Rating: 
Summary: awesome
Review: It was a rough start when I first began playing Civ 3. Im a huge Civ fan and I was so used to the old version that I couldnÂft get accustomed to the new format. The instruction manual is painfully inadequate. It has zero specific information and the index is abominable. But I pressed forward and within a short while I figured it out on my own. Then it all started to feel too familiar, just a fancy version of Civ2. Again after more game play the similarities proved to be superficial as many new levels began to appear, like the complex diplomacy for example. The AI can be surprisingly cunning and I am now chained to my computer unable to leave, at least not until I sack Thebes and teach those evil Egyptians a lesson, just one more hour...
Rating: 
Summary: Buyer Beware!!
Review: I am a fan of the Civs and am very disappointed with this game. I will keep this very short. I have never written a review before and thought that I would never have the desire to do so, but I feel that it is my duty to stop others from making the same mistake I did. Do not pay a lot of money for this game!! There are so many problems and so many short falls that you will end up disappointed, especially if you are an avid Civ fan. Don't believe all the pre-sales hype, the game is not very good.
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing.... but could be saved by a patch!
Review: A longtime player of any game with Sid's name (and I've never played the Call To Power series), after a week and a few games of Civ3, I must say I'm pretty disappointed. It seems that each step forward is matched by a step back. However, I have hope: I believe that it is quite possible and perhaps probable that all of the game's bugs and many of its shortcomings will be worked out by the patches and expansion packs that will surely follow.I'm sure you've heard about the new additions to the basic Civ2 structure... the addition of the concept of culture, and the massive changes to trade, diplomacy, and AI. For the most part, this is the kind of stuff that I always wished for when playing the predecessors. However, the new trade structure is rough around the edges, as a little bit of bad luck (re: resource placement on the map) can be quite debilitating to gameplay. I'm having a hard time understanding why the boys at Firaxis chose to pare down so many features, units, techs and improvements from Civ2. Game concepts like Capitalization and Irrigation are just gone... why? Even the menu system has been pillaged... it took me three days to figure out that there actually was a 'Top 5 Cities' screen (hit F10). What didn't take me long to figure out is that the elimination of the 'Firepower' attribute (gives newer military units the advantage over older ones to help produce realistic battle outcomes) was a big mistake... why didn't they figure that out in the test environment? By far the biggest gaffe is the rediculous level of corruption. This severely hinders the production capability of any city that isn't close to your capital. While corruption has always been a part of the game, in the previous versions it's possible to combat it with courthouses and more advanced governments. In Civ3, corruption is just out of hand. Apparently Firaxis is planning on addressing this fact in a soon to be released patch. I've really only touched on the game's biggest problems... Check out the newsgroups, and you'll see other veteran civ players with long lists of qualms. A lot of these complaints regard things that are easily changeable, like the offensive capability of a privateer... Others, like the lack of multiplayer, will require a whole other level of programming. So the question stands, Will Firaxis consider our demands when creating the expansion packs? If so, I'm sure I'll learn to adapt to the clumsy interface and simplified game structure. Civilization is still the greatest strategy game series out there, and there's no doubt that I'll give my copy of Civ3 a thorough workout over the years.
Rating:
Summary: Good potential, terrible outcome
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: So slow it kills the fun
Review: I'll get to the details in a second, but the overwhelming problem with this game is that it is so incredibly slow. As others have said, it is hard to enjoy the game when, in the later years, I make my moves and have time to go make a sandwich in the kitchen before the AI is finished with its moves. SO SLOW it drives me crazy. This is the number one priority for fixing this game. A game that would have progressed nicely in an afternoon on CivII now takes a few afternoons. It's almost impossible to comment on the new features and changes because the slow pace of play gets in the way. In addition, I've had to contend with several crashes and a few annoying situations where a unit had finished bombarding but would not accept the "Hold" command. So frustrating. On the positive side, the ability to conduct trade and diplomacy through your advisors instead of having to build units is a big time saver and makes more sense. Also, the ability to irrigate along the diagonal, something which seems minor, is actually a major improvement. No more irrigating non-city squares just so you can get around a mountain to your own city squares. And there have been some time-saving changes in military units. For example, it's nice to have a bomber simply choose a square to bomb without having to move the damned thing to the target and back. Aside from the pace of game play, there are a few issues that need to be tweaked. 1) Manual - Often the manual gets you 85% of the answer, but you have to figure out the rest through trial and error. Opening the Civilopedia takes forever and is often just as unhelpful. For future buyers, I hope they revise the manual. The index is terrible and needs to be expanded. Some major game concepts are not listed. 2) Resources - In one game, I had bombers, fighters and F-15s (as the Americans), but I still had to take cities on the ground with swordsmen because I couldn't find rubber. What are the wheels on those planes made of, wood? I was the largest civilization by far, yet I couldn't find rubber anywhere within my borders, nor could I trade for it. Very frustrating. I have yet to find horses in any game I've played and, because the AI is reluctant to trade them, I have yet to build a mounted unit, even in games that last until the late 1900's. Also, the conditions for making a colony over a resource seemed inconsistent. It was nearly impossible to predict when I could and could not build one. 3) Corruption - It seems incredibly high compared with CivII, even in Democracy. Maybe I am missing something in the manual. 4) AI Cheating - This has always been my gripe with Civ. Even in CivII, the democracies I was fighting seemed to produce military units by the ton with no discontent. Nothing has changed. In a recent CivIII game, I was attacking a civilization with four small (less than size 6) cities left (the others had fallen to my cultural influence) and (on top of the fact that I was using bombers to crush those four cities) this civilization was STILL cranking out what appeared to be ten units a turn. 5) SPEARMAN DEFEATS TANK! - I cannot believe that it would be that difficult to assign each unit a "technology" level that would prevent this kind of silliness. No unit that does not have gunpowder at the minimum should be able to survive at all versus armor or mechanized infantry. I've got to believe they could write a patch to fix this problem and make combat more realistic. For the moment, I have to give it only three stars because the pace of play is so excruciatingly slow compared to CivII. It's hard to comment on the new features because I have trouble enjoying the game when just a few turns end up taking thirty minutes. If they can fix that problem, the game may turn out to be an improvement.
Rating:
Summary: Good Game
Review: I just finished playing a game. It has been a very different game with civ 2 --- I would say, more reasonable and much harder. I must admit civ 2 is a very easy game for me (even deity level) --- because everything can be gotten with trade/money --- and trade is so easy to be increased --- by cravans and building road, I need do nothing but be commercialized and get everything with trade/money. So usually in Deity Level, my comp rivals can build no wonders at all (When I saw the warning that they will finish it, I rushed the wonder with money). Say frankly, in civ2, if you built the Pyramid and the Great library, you had already won. Usually in Civ2's deity level, I would unite the world (of a large map) around 1940AD with my mighty spies and money, and I might left a city not conquered and kept developing the future techs and population to get a tremendous score(I would not launch the spaceship until the game is to over).
But in civ 3, this will not happen: you cannot rush anything when you are in depotism or Monachy govenment, so money is not so important in the beginning. And the deity level of Civ3 is tremendously hard! --- I played the deity level of this game when I got it. Then when I was developing republic, I found one of my computer rivals was building Leonado's Workshop! So I quitted angrily and watched the replay --- I found why --- I had only one settler in the begining while my rivals had 2! Because in Civ 3, the building of a settler needs 2 population (not 1!) of a city, one settler means too much in the begining. And in the deity level, it's almost impossible to get any tech or anything really valuable from the huts, while the computer rivals can often get them easily (because they are playing Prince Level while you are playing deity level!), so usually your tech cannot match your rivals in the beginning. But I would say this game is more funny. I jusst played a game of Prince Level after I quittd the deity level. Because the computer rivals are also playing Prince level, this can be considered a "fair" game.
The biggest development in Civ 3 I think is the new diplomacy system --- for example, while one civ has a tech, she usually trades it with all the other civs. With this method, I got much from my rivals --- When I get a civ advance, I will keep it as a secret, but if I found one of them had a certain tech (of course I also had it) , I would sell the tech to all the others and get much money. At last, my research is mostly supported by the money from my rivals. And when I built the UN I was elected the secretary general easily because I had ruled half of the world (I played with 7 comps, eliminated 3, and made friends with 2, so be elected).
I still like the government of democracy because of the high productivity and low corruption, but you will find the democracy of civ3 is not so powerful as the democracy in civ2. I will find out how to beat the deity level computer rivals later when I am free. But I guess the right way is to use the skills of diplomacy and rush the great library at any cost. Although the pyramid is very useful for population, it has to be abondoned to build the great lib. If you can be tech advanced with the help of the great lib, more strategies can be made in the middle ages when the great lib is obsolete. Any way, I think this is a totally new game --- a great successor of Civ2, a better model for civilization.
Rating: 
Summary: Worthy successor to the old Civ
Review: I've just played this game all weekend, and I can definitely say it brings back memories of obsessing over the original Civilization years ago, only it's dressed up much nicer now. The new diplomacy and combat systems are great, and there's a lot of little touches like cute animations and sounds for all the units. In Civ II these were mostly just irritating, but this time it all works together. Well worth the ..., and truly an exceptional title in this age of disposable games. Expect to play this one for a long time. However, I still find the isometric perspective a little confusing. It's hard to judge distances, or whether a location is within a city's area of influence. The "3D" look is very pretty, but sometimes leads to mistakes like not realizing an enemy is in the next map square left or right; or sending a galley up or down towards a seemingly nearby coast, only to find out it wasn't that close after all and the ship is lost at sea. Also, I was a little bit surprised by the unfinished, shareware-like look of some screens, and there's a few oddities like the lack of "what is this" button in the city screen where you select what to build. Especially in the case of wonders of the world, I'd like to know why I'm building it or what it does before I commit to a 1000-year project. But this is just nitpicking... A couple of little flaws won't stop me from enjoying the game!
Rating: 
Summary: I waited a year for this?
Review: Keep in mind that most of the reviews here were written by enthusiatic Civ-2 players before Civ-3 even came out. I still play Civ 2 from time to time, even though it came out several years ago. It is compelling, addictive, and just plain fun. So for the last several months, I have been eagerly awaiting the arrival of Civ 3. I have been playing it steadily for the last several days, and I have to say that I'm very disapointed. A few nice cosmetic changes have been made; when you first start it up, it looks great. But in my opinion, much of the fun has been removed, and the resulting product is really very tedious. I've been playing Civ-2 for 6 years; I doubt I'll be playing Civ-3 in another 6 days. What are the problems? The mechanics of combat have been changed so that units no longer have a "firepower" factor. That means that a "hit" from a howitzer shell inflicts the same amount of damage as a hit from a company of spearmen. Because of this and some other rule changes, modern warfare has become sort of a joke. Your tanks, mechanized infantry, and battleships are constantly getting killed off by swordsmen, horsemen, and sailing ships. Air combat units such as bombers and fighters have been rendered essentially useless. In theory, you can conduct espionage operations, but these are so costly that you are probably not likely to ever find them useful, especially since there is also a "corruption factor" in which any decent-sized civilization is losing most of its income to corruption. Shortcoming with modern warfare might not even be relevant, though, because it is now very difficult to wage war in the modern era. The designers have introduced a "war wearniness" factor in which your citizens will become unhappy, revolt, riot, starve themsleves, and destroy their own cities if you spend more than a few turns at war. This factor really puts the brakes on your options in the latter part of the game. Instead of "war weariness" it should be called "game weariness." I usually quit playing at this point and start a new game because it just becomes a huge hassle. There are also other problems with the game mechanics that just make the whole thing irritating, dull, and basically a chore to finish. Also, global warming quickly becomes a significnat problem and here is no longer any way to deal with it. In Civ-2, you could build engineer units which could convert deserts and even mountains into useful terrain. Those functions are absent in Civ-3, so once global warming starts to turn all of your farmland to desert (which it will, very quickly), you're out of luck. Many people have also described problems with the operation of the game on their compturs. I have a lot of trouble with it freezing or crashing my machine. Altogether, I find this to be a real dispointment.
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful visuals, great sequel
Review: Civilization II was my all-time favorite computer game. This long-awaited sequel improves upon it in almost every way. The graphics are gorgeous, the gameplay is compelling. Playing Civ has always helped me see the world in broader terms, in the context of four thousand years of history instead of the narrow limits of modern pop culture. Civ III adds a lot of intriguing new concepts (flooding enemy cities with propaganda, war weariness, charismatic leaders emerging from successful battles that you can then use to mobilize armies). I do wish that certain other recurring features in history had been included, however controversial (slavery, different alternatives for addressing crime etc.) But diplomacy is SO much improved over Civ II. I'd recommend this game to anyone interested in thought-provoking, well-executed strategy games--I'll be playing it for a long, long time.
Rating:
Summary: Entirely, still the best
Review: I've been an avid fan of the Civilization series since its inception and have owned all the Civ titles. Civ 3 includes a lot of senseful improvements which I won't rehash here seeing as others have already pointed most of them out. I'd add to those descriptions, however, the ability to irrigate squares diagonally opposed to either a river square or previously irrigated terrain. The fact that the developers refined this aspect, which would seem pretty minor (however annoying!), should give prospective buyers a strong sense of the thoroughness with which they improved the game. Nevertheless, I'm irked and perplexed by the games sluggishness when it comes to the other civs' turns. I run the game on a PIII 1Ghz 256M RAM laptop, and on a PIII 1Ghz 256M RAM + 64M VRAM desktop, and STILL find the slowdown noticeable when other civs make their moves. Even when you deselect the "Animate friendly/enemy units" options under the preferences screen, it can still take close to a minute (or longer) for the computer to finish its turn, even if, as another reviewer has pointed out, your own moves only take ten seconds. This is frustrating. If I play the game long enough -- as I do, a lot! -- my eyes hurt from watching the other civ units darting all over the place, over and over again. I wish I could click a "Hide Enemy/Friendly Moves" option. But all this isn't to say the game isn't outstanding. It's still far and away the best -- the only -- real strategy game out there. Lastly, the added complexity of resource management and diplomacy, as well as culture points (which are so critical!), have forced me to seriously rethink my tried and true civ strategies. I was surpised to find that I initially struggled when I played the game at my usual Civ I/II difficulty level. I'm sure I'm not alone. There are new things to consider when it comes to strategizing. The dynamics of the game have changed enough -- and in an appropriately logical fashion -- to add a new dimension of challenges for players. And it goes without saying, if you've never played Civilization before, order it. Order it now! You'll know why when you're sitting home kicking something because you somehow managed to stay up playing Civ long enough to see the sun rise.
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