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Save your Money!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 3 / 14
Date: January 10, 2003
Author: Amazon User

There are only about a dozen or so strategy games out there that are more interesting, creative and exciting than Civ3. Consumer beware! This is nothing more than Alpha Centauri repackaged and maybe a little more eyecandy. This is yet another formulaic, static, staid pseudo-strategy game with nothing new or innovative whatsoever. The combat is frustratingly illogical, (axe-wielding warriors defeating tanks?!?) and simplistic, and the controls are simply juvenile and clumsy. Forget economy or commerce too, they are nonexistent in this game. They claim to have hyped up diplomacy, but do not be fooled! All they did was put some pretty pictures in the windows! There is really no difference in this game from Master of Orion, a game which is a decade old now, but clearly the better of the two.

what a disappointment

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 3 / 16
Date: March 12, 2003
Author: Amazon User

1. Exhausting
2. Fustrating
I had a city full of f 15s and not one bombing raid hit, this game is a complete waste of time to play, not enjoyable at all. Dont waste your money on this game, buy Civ 2.

A sham Civ

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 4 / 15
Date: October 31, 2003
Author: Amazon User

CIV3 is unrelated to the Civ2 and SMAC. It is only a CIV in name. The real heir to the CIV series is Rise of Nations designed by Brian Reynolds, the same person who designed CIV2 and SMAC. CIV III is a poorly designed game on half baked ideas. The game is dummer (no pun intended). The AI is dummer (it knows nothing of diplomacy) and the 'puter cheats harder. It is, however, winnable if you out-cheat the 'puter. Save often, fight wars, try verious fighting sequence at the same turn until you have produced a leader. You are on your way to winning at any level. It is a laborious and boring way to playing. But what can I say, it is a poorly designed boring game.

Eyecandy over substance

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 19 / 27
Date: July 10, 2003
Author: Amazon User

First of all, let me make it clear that I am an old Civ series fan. I played it back in 1993 on the Mac and Amiga, and I've loved it since then.

But Civilisation 3 is a sorry affair. To make a long story short:

Stroing points:
+ Good, detailed graphics
+ Sound less repetitive than Civ II
+ Generally simpler interface than precursors
+ Somewhat easier city management
+ Generally an interesting simulation

The downsides:
- As another poster wrote, the diplomacy system is a joke. It has an interesting form, but it is confusing in the end.
- Insane difficulty level, even at the lower diff. settings. Computer players get technologies way faster than you do, and their civilisation grows much faster, as well. Very unfair!
- as said elsewhere, the tech advances tree is almost the same as Civ I & 2, which is boring and disappointing! Same is to be said for city improvements.
- Boring and "accellerated" archaic ages... from 4000 BC to 0 AD, there are almost no advances happening, compared to the former Civ Games, and this part of the game feels very "hollow".

Summarised, I am thoroughly disappointed by this game, and I'm at a loss to explain why Sid Meier & the game designers did not include the huge advances we saw iN Alpha Centauri - highly customizable social designs, build-your-own units, etc.

It feels like Civ I with new graphics slapped on top. Oh, yeah, dont forget that the original Civ took up 5 MB of HD space. This gigant takes up 100 times that! :(

THUMBS DOWN!

Very overrated and very mediocre

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 9 / 13
Date: June 30, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I don't think that I have ever been as disappointed in a game as I was in this one. I used to think that if the game had "Sid Meier" on the box, it had to be a masterpiece. I guess I was wrong. "Civilization 3" is the original "Civilization" with a graphics upgrade, and then a few new features, most of which are extremely annoying. The only good aspects of the game are what was included in the original, and they haven't been upgraded to stay ahead of the competition. What's new is basically bad.

To start with, this games most glaring problem is its "Diplomacy". Any professional reviewer who writes about this great new "diplomacy" system should resign in shame. "Diplomacy" in "Civilization 3" is a complete and utter joke. The game's new diplomatic options are pointless. Each civilization that you meet is extremely warlike and aggressive, and declares war on you shortly after you meet them unless you give in to their blackmail demands to fork over all of your gold. This means that instead of building cities and researching advances, you are fighting a two or three-front war before you even reach the Middle Ages. I played at least 10 games on various difficulty levels to see what would happen, and it was the same result every time. Since the computer advances faster than you even if you are spending all of your money on science, then it's only a matter of time before you are wiped out.

Another annoyance that has been increased in the game is civil disorder. Cities erupt into civil disorder much earlier than the original game, which means that your citizens are rioting before you even have time to build a single structure, unless you station a bunch of military units there.

The only improvement that has been made to the combat system is the use of hit points, which prevents a caveman from defeating a tank. That is the only improvement. The rest is mediocre, especially when you compare it to other strategy games out there. It is also unbalanced. Some units, like catapults, have been neutered so bad that they are completely useless. The way to take a city in the game is to just build up a massive army of the same unit and beat on a city in a war of attrition. Combat is oversimplified and devoid of the strategy and tactics that you find in good turn-based strategy games.

These faults might be acceptable if the game could run without crashing, but even with all of the patches, this game locks up and crashes constantly. I had more trouble getting this game to run than with any other game released in at least the past 3 years. The graphics aren't exactly pushing the limits of today's systems, so I don't know what the problem is.

If you don't mind getting the old game with just a graphics upgrade and a few bad new features, then you might like Civ 3. On the other hand, if you are looking for a great turn-based strategy, you have a lot of other options to choose from. The rest of the turn-based strategy world has caught up and surpassed Sid Meier's work. Skip Civ 3, or go see if you can find the original somewhere.

Not as good as Civ II

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 6 / 8
Date: March 07, 2003
Author: Amazon User

After carefully reading all the reviews I finally bought my own copy of Civ III. First, if you are not sure whether you like strategy games, do not start with this one. For those who have played Civ and/or Civ II (which I have) this review is more for you. Civ III is a low budget version of Civ II that corrects some of the problems with Civ II but looses much of the magic that made Civ II so much fun to play. For example, gone are the actors who would evolve with your advance from cavemen and cave women to Elvis, General Patton, etc. Instead we have gone back to a Civ I approach where your advisors are inanimate goofs that do not give you any helpful advice. "Compared to them your military is unimpressive." Unfortunately "them" is never defined. Plus, although you can play with up to 16 diferrent civiliazations as opponents, you only communicate with 8 of them ! Where is the logic in that. The instruction manual [is not good]. It took me forever to figure out what to click on to start an embasy in a foreign nation. All told, Civilization is still a great game. Compared to Civ II, though, Civ III lacks style and fun. If the creators ever combine Civ II with Civ III and create a Civ IV I think we will have the perfect game.

CIV III - Boring

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 1 / 3
Date: January 06, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I thought it would be much better than Age of Empires, but I was wrong. Just as in that game, you can never find a winning scenario. I don't know how some of these psople wrote reviews on winning and becoming supreme deity status. The game is slow, there is no diplomacy between nations. Everyone of them declares war on you. All of the opposing civ's reach higher status than you. The other problem is you always run out of resources and are down to 0 gold before you know it. You can't customize policies with other nations and they all want to blackmail you into giving up all of your gold.

I like Medieval better. Not as much detail but far better strategy game.

Good ideas, but disappointing, too buggy

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

I'm a big fan of the Civilization series -- I think Civ II is maybe the best PC game of all time. Many of the features in Civ III are appealing, and after a bit of mindset adjustment, are actually quite fun.

The problem: bugs. Even at patch v1.29f (the last one offered before the Conquests expansion), I have yet to play through an entire game without running into some kind of computer-move hang, or game crash, or SOMETHING that completely obviates the substantial amount of time you've put into a particular game. Seeing two days of gameplay go up in smoke because an important strategic resource appears NOWHERE on the entire map is not fun.

I'm not too eager to plop down another $20-30 to get an expansion for a game I can't play in the first place, so I guess I'm out of luck. My recommendation is to save your money, and cherish the memories of the earlier installments of the franchise.

Game Of The Year?

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 60 / 64
Date: November 22, 2002
Author: Amazon User

This "Game of the Year" edition includes an extra CD that includes a few extra maps, a "making-of" video, a few chapters from the strategy guide, and frankly is worthless.

Civilization 3 itself brings a few new ideas to the mix with culture, strategic resources, and civ-specific units as well as revised units and wonders. The graphics have been updated and the map is very pretty if not always useful. It is sometimes difficult to distinguish terrain types without reverting to right-clicking on the square. Units now feature animations that are entertaining at first, but you'll soon tire of seeing cavalry attacking musketmen for the 100th time.

The scale of the game has grown and it is not uncommon to have a civilization of 20 or more cities at the larger settings. Luckily there are now governors to automate some of the more routine tasks of city maintenance.

The combat model is changed with the air arena being much different than previous versions. However, some combat seems to have taken a step back and it isn't uncommon to see older units defeat newer technology. You'll need new strategies to win here so don't expect your Civ 2 experience to guarantee success.

With version 1.29f, the game is relatively stable and most of the bugs/issues (rampant corruption) from early versions have been addressed.

I personally believe this game is inferior to Civ 2, but the price of this new version certainly makes it more attractive.

Well thought out, but tiresome . . .

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 24 / 33
Date: May 09, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I have never played Civ II, so Civ III was a new experience for me. It seems that the creators expanded the number of ways one can win, which is nice, but the game is still in rough form. I must agree with another reviewer who advised waitng for Civ IV.

The biggest problem of all, of course, is the amount of time it takes to play the game. At the easiest game setting, it can take 13 or 14 hours to reach the end game. This is not a game for those who like to finish everything in one sitting. Expect frequent game saves.

The diplomacy features are nicely done, and I would look forward to an expansion of possible dialogue options. Yes, the AI can pick on you and ruin your fun (some people complained about this in other reviews), but that is how real life works. This is a great game for seeing the different theories about how civilizations grow and expand in action. It definitely requires thought about how you will handle the situation given to you at the beginning of the game. (I will say that you can win in any situation, even when you are on an isolated island, provided you adapt to the hand that fate dealt you.)

My complaints about the design include an impossible espionage interface. I could place spies, but could not get them to do anything. Also, others have noticed with amusement that the battle resolutions are a bit odd. For example, a 16th century galleon was able to damage and sink a 21st century nuclear submarine. The battles are supposed to be based on attack and defense factors (assigned numbers plus defensive walls, population sizes, etc.) with some randomization, but the random influence needs to be scaled back a bit. I would suggest creating classes of combatants that could reasonably be expected to fight each other. If two units of different classes meet, the unit from the more advanced class should have an easy win without randomization.

Leaders should be explained in more detail; I have never been able to create one, even after setting barbarians to raging and destroying major enemy civilizations. The communications panel should be expanded to allow cantact with all known civilizations, as well. (You are currently limited to seven, or I have know idea how to do it if this is not the case.) Finally, the manual should be expanded or done away with. You spend to much time going back and forth between the help files and the booklet. In addition, the game takes three of four days to learn (along with about 100 pages of reading.)This isn't so bad for what you get back, but some may not be willing to invest that kind of time in a game that takes half a day to win.

Overall, this is a good game for perfectionists with a god complex. (Deity is one of the difficulty settings.)

However, it is a very bad game for those who prefer action or first person adventure.

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