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Expanded version builds on strength

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 14 / 18
Date: June 13, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Civilization II is one of the greatest PC games ever. So when Infogrames decided to market a sequel, they were careful not to tamper with what made the game so absorbing and addictive: A winning mix of turn-based play, resource development and military strategy.

The most notable change is the expansion and improvement of the game's graphics. Instead of the sometimes bizarre sprites (what exactly was the Engineer supposed to be?) of Civ 2 we have carefully rendered 3D figures that move about in convincing animation. When a worker mines, for example, he swings a pick-axe with a convincing thud. A horseman moves with the clomp of hooves and the jingle of his harness. The landscape is a subtle map of grasslands, hills, mountains, forest, jungles and steppes.

There are a few adjustments here a there -- some new units, a few old ones removed -- but by and large the gameplay is the same (thankfully). You begin with a settler, a character you convert into a city. A city's production allows you to create new units -- military units (from club swinging warriors to jet fighters), workers or city improvements. The fact that you don't ever get quite get as much as you need is the hook. Should you create a warrior to defend the city or a worker to build roads? Do you need a harbor for productivity or a library for culture?

I think the biggest change to the game (besides the look and feel) is the addition of a stronger national identity. In Civ 2, your nation was really a group of cities; in its sequel your nation has actual visible, if changeable, borders. The territory your nation (or despotism, kindgom, republic, etc.) controls is based on the presence of cities and the strength of your culture.

Civ 3 has greatly expanded the role of culture in the game. Culture is the effect of intangible benefits of civilization generated by temples, libraries, cathedrals, etc. As your city creates more culture, it's territory expands. A recurrent challenge through the game is whether to add territory by creating cities or building culture-generating improvements. Culture can even conquer -- cities will rebel and join your nation if the culture differential is great enough. But beware -- if you ignore your own culture, you can lose cities as well.

Civ 3 has made some changes in the map, most of which are reasonable. Engineers are gone (workers just get more efficient), so you can't change terrain anymore -- no more turning steppes into deserts, then plains, then grasslands. Rivers run along the borders of grid squares rather than a center. You can't irrigate from the ocean anymore (darn that salt-water anyway), but you can pump from wells (i.e., irrigate in non-water spaces) after you develop electricity.

Gone too are the zones of control. In Civ 2 if you had a military unit in place, you controlled all squares directly around it. No longer. This reduces the importance of fortresses, as enemy units can simply bypass them.

The trading aspect of the game is weak, I think. Gone completely are trade routes and trading units like caravans and freight. Instead you trade directly with other nations. When one nation offers to sell you an improvement, you'll get the same price from every other nation. An advisor tells you if a bid will be successful or not before you make it. And the game could really use some kind of slider to increase or decrease monetary amounts; the interface as it exists is clumsy.

Civilization III is not a complete improvement. I think the endgame of Civ 3 is slow and duller than its predecessor. In Civilization II you could always count on one kamikaze nation to attack you, just to keep things interesting. The 'improved' AI doesn't do that, so there can be long, peaceful stretches that are a bit dull. Even worse is the fact that as the game progresses, enemy turns take longer and longer. If you leave the animation on, you can count on turns which take tedious minutes to complete, as armies march back in what seem to be pointless and interminable manuevering. Even switching such animations off doesn't completely cure it. Late in the game, if you aren't fighting, the going can be pretty slow.

Overall, Civilation III is a fine PC game. The slow progression from a nomadic tribe to a globe-straddling superpower remains a fascinating experience. The turn-based play feels thoughtful and -- well, civilized -- compared with the frantic speed of real-time simulations. If you were a fan of Civ 2 you should probably move on to Civ 3 ... just to watch the workers work, if nothing else.

A real disappointment

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 19 / 28
Date: November 10, 2001
Author: Amazon User

I had high hopes for this successor but they were dashed almost immediately. The game is like an emasculated version of Civ II that runs far, far slower. By emasculated, I mean that there are actually FEWER game options than Civ II. For example, there are fewer city improvements available and no more units like spies and caravans. Combat is confusing with tiny icons that are difficult to tell apart. It is also impossible to zoom the map beyond three different levels. Diplomacy is a tricky nightmare. The graphics are glitzy but they do nothing but eat up drive space.

Some may find this picky, but one of the things I loved about Civ II was the refrigeration improvement that allowed a second level of irrigation. That's gone too. Also, the game opens each time with that annoying animation. It was cool the first time, but not EVERY time...

There is literally nothing I enjoy about this game that isn't offered in Civ II. I find myself playing Civ II instead of its successor. Civ III is a strangely cold, remote, and utterly soulless product. It is oddly telling in Civ III that when I pressed the "retire" button, it offered me the option to "end this nightmare." I gladly clicked "yes".

Much better than Civilization II

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 15 / 20
Date: April 23, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I found the game much improved. Artificial intelligence is amazing. I am not sure if anyone can beat the computer at the hardest level. The new feature "culture" I found to be a nice touch. Some people have commented that they didn't like it. It has made my game lot more fun. In civilization and civilization 2 one of the very annoying things was that you could not move your unit passed an enemy unit unless you attacked it, this does not exist anymore. I also am enjoying the resources and luxuries feature, it gives you extra issues to worry about during the game. Also the variety of victory conditions guarantees that there is something available for everyones taste. The world map feature is much improved too: realistically detailed.

No more brute force victory where you start attacking everyone from the beginning. If you start attacking the other civs randomly, world opinion shifts against you and the other civs stop trading with you, ally against you and so forth. Overall 5 stars for sure.

Two drawbacks: music is simply terrible... Lastly, the railroads look very amateurish. Why they changed it from Civ-2 i do not know but they look really bad. However, there is a patch available to correct this issue so not to worry.

Good potential, terrible outcome

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 18 / 26
Date: November 13, 2001
Author: Amazon User

This game has a great potential. I bought the game and planned to spend my whole weekend to play it, but it turned out, I spent whole saturday trying to go around the bugs and numerous other design flows.
- you can't group units together and send them that way, instead you have to move each unit one by one to the destination.
- you use workers to do tile improvements, but their way of doing thigs on automated mode is 99% of time not what you want, so you're forced to do it all yourself manually. Call to power, had this aspect done much, much better.
- you have to watch enemy or friend units move if they are close or within your borders. This is really annoying later in the game, when there are hundereds of units, as you have to just stare at your screen to have computer move them. There is no way to turn that off either. This was the main reason I stopped playing.
- Taking enemy cities is something that should be avoided as the city most likely will revolt back. Best thing is to reduce it's citizens to 1 and start over with it.
- Your tanks can be killed by ancient units like phalax, etc.

there are many other annoying things about this game, but too many to list. Just go to any civ3 message board and you'll see many, many people complaining.

Departure from, not improvement upon Civ 2

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 11 / 13
Date: January 01, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Before you buy Civilization 3, read 20 or 30 reviews posted here. Note that most of the negative reviews site specific problems with the game, whereas the positive ones praise the series, Sid Meyer, and the state of addiction achievable. Though all of noted the problems apply to your copy of CIV3, they may not be enough to weigh against better graphics, and the lure of new wonders and units.

Assuming you appreciate the beauty and efficiency of Civ2's design, note the following (non-comprehensive) list of differences.

1)SIZE - Civ 3 is a Bemouth - huge install (smaller install @ 500mb), demanding on processor; a lag between turns of several seconds occurs even with 500mhz PIII processor. Civ2 took <50mb to install, and you didn't need the CD to play the game.

2)GRAPHICS - Here is where much of the work has been done. Civ3 has more complex land and units, and animated leaders' faces for each nation (though the choice between female and male leaders is no longer possible)though it lacks CIV2's movies for wonders.

3)RULES - Significant changes to rules and wonders exist. Some seem in the interest of fairness of play, while most are arbitrary, and none of the CIV2 rules that you might want to reinstate are changeable. Rather than sum up rule changes, I urge you again to read a few pages of reviews.

(My personal issue is with the statement that there are "more ways to win the game," strange, given that
trading units no longer exist, and that given the new AI, a source of problems for many reviewers, on regent or higher, massive attacks by other nations is inevitable)

tons of potential, but too many irritating problems

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 16 / 23
Date: April 10, 2003
Author: Amazon User

To start, I have been way too addicted to the civ franchise for my own good. Civ1 probably dropped my grade point average by a point in college. Civ2 is still my favorite game of all time, and Alpha Centauri is nothing less then a masterpiece, although it shared some of the same problems that this game has.

Unfortunately, these problems make this game wholey unenjoyable
:(
1. The made NO ATTEMPT at making the ai seem like it doesn't cheat. The ai will always attack your least defended city. If you have a city half way across the world with only one unit, they ai will show up with just enough force to take the city. Therefore you spend the whole game building units, because a city with less then 4 units WILL be taken, even if it is in the interior of your civ. So so so aggravating.

2. The comps have always been able to spit out a lot more units then you, but in this version it is absolutely ridiculous. A civ half the size of your will easily keep up with you in production, making war a serious extremely hard. And I've been playing at the 3 level out of 6.

3. The new addition of a concept of culture could have been great. Your civ builds up a cultural score, which other civs either envy, or snub there noses at. The problem arises, when entire cities up and leave your empire for another. I wouldn't have a problem with this if it was smaller cities, or if your civ was extremely far behind an adjacent civ. This, however, isn't the case. I've lost cities of up to 12 to civs whom my people were "unimpressed" with. This also makes war much harder, because conquered cities lose improvements that give them cultural gains. So you either spend money rebuilding temples and the like, or often lose the city (including its entire garrison) to this phenomenon. You want to punch your computer, and throw it out the window.

4. The whole concept of spying has been thrown out the window. For some reason, they decided it wasn't hard enough to keep up with comps, with all of there cheats, in the tech race. So, they got rid of spy units, and instead make you spend ludicrous amounts (upwards of 5000) of money to steal technologies. Oh I should mention you spend ludicrous amounts of money for a CHANCE to steal a technology!

5. they took out your ability to speed up great wonder production, with either money, or with caravans. Again, with the comps cheats, this makes it very hard to get any of the wonders, and is counter to real life. If a society decides to put all of its energies into one thing, it can and has historically. So why not in this game?

6. the diplomacy is terrible. There is no room for diplomacy actually, the civs will always ask for more then you are getting, but will never give you more? There is no room for haggling whatsoever. If you refuse their outlandish requests they get annoyed at you and unless you are armed to the teeth will perpetually invade your borders, making you perpetually tell them to get out. It flat out sucks.

About the only addition they made to this new version that was well implemented was the addition of special resources which are needed to build specific units. For instance, if you want to build musketeers, you not only need the technology, but you need to have saltpeter as a resource somewhere in you empire.

I could go on, but I think you get the idea. Luckily I bought this game used, and didn't get taken for the whole price. I would not recommend this game at all. Unfortunately, it didn't live up to its vast potential, because they didn't put in the time on the AI. It's is really more annoying and tedious then fun.

Very Addicting

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 13 / 17
Date: December 03, 2001
Author: Amazon User

I have to say that the Civilization line of games is as addicting as ever. There are so many times where i was just saying to myself, "just a couple of more turn so that I can get XXX, and I will go to bed/dinner."

But I do agree somewhat with some of the comments here that Civ III is not that dramatically different from CIV II. But personally, I don't expect so much changes to be made. After all, it is CIV III (a sequel to Civ II). The designers just kept the best features of CIV II and added some more cool stuff like strategic resources and luxuries. I especially like the use of strategic resources and trading for them. Dipolomacy has also been improved with a lot more choices in terms of what can be traded (cities, workers, technologies, luxuries, etc).

This is not to say that the game is perfect. The way the city governors choose what to build is exasperating. Sometimes they change the production without giving you a pop screen to warn you. Also i know of no way of dealing with corruption, even in a democracy. Courthouses do not help. Cities far away from my empire have more than 90% of their commerce and resources lost due to corruptionm, and since you cant hurry production of a forbidden palace (to creat a second palace), the far flung cities are just backwaters of non-production with huge 20+ size cities.

The hard-copy manual lacks the technology development tree and lists of the maintenance costs of various city imporements.

But these are just minor quibbles. The game, stripped down to its core, is simply addictive.

Glad to see Civ III, but I'm not deleting Civ II from my HD

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 8 / 8
Date: November 17, 2001
Author: Amazon User

First of all, 90% of computer games are just not very good. Civilization clearly shows the signs of thoughtful design and, of course, it's Civilization after all! I write this review with all possible respect to the design team and with an eye towards improving the product.

There are some characteristics (not exactly flaws) that the experienced Civ player should be aware of. First, the animations are beautifully done but in late game they slow down the engine to the point of unplayability. It can take over a minute for the AI to move, and it's a loooonnnnggg minute. Second, some of the "features" are nonintuitive; for example, since diplomacy is conducted on a menu (and not a unit), it was quite difficult to figure out how to conduct espionage. And on the subject of irritating changes, with Civ III we can no longer customize player and civilization names. You can't even pick the sex of the opponent or the player (I guess for animation reasons). This is a HUGE disappointment, as I just am not comfortable playing England as Elizabeth I, or Russia as Catherine the Great. Why was this feature deleted? For whatever reason, indirect fire units (catapults, cannon, bombers) can no longer attack by moving into the square of an opponent. Rather, there is a separate menu button where you separately target the city. This is NOT obvious in the manual, and took some experimenting to figure out. Another key difference is settlers....for whatever reason, there is no only one type of setter, but there is a worker that performs your terrain improvements at a very slow pace (engineers are nowhere to be found). What this boils down to is that the games moves incredibly slow...my first run-through (yes, I resorted to reading the manual) took almost 5 hours...and this was on a reduced map with few opponents.

One missing feature that falls in the inexcusable category...in the standard edition, there are no quick reference cards or technology charts. Most of the documentation is in-game (doubtless a cost reduction ploy) but I grew very used to the docs in Civ I and Civ II gracing the wall next to my computer...hopefully something on the internet will become available to fill this gap, but this is just unacceptable.

Now for the good news! Most of the menus are gone (remember the endless "we love the king" popu-up screens?") and are replaced with text messages accross the top of the city. Yes, this means that cities can go into chaos unless you notice the smoke animation...but we're all observant, this is ok. Second, the issue of managing fuel for planes is gone. I thought this was rather part of the fun, but I know this annoyed some people. Best of all of the improvements is that the AI and interaction with opponents is FAR more complex and feels more "real". It's a beautiful game...but somehow the fun was lost!! Worth buying on the basis of graphics and potential of the design team, though.

I salute Sid Meier for a long-awaited sequel to a classic game. It's beautiful, it's complicated...and sometimes almost unplayable. A few tweaks and a Civ 3.5 should balance this game nicely. Recommended, since this is a great game by a great computer game designer.

Civilization 2++

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 8 / 8
Date: December 16, 2001
Author: Amazon User

After a long period of waiting, I finally got a brand new copy of Civilization 3. Being a big fan of Civilization 2, I was very eager to find out how Sid Meyer will repeat his past success. Well, after playing a few games I can't say I wasn't disappointed - AT FIRST. But then I changed my mind. The problem? the game doesn't feel like a new game, just like a slightly improved version of Civilization 2 - and with much better graphics. Ironically, the movies from Civilization were taken out of Civilization 3! I guess to save CD space?!
However, the more I played this game, the more I realized that yes, this isn't a new game, but still it is a much better version of the old game. So many of the annoying things in Civilization 2 were taken out. For example, now there is a distinction between settlers and workers. Workers improve roads, make irrigation, while settlers start cities. In addition, there is no need to spend all your time worrying about making all these improvents - there is AI to guide this workers, so you could spend time doing what you LIKE in the game. Naturally, you can always turn this feature off. I did like some of the new features, such as cultural conquest - if your culture is strong enough, enemy cities will simply rebel and join your side. And the AI controlling the other players feels much improved over the previous game. The bad thing, Civilization 3 is much slower. It took me *forever* to finish each of my games.
To summarize: the game is similar to the previous game - just better. So, if you like Civilization 2 - and have realistic expectations - you'll enjoy this game. But if you expect something totally new, skip it.

The most dissappointing Civlization game

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 9 / 10
Date: January 30, 2002
Author: Amazon User

The long awaited sequel to; perhaps, the best strategy game of all time is Civilization III. It may also be the most disappointing sequel. This review will be slanted for people who have played Civilization II.

There are some new things that have improved the game, such as nationality boundaries, the idea of national patriotism, military units capable of bombarding other units or cities, and the new air missions are all improvements.

Let's focus on what went wrong. For starters, 'Diplomacy is dead'. The 2-dimensional AI is a regression from Alpha Centuri, you wouldn't be able to tell them apart if they didn't look different because they all act very similar. Each other nation is very aggressive even when the player's forces overpower them greatly. The AI will force cities into the tightest spots within a player's territory regardless of their diplomatic stances. When war is declared with a computer-controlled nation, they quickly gather the support of the rest of the computer nations to team against the player. Within three turns, a player could very well be fighting a worldwide war with every other known nation.

The small villages that give a player a random effect when moving into could have a tremendous impact on the game. Many military units require a natural resource to build these units. If you gain a scientific advance that provides your nation the ability to create military units that require a natural resource, the computer will never allow you these resources. If the player discovers the same advance on his own without the help of a "goodie hut" the computer will give the required natural resources. The result is that a "goodie hut" can be a permanent critical disaster for your civ, forcing you to chuck it all in and start over.

The small complaints are not near the magnitude of the previous ones, although they still effect the enjoy ability of the game. The Wonders lose their feelings of awe and satisfaction upon completion. There are no wonder movies, nor a reminder of what a wonder does in the announcement screen once it's completed. The espionage and features of a spy or diplomat are all but completely gone and the features that programmers added in their place feel very much like an afterthought. This last point is a personal complaint; Civilization II had a playable map of Earth. Civilization III also has one but the map is so much smaller, that England can only hold one city and the entire continent of Australia may be able to hold four. The world map has shrunk so much that it really loses its appeal.

The final answer = The game is not that difficult, but it is not that fun either.

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