Rating: 
Summary: Glitz over gutz
Review: If you like, what now is, run-of-the-mill game animation techniques and much slower game progression than the original Civ II (similar to 'Call to Power') and apparently the same 'heavy handed' levels of difficulty, then you will like Civ III. If you were hoping for faster game play, more control over your 'Destiny', and more sophisticated AI and more surprises, like I was, then you will be disappointed. I liked the old Civ II GUI and city window better, more controlable. In short, all I see added is a slicker but less funtional GUI and more limitations on what you can do, or how you can progress your civilization. The slow progression of the game, even after all the fancy animation was turned off was stifling. I never got past a few hours of very boring play. Maybe there are great new features after 1 BC, but I couldn't stand the slow game play enough to continue.
Rating: 
Summary: Review from an Age of Empires (1 and 2) veteran
Review: Having played Age of Empires and thoroughly enjoying it, I thought I'd give Civ 3 a try after hearing so many rave reviews. My overall rating is that this game is really brilliant but for someone raised on AoE, there are a few drawbacks.
This game is at least 10 times more complex, and the scope seems overwhelming at first.
Second, the turn based play takes some getting used to, as in AoE, we could move our units in real-time.
Third, the tutorial is very poor, and even the extremely fat instruction manual doesn't describe things properly. I am still trying to figure out where certain features are located.
That being said, this game is so much cooler than Age of empires, as military victory is not the only way to win. There are many other kinds of victories, and many other paths to pursue. My all time favourite was using culture to achieve victory, although the fact that this games spans so many ages, means that nuking someone is possible (and strangely enjoyable too). Finally, the one thing that annoyed me about this game is that at least as far as the Indian civiliation goes, the buildings don't look Indian at all, and the background for Indians is definitely oriental. Other than that one falw, this game was great in terms of graphics, performance, and overall feel. I have a 700 P3 with 256MB and WinME, and there zero issues with my computer.
Rating: 
Summary: Where did the fun go?
Review: Simply stated, they spent too much time making a 3D model of Sid Meier's head, and not enough time making the game fun. I loved CivII, I thought Activision's rendition of the genre, "Call To Power" was a pretty nice step up, but Civ3 here, it's just not fun. Given, the AI is vastly improved. In Call To Power it was impossible to keep friendships amongst civilizations. In CivII and CtP diplomacy was also somewhat of a joke. But they've finally perfected the diplomacy in Civ3. Lots of new features, right down to trading cities. But what's with strategic resources? Alright, so no, the English couldn't have ever had Knights if there wasn't any iron around, but give me a break. At least make resources easy to accumulate. In a whole country you might find two iron resources. And don't even try to make musket men; I haven't been able to find saltpeter anywhere on the globe to date. In one of my games, it's 1870 and my best units are spearmen and knights (not that knights were very easy to come by either). The game doesn't lend itself to combat. It's hard enough to build decent units, much less orchestrate a war. I don't know how others play the game, but I might get up to the year 1900 before fighting anyone. The whole culture thing is pretty friggin cool. I like how culture can take over cities, I like how it expands a citie's influence, and how it ties into "national borders" in a way. Citizens get upset too easily in the game. I'll be running a city pretty dang well, but regardless it'll end up going into civil disorder every 4 or 5 turns. Sure I could raise the overall luxury rate a bit, but that goes back to how hard it is to afford to build better units with better technology and more resources, which quite frankly, takes priority over raising the luxury rate. So where did all the technologies go? Interesting wonders of the world? More useful governments? Futuristic anything at all? The technologies and units just seem rather bland, and there isn't much to look forward to once you get well into modern times. Lastly, it's too bad we don't have those live-action advisors anymore. I'm talking about the High Council from Civilization II. They really added personality and a little emotion to the game, especially that trade advisor. What a character! They ought to find him and see if they can't put him in something else. Overall, the game is much more realistic. There are lots of crucial "reality" improvements that make the feel of the game much more lifelike. But at 4 in the morning I had to ask myself, why aren't I having any fun with this? The game is stressful and slow, unlike it's predecessors. I hope for future civilization games (which I expect and hope there will be), the creators ask themselves "what will make this game more fun and exciting," and not "what will make this game more realistic," to the extent that all this new realism makes the game slow, difficult, and complicated. Hurrah to you if you don't mind the emmense challenge of doing just about anything in this new game, but I'm sure I speak for a lot of people in wishing it wasn't so slow. My two stars are for the new diplomatic features, improved AI, and prettier graphics. I'm thinking about selling my copy and buying "Call to Power II."
Rating:
Summary: It's not "Civilization" anymore.
Review: For people like me who loved the previous Sid Meier Civilization games, Civ3 is a bitter disappointment. There are two seemingly paradoxical reasons for this: not enough has changed, and too much has changed. On the one hand, there have been very few improvements to interface and gameplay. All the things you liked about Civ2 will be too familiar to seem fun, and all the things you disliked about Civ2 are still there and just as frustrating as they ever were. The AI is still berserkly aggressive and will attack you constantly, even when it has no hope of winning and even when there's nothing to be gained from fighting. There is a way to group units to simplify movement, but it is only available as a random result of combat (leaders) or as a capability of a rather high-level tech (military academies) that does not become available until relatively late in the game. Thus, moving armies around remains a tedious and time-consuming process of giving go-to orders to each unit individually. Master of Magic allowed you to group units for movement back in 1994. Why does Civ3 still withhold this obvious labor-saving measure 7 years later? Most of the time, this game looks, feels, and plays just like Civ2 did. On the other hand, building almost all military units now requires the player to acquire access to certain "strategic resources." This is an interesting idea in theory, but the concept was implemented so severely that it cripples the game. For example, if the random map generator did not happen to place an iron mine near your starting position, you will not be able to build swordsmen, gunmen, frigates, canon, or even build railroads across your empire. You may have researched techs well into the modern era, and still have to fend your enemies off with longbows and spears because the resource rules won't allow you to build more sophisticated units. On their website the game's designers say they intended for players to be able to trade with other civilizations to acquire these neccesary supplies. Anybody who's tried to negotiate diplomatically with the previous Civ games' AI rivals knows how laughable this is: you're expected to rely upon good-faith trading with those same guys who delcare war on you every few turns! And without a source of strategic resources, you can not build any of the worthwhile military units and your aggressive AI rivals will eat you alive. It's just that simple. Complicating matters is the fact that the number of strategic resource tiles is proportional to the number of players in the game. The larger the map you play on, the harder it will be to find just those few terrain squares that have the essential resources. Since I prefer to play on large maps, I found myself unable to acquire iron in most of the games I played, and I never, not even ONCE found a source of saltpeter on my starting continent, which in Civ3 means no muskets and no canon. (Civ3 shipped with an editor that is supposed to allow you to alter the rules to your liking, but I'm afraid that when I tried this the game crashed.) The result is that it no longer matters how happy your people are, which techs you've researched, and which wonders you've built. Despite its name, this game is no longer about building a prosperous and happy "Civilization." Winning or losing Civ3 depends solely on the blind luck of being granted a source of strategic resources by the map generator. If you want to fight over a few scattered resource tiles essential to mere survival, then buy Civ3. But if you want to manage and grow a prosperous empire, save yourself $ and break out your old copy of Civ2.
Rating: 
Summary: I liked Civ II a lot better
Review: There are some things to like, and some not to like...
The new graphics are not all that better - in fact I think it makes it harder to see what's going on. The game tries to do a lot of stuff "Automatically" for you and actually makes it more difficult for you to do what you want. On the plus side - the game does make some good choices most of the time.
The diplomacy is much better and the computer is a much smarter player than in the past.
It's a good game - but I think they could have done a lot better by keeping what was good with Civ II and adding in just the diplomacy and the improved AI.
Rating:
Summary: AWESOME (with some flaws...)
Review: Got this the day it came out. The store did not have the regular version in stock, so I bought the special addition. I have been looking forward to this for a LONG time, as I am sure many of you have been. I will glance over the positive first - game is great - more or less same as before - which is what everyone wants. BUT, the game crashed on me once so far. It is also VERY slow, and I have a very fine machine (P4, 1.4MHz, etc.). These two quirks, sadly, upset me, and I think that others should be made aware of them. Perhaps a fix will come out over the next few months. The game is great, as shoudl be expected, but perhaps some more QA time should have been applied.
Rating:
Summary: Problems
Review: I can't say anything about gameplay because I cannot get that far. I get errors while setting up the game! Words are over-lapping and i can't read anything. Back to the store for a refund , I guess! Damn, i really wanted to play!
Rating:
Summary: Totally rocking gameplay!
Review: This game is mad addictive! I can't believe how many hours I've already spent playing it since it came out. There are so many options now! The best part is to actively trade and negotiate terms with your opponents. It's too bad they left out the Mongols and Vikings, but I think they'll add them in the expansion??? I really like the changes they made in the battle tactics and rules. If you like strategy games, get this game!
Rating:
Summary: WAIT FOR THE EXPANSION PACKS
Review: The game has some serious flaws, as early releases always do. I suppose the game might be good if I ever got it to work. I spent HOURS reinstalling drivers, updating drivers, reconfiguring video display.. . . . .and I even upgraded to Windows XP. The game never worked. Fraxis and Infrogames has multiple websites set up for tech support, however if that doesn't help, you can always call LONG DISTANCE to their people to help with the game set up. BUT, even if it did work, THIS GAME IS NOT MULTIPLAYER!!!! NO HOTSEAT.
NO LAN.
NO DIALUP.
NO WEBSITE.
NO MULTIPLAYER. The WONDERS of the world were severely weakened and some even removed all together. NO Marco Polo, a superb multi player wonder. So, I returned my game. I'm waiting for the expansion packs in a few months or more when the game is more reasonably priced and they clean up the SERIOUS BUGS.
Rating:
Summary: the biggest disapointment of the year
Review: all civ3 can boast is that it has slightly better graphics than civ2 or alpha centauri. but the game play leaves MUCH to be desired. no wonder movies, slower gameplay, no tutorial instructions. i was really looking forward to this... do yourself a favor, don't buy this one unless you've actually played and liked it!
| 
