210). Better yet, have a dozen tanks fight a dozen horsemen and sit back and be utterly annoyed that it will play out the combat ONE UNIT AT A TIME. What about the very real option of being able to apply overwhelming force? Not in this crap game. Another example: I pitched several infantry units against ONE tank and lost... Sure, I expected attrition, but because my infantry would engage one by one, instead of all at once, they got anihilated.

City management and research was kind of interesting (IMO an old spaceciv game from 1995 called "Ascendancy" was better at this), but because most of the game is geared toward combat, there's next to no redeeming value for this waste of CD-ROM stock.

Review Page: Previous 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 Next 

Actions