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A friend got me hooked on this.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: January 19, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I had to give up my PS2 as it caused arthritsis in both shoulders. So a friend let me play this on his PC. WOW!! a lot of fun. Took me awhile to get the hang of the game like how to EXPLORE; use the Automation feature and how to put ppl on a ship etc. So I have purchased the game for myself. Game has several levels from beginner on up to difficult. You get to pick what civilaztion you want to build and which one you wish to challange.

If you have just started to play a PC games, get this one as the price has dropped since first introduced.

good education game for teens

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: January 11, 2007
Author: Amazon User

It is a nice educational game for teens and adults that stimulated interest to the world history and helps to understand past societies.

Great Game

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: June 21, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This is a great game but after a while it starts to get boring. You can play as many nations but I prefer to be American. If you play it too much you might feel like you never want to play it again. I just suggest that you don't play it constantly and only every once in a while.

More of the same!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: December 18, 2001
Author: Amazon User

There's not a whole lot about Civ that's changed in the latest version, but that's what I love about it. Oh, they added some nice stuff: more victory conditions, special units for each civ, better diplomacy, better graphics, a better system for trade, and a few other treats. But where the game wasn't broke, they didn't try to fix it.

It's basically the same gameplay experience as Civ or Civ II but slightly tweaked, smoothed out, and worked over. It's evolutionary, not revolutionary. If you liked the first two in the series, you'll like this one.

My recommendation: get it. Just don't forget to eat and sleep in between games.

The original and still the champion!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: November 08, 2001
Author: Amazon User

I loved Civilization. I played Civilization II until I could whip 6 oppenents at diety level. I played scenarios and variations until I grew tired of the game (and that took some doing!).

When Alpha Centauri came out, I rushed to buy it, only to be disapointed. While some people really enjoyed, I just could never get caught up in it. When Civ: Call to Power shipped, I rushed to get it, and was a little dissapointed. A nice game, and I liked it better the AC, but just missing that certain *something* that made hours dissapear into the ether when playing Civ I & II.

So when Civ III came out, I thought I'd wait a few days. Then I visited a friend who had bought the game. Within 30 minutes I knew I was hooked. Bought the game the next day. WOW!

Sid & Co. have done it again. This game has more overall depth than Civ II, but enough things have been streamlined that the game doesn't seem to get bogged down in extra complexity (like a game of CTP tends to do). The graphics, while not the most cutting edge on the market, are very pleasing when viewed for HOURS at a time. The revised political and economic aspects seem to blend very well with the overall gameplay.

For the veteran Civ II player, this game is wonderful - enough familiar elements that you can get right in and start having fun, but enough new or changed elements that you still get to do a lot of exploring and learning. Even after so many years of playing Civ & Civ II, this game feels fresh.

If you've never played turn-based strategy games before, you should try to find someone with the game and give it a look first. While I think Civ III would make a great first TBS, this style of play isn't for everyone. Those who cut their teeth on RTS games like Age of Empires may find the pace a little hard to adjust to; but for me it's always been Turn-based all the way!

Thanks Sid! Keep up the good work - and ship us a multiplayer patch... my friends and I are dying to compete with one another!

Not ready for prime time

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: November 17, 2001
Author: Amazon User

If you have never played anything in the series, buy after the first round of patches. It is fundamentally a great game and a classic of the genre. My main problem is that it is only marginally better than Civ II.

The graphics are definitely better. Wonders, units, and improvements have been tweaked mostly for the better. Generally the game is more playable now because dominant effects like Leonardo's Workshop have been tempered. But there is very, very little that is actually new. [Alas, they only partially fixed goody boxes. Saving doesn't do any good within a turn, but if you restore and wait a turn the random number generator is reset and you get a different result.]

The interface has been tweaked but, unfortunately inconsistently. Some interface actions (e.g., moving units) are much better. But others actually decrease playability. For example, the pre-turn processing may display several quick messages for indiviudal cities. If you have a lot of cities it is hard to remember which ones and it can be a bear to find the right one later. Try finding the new Iron resource it announced on a huge map!

The new features like resources and culture add to the game overall. They just don't add up to the same sorts of change as, say, Alpha Centauri. One playability problem is that there tend not to be enough resources. As a result you can be prevented from making certain units simply because a critical resource isn't in your area and the other nations won't trade with you. To fix that you need to make your own map with the map editor, which is kind of tedious for larger world sizes.

As usual, initial location brings an unfortunate luck aspect at any difficulty level above Warlord so making your own map is still key to dealing with the higher levels. Especially since the AI is tougher now.

I was also disapointed in the reliability. It has crashed a couple of times. This seems to be due to typing hotkeys too quickly in combination with mouse clicks. I have also found that about 1 out of 3 times after I shut down the game normally I cannot connect to my DSL vendor without restarting WinPoET; this game is the only thing I run where this happens.

Bottom line: it is a great game that realizes much of the potential of turn-based strategy games but it just doesn't add enough to Civ II to justfy full retail pricing.

The above was written after about 20 hrs of play. I have since added another 30 or so. Just enough to uncover a lot more problems. On large games (huge map w/ > ~50 cities) it crashes with annoying regularity; it even trashes its own implementation so that I had to reinstall it twice. I have yet to complete a large game.

I don't see any way to play this game except through quick conquest without building one's own map. On computer constructed worlds the luck factor in resource distribution is absolutely dominant. Also corruption is punitively high when the number of cities is large -- the strategy guide says it increases exponentially with number of cities, which seems to be the case. The city count threshold supposedly can be edited, but all the menu choices for changing rules in the map editor are grayed out!

Absolutely atrocious

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: November 04, 2001
Author: Amazon User

I loved Civ 1 and 2, and I also loved colonization. What made those games truly great was the endless depth and the ease of play. Civ III is a radical departure from the latter. It is just too difficult to figure out. The interface is clumsy at best and the game play in my opinion has really slowed down.
All in all, I am really dissapointed in Civ III. Sid Meir had to fail eventually.

A little disappointed.. A slight anticlimax

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: November 03, 2001
Author: Amazon User

As one of the legions of fans of Sid Meier and of the Civilisation genre I had been following Civ III's development and counting the days until the release. Having had the game for a day or two now and having played it several times I still haven't been 'sucked in' as I was expecting. For me it is a great piece of work and there are many improvements over its predecessors such as the diplomacy model, the distinct cultures, the beautiful artwork and the additions to the basic elements of the game, notably the importance of 'culture'. However there is something almost intangible missing from the game. The game does flow very easily but perhaps thats where I am let down. The music is well composed and balanced with the timeline and slides into the background almost unnoticable after a while. But I want it to be noticable.. every now and then I want to be 'woken up' by something like 'ode to joy' in the previous games. Also there was a decision to not have 'videos' for creating wonders and the like. Again this may keep the game 'flowing' but every now and then you need something different to 'break the flow' and make yourself feel proud of the achievement. Really these sorts of design decisions are at the heart of my disappointment, the game flows so well that after a while there is a sense of monotony that creeps in. I also have to say I'm baffled as to why you can't make a custom size for your game map without using the very detailed yet cumbersome map editor (the lack of a zoom feature can be annoying for navigating around the map).
All things considered this is still a first class game but there is something missing that stops it from being classed a 'great' in my opinion. I rate it a 4/5 and would recommend it to fans of this type of genre.

Not an upgrade

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: November 06, 2001
Author: Amazon User

This is not an upgrade of the Microprose version of Civ II. It has new features but also lacks many of the old ones. It is harder to get information and give orders. If you have played II until tired of it, the change might be refreshing, but if you don't have II or have it and still like it, forget III. It also has nothing to compare to the additions in Civ II Test of Time.
If you do get it, make sure you have the recommended processor speed--500 or better. At 333, even with all the graphics turned off, I keep a book by the computer to read while waiting for the game to catch up.

Computer Game Mega Flop!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: March 04, 2002
Author: Amazon User

One would think that a new version of a classic game would be a tremendous improvement. Unfortunately, Civilization III would prove you wrong. The user interface is frustratingly slow. Press the "enter" key, and the game takes 3-4 seconds to recognize that you did something. Others, like the 'r' key for building railroads, do not work at all. Most importantly, the game prevents civilization advancements even at the easiest level. I've got cavalry and musketeers charging computer-generated catapults, archers, and warriors bearing stone axes in game year 1956. And frequently, my cavalry loses! The game's artificial intelligence is corrupt!

So, don't buy Civilization III. Stick with the classic Civ II, instead

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