Civilization 3: Game Of The Year Edition (Mac)

Rating:
Summary: Not impressed
Review: Game of the year?? This game has lots of bells and whistles (perhaps too many), but it lacks an important ingredient...fun. In many ways this game is a step backwards from Imperilism II. It follows many of the same ideas, but when it comes to battles this game is sorely lacking. One of the most interesting aspects of Imperialism was the ability to control multiple units in one battle. Here each unit simply goes one on one with another and the computer decides who wins. Additionally, the game is just too PC for its good. If you get attacked by someone else suddenly half of your cities erupt in civil unrest, making it very difficult to fight. The message seems to be that you should conquer the world by investing in the arts??

Rating:
Summary: Pretty Good---sort of.
Review: I don't want to write a review; I just want you to read this and there's no place else to write it. When a game is listed for a Mac, the system requirements should be Mac requirements, not PC

Rating:
Summary: The best Civilization for OS X
Review: If you are using Mac OS X and you want to play Civilization, you want to play Civ III. (Alpha Centauri used to be my favorite "Civ", but it doesn't work as well in OS X/Classic.)
There are enough variables that this game can keep you occupied for months! Because of the way the game is designed, if playing one tribe gets boring, try playing a different on instead. Each tribe has its own advantages and disadvantages.
If you are intimidated by all the variables and complexities, don't give up. Save your game frequently, and if you start losing, you can always replay from an earlier save! This also gives you the advantage of being able to see where your opponents and the resources are. Or try the faqs online on websites like gamefaqs.com. (matt123456789 from Granite Bay, if you still have your copy, try the faqs.)

Rating:
Summary: The best Civilization for OS X
Review: If you are using Mac OS X and you want to play Civilization, you want to play Civ III. (Alpha Centauri used to be my favorite "Civ", but it doesn't work as well in OS X/Classic.)
There are enough variables that this game can keep you occupied for months! Because of the way the game is designed, if playing one tribe gets boring, try playing a different on instead. Each tribe has its own advantages and disadvantages.
If you are intimidated by all the variables and complexities, don't give up. Save your game frequently, and if you start losing, you can always replay from an earlier save! This also gives you the advantage of being able to see where your opponents and the resources are. Or try the faqs online on websites like gamefaqs.com. (matt123456789 from Granite Bay, if you still have your copy, try the faqs.)

Rating:
Summary: Boooooooring!
Review: The idea of this game is cool, build an empire, make the best army, and conquer the world. Well the game is just BAD. It is really, really slow and you always have to press the space button to end a turn. Another problem is this, you almost always go bankrupt. You end up having to not buy anything and building a ton of mines (and you still dont get much!) There must be a million ways to beat the game, but I've had it for a year and still havn't beaten it yet! I personally don't see how this game won a medal, besides maybe "Most Boring Game On Earth Award". If you like to make armies buy Command and Conquer.

-Matt

Rating:
Summary: Really Awesome Turn Based Strategy
Review: This is a really fun game. You get to control an empire, and try and expand your empire. You try and build cities in certain places, where you can get food, gold, etc. Then you try and wipe out other empires and take their cities. It is a really fun strategy game, with really cool people. First you build Settlers, Archers, Spearmen, Workers, then move on to Legionary and Horseman. After that, you start building gunman, then all the way to tanks, and finally stuff like missiles.

One of the really fun things is trading. You get lots of technologs that way, and its really fun ripping people off. For example if someone wants a peace treaty, you can just give them a peace treaty, and make them give you cities, gold, technology, things that make your civillions happy like fur and dye, and other really good stuff.

I highly reccomend playing as Caesar of the Romans, playing on the easiest level (which is still pretty hard) Chieftain, playing on the area with the most land not water, and having your enemys be really bad like the Aztecs and Iraquois, and not the Greeks, Germans, and Russians. This is the best because its the easiest, and when its harder, its less fun, because you get really annoyed because you can't rip people off when you trade, and the other empires will always be taking over your towns a lot more.

To have a good game, you need to start out extremely well. Build a city on your first turn. Then get your worker to irrigate all over the place. Then take your settler, and travel all over the place, until you find agood place with water, and food, and build a city there. Also, when you travel around the land mass, you will find things that look like pots. If you get anyone to go over to them, they will usually give you a technology, but sometimes they will give you a warrior, which suck, but you should use to gaurd a city until you get something better to gaurd it with, and sometimes they will give you gold, and sometimes, the place is desserted.

With your military guys, try and attack guys that are weaker, so your guy will become more skilled, and get more health, so that guy will be harder to beat. Also, don't attack extremely good empires, you will lose. Instead, start war with [*]people, and take over their cities, and use them for your use. Also, when other empires want a peace treaty, rip them off in trading for the peace treaty, and then wait 5 minutes before starting war with them again. Then keep on taking over their cities, until their wiped out, or you keep on ripping them off trading for peace treatys. Let the better empires be until you are really strong. In the mean time, keep on giving them gifts of 10 or 20 gold, if you can.

If your a fan of turn based strategy, get this game. The only annoying things are that

1. Your people can only move once per turn

2. It really pisses you off when your doing really good, and then somes crazy attacks your city and gets it , so you should really start over.

3. It really sucks how if you attack a guy with a spear, and you have a tank, you might even lose!

Overall, its a pretty good game. I would definitely get it.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent, highly addictive game with few reservations.
Review: This is an incredibly absorbing and eerily lifelike game. When I made a deal with England knowing it was only to buy time so that I would attack them I actually felt guilty.

Some answers to the critics here... Boooring obviously never learned how to play. He should try researching and changing to a more productive form of government. Tank loses to spearmen. Actually that's rare but not unheard of in real life, too and he needs to remember that, although it's represented as a single figure each unit represents a squadron and a badly damaged squadron of tanks might well fall to a health squad of spearmen if they're smart enough to get inside their range and swarm them.

There are a lot of improvements over previous Civ's making the game worth buying. Particularly better trade, better graphics, many more diplomacy options, significant civilization style, attribute and strength differences.

Brickbats.
In many ways the port to Mac is REALLY bad carrying over all the Windows quirks and inconsistencies instead of porting it to a true Mac application e.g. writing their own dropdowns, eliminating the Mac menu and creating their own (with options missing) not using real windows, taking over the whole screen etc...

This game is so good that sooner or later you're going to want the upgrades, Conquests and Play the World and the likelyhood is that you won't be able to get them on the Mac.

Rating:
Summary: Pretty Good---sort of.
Review: Well the game is pretty cool, but there are a couple of problems i have faced:
1. the game speed is pretty slow, and i have a new computer, powerbook g4, and something like 500 MB(?) of space.

2. You cannot move your guy without holding down the 'fn' key in the lower left hand corner of the keyboard, because the game interprets the left arrow on a G4 powerbook as being a 'page up' key. What i have had to do is just use the mouse keypad for everything involving movement.

other than that, if you got a normal keyboard, the game should be cool. So definetly get this game if you have a desktop, and if you don't mind pointing and clicking, try your luck with a laptop.