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More Scenarios

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 13 / 16
Date: August 27, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I have enjoyed Civ from the beginning. The Civ3 scenarios are excellent. They give the flavor of the different periods and a good sense of history. however there are some scenarios in Civ2 that are not available in Civ3 that I am aware of and I keep hoping they will show up. The American Revolution, the American Civil War, WWI (even if it is only the European and Mediterranean theaters, and WWII European, Mediterranean and North African theaters. Make no mistake the scenarios available in Civ3 are excellent, ancient Mediterranean, ancient Japan, medieval, Napoleonic and the World War2 Pacific Campaign are all great. I'm sure there are some scenarios that I have left out. You can see those that I play most often.

My Favorite Game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 11 / 13
Date: July 22, 2005
Author: Amazon User

You can play this game for countless hours... each time you win or lose you can simply start a new (and completely different) game. If you like turn-based strategy games and/or God's-eye-view war games, I highly recommend this game. Oh yeah, fair warning: this game is highly addictive and you will find yourself playing for 4 hours and wanting to "just finish your next turn" before you go to bed... and then you realize that it's 8:00 in the morning and you have to go to work on no sleep. Not that it's ever happened to me. Again, this is by far my favorite game of all time so I'm sure that staying up all night would ever happen to you... You've been warned.

Amazon, please don't rip us off!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 22 / 37
Date: July 04, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Amazon, you're telling people who are interested in buying Civilization III: Complete to consider purchasing it together with Civilization III: Conquests expansion pack, and possibly offering them a discount if they buy the two together.

Civilization III: Complete INCLUDES the Conquests expansion pack! People who buy Complete should NOT buy Conquests as well!

The best stategy game ever

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 10 / 12
Date: January 25, 2005
Author: Amazon User

This game is awesome. The whole series is. You can make your own maps to play on, there are so many new resources, and more civilizations to choose from. There are scenarios that are really cool too. You can play anywhere from ancient Mesopatamia to WWII in the Pacific. If you are looking for an awesome stategy game this one is for you!!!!!!!!!

Seriously terrible

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 11 / 14
Date: January 22, 2007
Author: Amazon User

First things first:

First, as Mr. Dusel pointed out, this is just Civ III plus Civ III: Conquests. Conquests includes Play The World, so in a sense there is only one expansion. I myself posess Conquests and the Civ III Game of the Year edition or some such nonsense, which has a few extra maps and the map editor.

Second, as someone else pointed out, the computer cheats to a ridiculous degree on even the moderate difficulty levels, and it is the worst kind of cheating, because the computer will turn away numerically and statistically superior units in preposterous streaks of wins while your own units infuriatingly snatch defeat from the jaws of victory time after time. This is the game's single biggest flaw, and it is, in my mind, unforgivable. In short, the Civilization I problem of phalanxes turning away battleships is back, (although as ships can no longer attack land units in the normal fashion, that's not literally true).

Pros versus Civilization II:
More units (slightly)
More logical tech tree
Settlers auto-management improved (though still annoying in that the computer has a particular way of management which isn't always the most efficient)
Unit animation is cute the first time you play
Bombardment was a good idea, though it's been implemented in too many units and is a time-consuming process with large numbers of units, and is too hard to do effectively
Easier to move unit groups, pathfinding improved somewhat
Resources are a smart idea
More sophisticated diplomacy options
Civilization-specific units
Cultural value a good metric and asset
Detailed scenarios

Cons:
Flagrant computer combat cheating to the point of ruining the game
Geographically large states still almost invariably win (personal issue, but I think this should not always be the case)
Unit animation quickly becomes annoying and useless
Time consuming end-game armies
Corruption plagues all states regardless of government. While some corruption is understandable there is no reason for a state to become unmanageably large in the late game
Bombardment wastes time and does nearly nothing (cheating computer again?)- on a related note the single most aggravating bug is the non-functional coastal fortresses, which only attack during the player who owns the fortress's turn; the computer consistently circumvents this by bombarding and retreating, acknowledging the bug and rendering the fortresses useless.
As mentioned by others, resource placements often screw the player over from the get-go. Furthermore there is little motivation to trade an opponent strategic resources like iron and oil, so the unfortunate player is doomed to defending against battleships with arrows because there is no iron or oil on his entire continent.
Computer sees resources (indeed, the entire map before it is explored) before it gets the tech to do so, further tipping the scales against the player
Diplomatic AI is miserable
No way to force the computer to respect borders (computer players will build pointless, obstructive cities in isolated places within your territory and constantly cross over your borders and will declare war if you ask them to remove their units, yet regard your units crossing into their territory as cause for war.)

Do not listen to the cheerleaders writing reviews here. The computer DOES cheat (and I don't understand how anybody could not see this), the odds are frequently stacked overwhelmingly one way or the other, and the computer cannot negotiate in anything like a rational way. This is a truly awful game, because it can suck you in for hours only to crush you when you realize that you had no chance to begin with. Deeply flawed and pointless. Civilization II is much better.

Good but...

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 13 / 19
Date: December 09, 2005
Author: Amazon User

This is a very entertaining game, and can keep you occupied for hours. I have only one complaint. The CPU can conquer one of your cities defended by twenty tanks with a medieval infantry guy. Most of the times the battles are not realistic at all. My tanks frequently lose to puny medieval units. I would love to see a man with a sword defeat a tank. Not gonna happen. I suggest buying this game because it is fun, but expect to be pissed off every once in a while when the CPU kills your best modern units with ancient units.

They ruined it!

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 20 / 37
Date: February 02, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I don't normally play video games, but I'm a huge fan of Civilization 3. Too huge in fact - it's a real problem for me. I find myself skipping meals when I play this game. Civilization 3 is my favorite of the Civilization series. I think the zone of controls concept is natural to the gameplay, and the ability to have cultural takeovers of other cities is fun. Some of the oddities and cheapness of the previous versions have been removed - it's not really possible to build every single wonder, for instance.

I hadn't played the game in a while, so I decided to get this complete package when I saw it at the store. However, the several years of updates have really hurt this game. The problems haven't been addressed - most notably, the diplomacy AI is terrible, and the endgame, with its emphasis on large amounts of indivisual military units, is so ridiculously slow that I can still only rarely make it through without quitting, frustrated. Instead, the main change is that resources are much more scarce. These recourses are essential to the progress of your game. However you have no way of knowing if you'll have, say, a coal resource somewhere in your map, until you've already been playing for 5 hours.

If the scarcity was a matter of instigating small military attacks on your neighbors, or heavy diplomacy, that would be fine. However, this weakness plays off the game's other weakenesses. Often the necessary resource will only be available halfway around the world. Launching a military attack is so ridiculously slow that it isn't worth the time even for the most addictive player (that being: me). And the diplomacy AI is so worthless that other empires won't trade their essential resources even when you throw ridiculous sums of money and technology at them.

Anyway, it's no fun to play for hours and hours before you find that your game is a lost cause due to the map you were given. Also, the expansion disks are (to my mind) worthless. So I'd strongly recommend just buying the earlier editions of Civilization 3, which are much cheaper.

Fantastic game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: July 05, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Thats all tha can be said. This is a fantastic game. The way the game play is set up it can be as deep or as light as you want the experiance to be. Just a word of warning though; when you start to play this game be sure to set an alarm clock to ring every few hopurs so you remember to eat. Otherwise you may find a day or two goes buy and you wont even realize it. Civiliztions III Complete is that good!

A great game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 10 / 16
Date: March 20, 2005
Author: Amazon User

This Game is really good. It has much more resource to gather and much more civilizations to choose from. It also has more modes. The expansions are nice too. This doesn't have too good graphics but it's OK. It is a little slow too. Tis is a realy GOOD GAME.

Not Sid's Best Work!!

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 6 / 8
Date: April 17, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Civ 3 was a great product. The expansion packs, however, were a failure of monumental propoprtions! Nothing about them was entertaining. They didn't add anything to the Civ experience for me. I settled for merely playing "Same old Civ 3", uninstalling the expansion packs because, in my opinion, they hurt the game more than they helped it.

Graphics were an upgrade from previous Civs. Plot was pretty much the same as before. But the game was entertaining as all civ products are. My only knock is the same knock I've had for all Civ products. It takes place over 5,000 years. You should have to change your leader's name every 50, 60 or 75 years or so. Your leadership should be structured more like Romance of the 3 Kingdoms where you pretty much build a dynasty. You have kids and grandkids. Marry and make relationships that will ensure the survival of your dynasty. Some have said they thought it would make the game more complicated. Personally I believe it'll make the game more realistic. It'll be the ultimate tweak.

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