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Just A Preview

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 121 / 151
Date: September 29, 2001
Author: Amazon User

I have not yet played this game, this is just a preview. The game will be released in the US late October, and will run on Win 95,98,00, and XP, but not NT. Mac will come out Feb 02. Now onto the game:

There will be 16 civilizations, and you can play with them all at once on totally customizable maps. Each civ has it's own special unit and specific traits, however these can be turned off. The Romans special unit is the Legionnaire, the Aztecs the Jaguar Warrior, the Persians the Immortal, etc. Graphics have also been greatly updated. With military, you can have stack units, and form armies. There's also a chance that elite units might turn into great leaders, such as Caesar, Hannibal, etc that can rush build wonders or form armies. You can also make your own units, maps, civs, and governments and add them all in as you wish. The game will ship with 12 scenarios too. However, it will probably not come with multiplayer, but a patch with MP will be released eventually.

Diplomacy is different now. There are alliances, trade embargoes, rights of passage, mutual protection acts, and even the UN. There is also the diplomatic bargaining table, where you can make as many deals as you want. You can offer ivory and gold for the city of Pompeii, or offer the Gunpowder technology for their maps, or pay reperations for war. Anything is interchangeable.

Trade is not done with caravans anymore, but with trade routes that can even be pirated. Resources also come into play. For example, the tank requires oil, iron, and rubber. The Legion needs iron, etc. There are also luxury resources such as ivory, gems, wine, etc.

There are also new units, such as the Privateer. Like I said, there are also 16 unique units. Enemy cities can also be destroyed in war time and their workers can be made POWs.

Workers are a new concept. They do land upgrades and build colonies, while city building is left to settlers. There are also 6 paths to victory, as compared to Civ2's 2 paths. Culture is also a new innovation. Culture points effect your influence on neighboring Civs and are generated by art or religious buildings like temples, colosseums, libraries, etc. With enough culture you can even assimilate neighboring cities. Citizens also have their own nationalities.

There are also Golden Ages, which can either be triggered by wonders or by military gains, and you get bonus production for 20 consecutive turns.

All in all this looks like it has the potential to be the greatest strategy game of all time, and looks worth every cent. I highly recommend pre-ordering ASAP.

Check This Out

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 73 / 106
Date: August 22, 2001
Author: Amazon User

How about this. None of us have played the game yet, but we can all rate how much fun it is in stars. What a great deal.

Put your coffeemaker into overdrive - you'll be up late

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 58 / 61
Date: December 12, 2001
Author: Amazon User

I read the comments of another reviewer whose thought process was along these lines: "I'll keep playing until I get X, then I'll go to bed/dinner". I had to laugh, because that same thought process has kept me up many a night playing "Civilization 3". There is no way to describe the addictiveness (not a word, but you get the idea) of this game.

Having played the original "Civilization" back in college in the mid-90s, I should have known what I was in for when I got Civ 3. I had no idea how much more addictive it would become in this new and improved version. And what an improvement it is. The graphics are amazing, with highly detailed units (fully animated now) and terrain squares. The user interface is much simpler - no more menu bars at the top of the screen. Visuals of other world leaders are now animated, with facial clues to their moods and attitudes towards you.

Gameplay is also different. There are now multiple ways to win the game including (for the pacifists out there) cultural and diplomatic victories. The ability to build and support various units has also changed with the idea of strategic resources - they appear only when technology that uses them has been discovered (which makes sense - if you did not know what to do with oil, why would it be a resource to you until you could use it), and your access to any given resource at the time you need it may not be easy. So even if you discover Flight, you cannot build jet fighters unless you have access to aluminum (either through trade or by having deposits of it in your territory).

Empire management is done through advisors for domestic activities, trade, diplomacy, military and science (the science advisor is never satisfied with his budget, and always complains that he needs more funding - how typical), and by directing the activities of your workers, military units, civilians and so on.

Having read some of the other reviews here, I have to agree that there are a few quibbles to nitpick over. Like the inequities in battle units - I have had elephants and barbarians invade and take out cities fortified with jets and tanks. Like the slow progress of science even at unsustainably high budget levels. But my complaints are few, and my hours of sleep are growing fewer. Once you become immersed in this game you'll know what I mean.

To answer another reviewer's question, the game runs just fine on Windows XP. I have not noticed any problems with graphics, animations or gameplay (my system is an Athlon XP 1.33 gHz with 128 MB system RAM and 64MB video RAM). "Civilization 3" is a great game for novice gameplayers (it's fairly intuitive and easy to learn) and for fans of the older versions of the game and fans of strategy games in general. Just be prepared to say bye to your friends and family and any outdoor activities. You won't be seeing them for a while.

Civilization III disappointment

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: November 17, 2001
Author: Amazon User

Civilization III has been getting a large number of negative reviews on amazon, which is understandable but in many ways unwarranted. I will admit that when I started playing civilization III I was disappointed. My heart sank. I had looked forward to the release of the game for months. When I heard they were developing civilization III I could not believe it. It was like my favorite band had reformed to make another album as good as their first. But after I opened the box and started my first game, as the turns progressed I was thinking, "this is not right' this is not fun' my god, they blew it on civilization III."

The reason I didn't like the game was I didn't understand it. I went in playing civilization II and it wasn't working. It seems like most of the negative reviews are in the spirit of 'this is not as good as civilization II." As I played through more and more games I began to realize the game is more complicated than it would seem to a civilization II veteran. I am sure as many of the reviewers play the game more, they will recant their initial negative reviews.

I like the culture rating. I love that our civilizations now have borders. That was terribly annoying in civ II. You would be in your city peacefully building your university and cranking up your science production as enemy forces surrounded your cities across your nation. Now they cannot sit right outside your city during peacetime and randomly declare war when they are all in position. When they enter your cultural border, you can demand that they leave or declare war, giving you some a turn or two while they march across your border and towards the city they intend to attack.

I like the resources. You don't know if you have iron in your nation until you discover iron working. You don't know if you have the rubber needed to make infantry until you discover replaceable parts. This is very cool and very realistic. My last game I had a great civilization' until I realized I had no aluminum, rubber, or coal and a few hundred years later my civilization was reduced to ash as my riflemen were rolled over by the modern armor of the once minor civilization of the Romans. Where is the oil in the real world? Much of it is in nations where if they did not have it would be the poorest on earth, instead they are the richest with modern military hardware built by the US. This is one of the finest aspects of the new game.

The computer AI is 1000% better in civilization III. I think this is a major factor in many player negative perception of the game. You cannot play on deity or king anymore. Start on the second level and work to the third level. The AI is that good. I am sure I will work my way up to the higher levels but the computer players are far smarter in this game. You cannot expect the enemy troops to attack cities with one unit at a time with no prayer of ever taking you over. They will take your workers, they will pillage your land, and then they will attack your least defended city with every unit in their military and reduce it to rubble, pyramids and all. That makes for great game play. Sure, beating civ II on deity every game was a great ego boost, but I would rather take a good beating from a well designed game any day.

The more I play civilization III the more I enjoy it. Give it a chance, you won't regret it.

Civ, Civ2, SMAC... and now CIV!!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 16
Date: October 06, 2001
Author: Amazon User

sigh... already wrote one of these for the limited edition. to put it simply:
turn based, resource management, build/conquer/discover, Sid Meyer: IF you don't know who he is.... GET THIS GAME. you will not regret it, but i digress, it is simply the best single game series EVER. even if your not into turn based, you will be into this game. now... who wanted the OIL? I have a couple of barrels going for that neet SDI thingy you got there.
=)

Solid

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 9
Date: October 09, 2001
Author: Amazon User

Civ3, from the information that has been given out to fansites, looks to be another solid game from Sid Meier and the Firaxis team. It takes the best of Civ2 and adds much more and whats real nice is that Firaxis has listened to the fans ideas on some things. Unlike childs games like the sims and simcity that you tossed on the shelf after a few hours of play this is going to have you going to work with no sleep because you stayed up all night thinking "just one more turn" or "well if I play for another hour I'll still get two hours of sleep". Your life outside of this game will be over.

CIvIII and prejudiced reviews

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 9 / 28
Date: October 09, 2001
Author: Amazon User

First I would like to say that I have been following the development from a gamer's perspective for quite some time, and everything I have seen about this game- from screenshots, write-ups, to preview movies- has shown that CivIII will be included as one of the new millenium's hottest games.

As for anyone who has anything bad to say about this game (which has not been released YET, and is scheduled to be available October 30th 2001), they are just plain idiots! More specifically, Mohammad Al Qattan's review is utter nonsense, as he, and no one outside of the Firaxis/Infogrames staff, has seen this game. Mohammad, your opinions of things that you have absolutely NO information about are quite useless, as is your total lack of taste.

Simcity versus Civilization? Are you joking??

Hope its not cluttered like civ 2

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 43
Date: August 24, 2001
Author: Amazon User

Civ 1 was easy to look at and understand civ 2 you really had to work at making out what every thing was in the cities cause it was so cluttery so hopefully that was fixed

Fun Fun Fun! I give it 5 stars!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 25 / 143
Date: August 27, 2001
Author: Amazon User

This game is really, really cool, and yes, as the title suggests, it is indeed about Chinese food. It has been improved vastly over the original, for it only freeses up when you refrain from pressing any buttons for five seconds, pause, or try to save your game (or pick your nose, or breathe, or not breathe.) Also, the graphics have been extensively upgraded, because they are now in color. You'd just better hope that the problem in which the game seizes control over U.S. nuclear missiles and launches them into foreign nations selected at random has been corrected (rumors of such appeared when the prequel came out.) My favorite part of Civilization 3 was when the I.R.S. audits the non-deductible toilet, thereby preventing the flushing of the Claustrophobian race and enabling (with the help of Richard Nixon) the destruction of the evil communist Zertogerator XVII before the Coming Of The 3rd Booger without accessing mode 17-alpha, which is, of course, very important (as you should know if you've ever played the prequel) because it triples the equilibrium of the indispensable discount coupon on frozen vegetables. That way, you can reduce global warming by the square of the hypotenuse multiplied by the sum of the two sides in a right triangle. (And thereby waste Even More time!) Civilization 3 also has a very user-friendly interface, because you can now use the keyboard and mouse. Help your environment by buying this game, because, in order to run the full 2 Meg. Version, you must first shut off everything you own that consumes electricity (aside from this game, you nitwit!) If you act now, you get a free attachment that messes up your tax forms! Don't let the fact that it's a dos game deter you (so what if it doesn't work if you have Windows on your computer and displays an error message every two seconds.) Buy This Game Now! The prequel too. (Because its there! Don't waste your money on something you actually want!) Then you can get to the end where Bill Gates takes over the world and see the following ms-dos prompt: "Thank you for making Bill Gates even richer!" "Bill Gates Rules-He's a Genius!" "Bill Gates Rules-He's a Genius!" "Bill Gates Rules-He's a Genius!" -add infinitem. (P.S. try typing Bill Gates as your name when you play.) And you are getting sleepy... Very sleepy... Your eyelids are getting heavy... You will buy this game... You will do what I say... You will give me all your money... And your house (or apartment, or trailer, or cardboard box, or whatever the *BLEEP* you live in...) And your kidneys...

Barbarians

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: August 29, 2001
Author: Amazon User

So I'm sitting at dinner with a bunch of academic economists (by luck I'm one myself). The talk turns to the factors that influence the survival of civilizations and cultures. One of the consensus rules is to avoid barbarian hoards. And what gives rise to this logic, as deduced by the members of the dinner group? Experience playing Civilization. What a great game. I only hope that the next version can match up to the others.

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