Rating: 
Summary: Is Civ 3 a worthy successor?
Review: Well, I never rush out and buy a game the moment it is put on the shelves, but my attachment to the Civilization series was enough to motivate me to go buy this one. I'm still on my first game (so it would be misleading of me to try to comment on everything), though I've been playing for hours, and I wanted to write in and join the debate.First, let me just say that the game (on my 650 mghz machine) runs as smoothly as a dream. Yes, occasionally, one has to wait for it to process something, but there have been (so far) absolutely no glitches or bugs. As the interface goes, so goes the game. The interface here is decidedly elegant and is a vast improvement over C2, which could become most unwieldy late in the game when one had stacks of units in a given location. Here everything is pared down and spartan and facilitates game play wonderfully (I'm amazed at those reviewers who see "dizzying complexity" as a positive attribute of an interface--as if being baffled by the array of menu options is what a menu is supposed to do!). The real problem, however, is whether the slight alterations in mechanics and the revision of the graphics really mean that this a new game. The tech tree is similar; the units have undergone some (much needed) revision but are pretty familiar to C2 players; the city mechanics are similar. "Why mess with a good thing?" appears to have been the motto of the designers Astonishingly, however, there has been no effort to bring the game into the next century. A 21st century sci-fi aspect would have been interesting even if it only took the game into the near-future. I will even question whether the animation adds anything to the game--it is just eye candy, of course. And the refusal of C2 to knuckle before the oxymoron of "real-time strategy" is part of why I love it. Static token-like pieces are fine with me. And where, I wonder, is the delightful units editor we saw in SMAC? Elegance, at times, means a woeful lack of complexity in C3--I'm not even sure that the trade system is an improvement over C2's stupid caravan system (I'm going to have to play more to come to a conclusion on that). And yet there are many, many small positive changes that C2 players will notice and will find enhance the game. Artillery can now bombard like in SMAC; players conquering small cities (as in 1 citizen) no longer destroy them, but have the option to raze them; units do not attack until death, but instead withdraw. Apparently, there will no more battleships being sunk by that partisan on a mountaintop! I could provide many more such examples. These changes are trivial, but they do matter. They improve the game without altering it in substantial ways. This appears to have been the modus operandi of the designers. My final verdict? Well, if you love C2 and if you've recently put it back on your hard drive for a nostalgic game at the Deity level, then I'd buy C3. It's basically the same game, if slightly improved. C3 doesn't seem to me to be the next generation of turn-based strategy; that does not, however, prevent it from being an improvement over one of the best such games of all time (which should say plenty). It is a refinement of C2, and not an expansion of what the genre is capable of. In fact, I would agree with those who see in SMAC the best attempt so far to extend the boundaries of the genre--C3 evidently retreats from the complexity of SMAC and instead settles for a high degree of playability and a gentle learning curve. It's a worthy game. The tone of disappointment one senses in some of these reviews is the result of an audience who is very demanding, who has grown accustomed to an excellent product, and who dreams of the ultimate strategy game. C3 isn't quite there--the vision just isn't bold enough or new enough. Nevertheless, it's still fun to play and even worth its (hefty) price tag. *** I've been playing for weeks now, and wanted to add an update. (...) I just launched my spaceship in 1802 in Regent level, so I guess it's possible . . . And there is a button to hurry production with gold. Lots of people seem to be reviewing this game with minimal play, and they seem also to be expecting everything they did in C2 to work. Even the new concept of "corruption," (...)is starting to seem to me like a very well thought out game device--it forces you to build civs that are compact and efficient and then to project power. Many of the things that people complain about (scarce resources, for instance) make strategy more interesting; a player just has to learn to work within the new concepts. It's a new game, and it should be taken on its own merits. It's not perfect--the patch will definitely help--but I am enjoying it a great deal. And patches are just part of computer gaming--the Firaxis designers are actively monitoring complaints on the Apolyton boards to eliminate errors . . . I stand by what I said above, and I add that this is the best turn-based game since SMAC. Buy the game, download the patch (which should be out shortly--you can play it without the patch, but some elements are flawed--most irritating for me is a save game bug on the huge maps, but even that has given me renewed appreciation for play on the smaller maps), and judge for yourself. It's worth it.
Rating: 
Summary: sweet
Review: bought it wondering how it could beat civ2 (didn't realy like alpha centauri.. too slow), and with the addition of culture and nationality and the changes to trade and barbarians, + the AWESOME improvements to computer AI I am happy. Was playing and expecting the computers to be dumb again and found they expanded faster than me!, then since i had a bunch of wonders and culture, they all made military alliances and started pumulting me hiding behind rivers and such. wow never had a challenge on chieftain before :-) Now its my 4th game and i'm adjusting my strategy and beating down some russians and english with my germans. will see who rules the world now! muahahah!
Rating: 
Summary: Civilization 2 v3
Review: This is quite literally Civilization 2 with modifications. They've revamped the interface on the game to make some parts slightly confusing and difficult to get used to and to stop it from looking exactly like Civ2. As in Civ2 the game grips you. I am currently hooked on it. It's that kind of game. Once you've completed however it's going to all of a sudden become uninteresting because overall there just isn't enough. Exactly what happened with Civ2. It's nice to play such a game again but I don't feel it's worth buying if you've got civ2. If you are a fan of Civ2 go and buy it, but I reckon you should hold on to your money and wait for something else if not. Think twice.
Rating:
Summary: A Worty Successor in a Great Series
Review: As a long time player of Civ2, I have been waiting with bated breath for the release of Sid Meier's latest opus. After spending almost every free moment of the last week playing the game, I've concluded that the game is good, if not quite great. Some comments: Generally, gameplay has been improved by the vastly improved diplomacy, the better abstraction of trade, a better, and more complex view of resources, better differentiation between the civilizations, and some improvement in the way the tech tree works. The graphics and sound, though maybe not quite up to the level of your favorite first-person shooter, are much improved. The game (at least after only a week) seems much more difficult to master - I've had to set the difficulty factor two levels below where I played on CivII in order to win CivIII. The game runs relatively slowly. This seems to be especially dependent on the size of map you choose. I like playing on the largest size map possible, but the game was almost unplayable with this setting on my 550Mhz PII. The city management screen, though improved over CivII with the addition of a build queue and better control over the city manager, still leaves something to be desired - I generally found the interface in Call to Power II to be better. I still can't convince the city managers to build what I want, and so have to carefully watch each city to make sure that it's building what it should. When cities finish building things, you may not be informed (if it was building a unit) and the city will start building something new. Similarly, you have to keep alert during the start of your turn to see where pollution has occurred, otherwise you may not notice it. No network play - not something that I personally care that much about, but seems odd that a new game is missing it. All in all, I'm not quite sure that I'll be as addicted to this as I've been to CivII - I suspect that it may end up like Alpha Centauri - I play it every once and a while, and then go back to CivII!
Rating:
Summary: Big disapointment
Review: I was really looking forward to the 3rd version of my favorite game of all time. I even paid top dollar for it the first day. I only wanted the basic lower-cost box, but all (the retail store) had was the more expensive 'tin box collectors' version. I never buy this (stuff), I just want the game, but I couldn't wait, so I shelled out for it. Well, after week of play, I have to say that I'll probably go back to playing CivII. Yeah, the graphics are cool, the new rules and details are interesting, but you know what? All this new stuff just makes the game slower and more complicated. It really seems like they just took CivII, bogged it down with bits and pieces from Alpha Centari and Call to Power, and repackaged it. I would have been happy if they just cleaned up some of the rules and gameplay of CivII. I DO like the concept of territories and borders in CivIII -- (it was really annoying in CivII to have your nation established and still have those damn Egyptians waltzing through your backyard without being able to do anything about it short of declaring war). And it always ticked me off when other nations could just hop on YOUR railroad system. CIVIII addresses some of these annoyances, but then cancel out the corrections by adding TOO much.
Rating:
Summary: Civilization III is awesome, but seems to be unstable.
Review: Civilization III is awesome, as I expected, but I have 2 complaints. 1) You can still create a custom tribe, but there are fewer tribes to choose from, for instance the Celts are gone. I was hoping for tons more tribes, like the Scots led by William Wallace, not less. 2) The game seems very unstable. It freezes in the city screen for me about 60% of the time, and I have to end task, and start back up. I just make sure the auto save is on. My system is a Dell P4 1.5 GHZ, 256K Ram, so I am over the minimum hardware requirements. I hope they development a patch of some sort to fix this. Game play is awesome, and many things are improved, especially in dealing with other nations. It's definately worth buying. And hopefully your copy won't crash as often as mine.
Rating:
Summary: The original and still the champion!
Review: I loved Civilization. I played Civilization II until I could whip 6 oppenents at diety level. I played scenarios and variations until I grew tired of the game (and that took some doing!). When Alpha Centauri came out, I rushed to buy it, only to be disapointed. While some people really enjoyed, I just could never get caught up in it. When Civ: Call to Power shipped, I rushed to get it, and was a little dissapointed. A nice game, and I liked it better the AC, but just missing that certain *something* that made hours dissapear into the ether when playing Civ I & II. So when Civ III came out, I thought I'd wait a few days. Then I visited a friend who had bought the game. Within 30 minutes I knew I was hooked. Bought the game the next day. WOW! Sid & Co. have done it again. This game has more overall depth than Civ II, but enough things have been streamlined that the game doesn't seem to get bogged down in extra complexity (like a game of CTP tends to do). The graphics, while not the most cutting edge on the market, are very pleasing when viewed for HOURS at a time. The revised political and economic aspects seem to blend very well with the overall gameplay. For the veteran Civ II player, this game is wonderful - enough familiar elements that you can get right in and start having fun, but enough new or changed elements that you still get to do a lot of exploring and learning. Even after so many years of playing Civ & Civ II, this game feels fresh. If you've never played turn-based strategy games before, you should try to find someone with the game and give it a look first. While I think Civ III would make a great first TBS, this style of play isn't for everyone. Those who cut their teeth on RTS games like Age of Empires may find the pace a little hard to adjust to; but for me it's always been Turn-based all the way! Thanks Sid! Keep up the good work - and ship us a multiplayer patch... my friends and I are dying to compete with one another!
Rating: 
Summary: More like Call to Power 3
Review: Don't be fooled by the overall Amazon rating for this game -- it's been skewed by people who reviewed it before they even played it. Civ III is a huge disappointment. It looks beautiful, it's more realistic historically -- and it's crushingly boring. Forget about Civilization Insomnia, this game will give you Civilization Narcolepsy. Why does it fail? It all comes down to gameplay. Civ I and II were electronic heroin, you couldn't pull yourself away from the next turn. It was simplistic, sure, but who cares, you can't earn a PhD from a video game. But in Civ III, it seems like Sid Meier and his Firaxis team spent too much time studying Call to Power and Europa Universalis and completely forgot the simple things that made the originals great. The empire building genre has run its course, it's time for this linear history model to be overhauled completely, perhaps with a game that builds the cycles of history. Whenever the genre re-emerges (and it will) Civ II will be the model for its revival. Civ III will be soon forgotted (except for the unfortunate folk who paid $50 for this clunker.)
Rating:
Summary: a bit buggy
Review: So far, the game play is better than the last version of the game. I think the players interface is much stronger, with fewer pulldown menus to rely upon. Unfortunately I seem to have had some problems. The game has crashed many times during the palace improvement screen when choosing what to add to your palace facade. Also, after exiting the game I have had to restart my machine to be able to start the game again. I receive an error message telling me that a required .DLL file is missing at that time. After restart, things are fine. Im running a PIII 800, 128 MB RAM, Win 98 SE and all other games are fine.
The interaction with other players/nations is much improved, especially the trading and negotiation options. Much more realistic now that you can haggle effectively. Combat is much better as well, catapults are defensive and siege weapons and cant enter to capture a city. Definitely worth the upgrade despite the minor problems I have found. If I continue to have buggy problems, ill put another posting up here.
Rating:
Summary: Hardcore Fans Will Be Disappointed
Review: It's been a long wait for Civilization 3, (though one made shorter by the excellent Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri) and my personal feelings about it are decidely mixed. Despite the bold proclamation on the box that this is indeed Sid Meier's Civilization, it's not. Meier hasn't really touched the series since it's first incarnation. This time Jeff Briggs gets lead design credit, not Brian Reynolds who was responsible for Civ2 and SMAC. It shows. After the commercial failure that Alpha Centauri was, Firaxis has decided to take a step back and rexamine the series. Gone are the complicated menus and insanely complex tech tree found in Civ2 and Alpha Centauri, the whole package has been slimmed down and made simpler for mass consumption. On one hand, this is a plus, it makes the game much more accessible and lets you devote your thoughts to game decisions, not where a certain command is hidden. On the other hand, many of the great innovations from SMAC have been entirely abandoned. Some of the advances remain (such as national borders), but this has the feel that they left behind the Brian Reynolds design and went back to the drawing board. This plays much more like a sequel to Civilization than a sequel to Civ2. That having been said, it's still a total blast. The new map generator is perfect (as it has to be, as Firaxis has eliminated the option to start a normal game on a predesigned map), generating the type of map you want to play on, and generally doing a pretty good job at distributing resources. The culture system is a great addition, though it makes winning through non-military means, which wasn't that difficult in earlier incarnations of the series, far easier. The unique aspects to each civilization could have used a little more thought however, as they don't really have the unique personality of the factions in Alpha Centauri. It grants nice bonuses, but hardly enough to alter the way you'd play the game. Thankfully you can turn them off, one of the few things you can tinker with, odd for a team that usually produces very customizable games (Civ2 even had a "Cheat" menu at the top for people who enjoy cheating). This is still overall a great package, though I wouldn't expect it to replace Alpha Centauri as my favorite game of all time.
| 
