Rating: 
Summary: An 'OK' update on Civilisation 2
Review: I thought this game was mainly just an updated Civ2; If you try to play on a warlord or higher level of gameplay, it really seemed to me the game was just 'cheating' whenever you engaged in combat with enemy units. The Opponents didn't get 'smarter' or use better strategy, it just seemed like suddenly all of their units were much better than yours, even if your technology was superior and you also had the better choice of battle terrain. It's just very irritating to see your tanks destroyed by enemy knights on horseback armed only with swords. The aircraft, artillery and other projectile units not being able to kill enemy units was also frustrating. I hope that they do a better job of eliminating these detracting factors in Civ 4. The overall concept is one that I enjoy, it's just that some aspects of the game are missing the mark. You will get some joy out of playing the game on 'Chief' setting, but the flaws will reduce a lot of the game's replay value. I really hope they do better on the next one.
Rating: 
Summary: If you've time to waste
Review: This game is the best game out there for those who like a combination of chess and nation building.You will have a better understand of world history after playing this game and successfully building a dominant nation. Be forewarned however. FPS fans won't like the turned-based play. Those who love it can become addicted and will have to destroy or sell the CD when they look out their window to see the sun coming up and they have to be at work in 2 hours.
Rating:
Summary: No multiplayer support, but otherwise good
Review: It's like previous CIV's, with better graphics and sound, and a lot of rules changes that are, for the most part, well thought out. If you've played previous CIVs, read the manual to get the changes, because some will significantly change your strategy. HOWEVER, it does not yet support multiplayer. If you like playing by yourself, buy the game. If you like multiplayer CIVs, then hang onto your CIV II Multiplayer for a while longer until CIV III Play the World becomes available. One bug I saw -- the "establish an embassy button" mentioned by but not pictured by the manual, which is supposed to appear once you have writing and contact with other nations, does not seem to exist.
Rating: 
Summary: One star because I could not rate with zero.
Review: I remember a special part in the official civilization site where the fans were encouraged by the civilization team to write their ideas about Civ3. It seems to me that Civ3 is exactly that: A set of various ideas without any efford to combine them and work on them properly. Some examples:
1)There are no zones of control because somebody suggested that it is not reliable for units like horseman to control a region of 1000Km (3 game squares if the whole terrain is as large as the earth, can you imagine such ideas in chess?). Result: It is useless to hold strong positions because the enemies can easily bypass them. 2)Strong attacking weapons (catapult, cannon, artillery etc.) now cannot destroy enemy units but only damage them. They can destroy terrain improvements, city buildings etc. but nobody would waste his resources to build them. The more that they are NEVER!!! destroyed but they can be only captured. Similarly naval units cannot destroy land units and the attack of air units is similar to this of catapults etc. Result: Too many important weapons are useless. 3)Resources: You can't build horsemen if you have not the resource of horses, infantry without rubber etc. You can trade them by a strange way and there is no warehouse to store them. If you have much you can either trade or waste it. To make matters worse: You do not know what resources you have until you discover the required advantage. Resources are of extreme importance for weapons and improvements (i.e. railroad requires coal) so there is an important (I would call it irritating)random factor in the game. 4)There are some new features in diplomacy but it is evident that the designers have not examined them properly in order to get the most of them. Many times I have found myself in a war when my ally got involved because I had not the option to betray my ally or demand from ally's enemy to make peace. Also in many situations war is the only way you can cancel an agreement. Nevertheless the worst thing in diplomacy is that AI diplomats can take controversial decisions.
For instance in one of my tests:
i)Ask for A and get the answer that I have nothing to offer for that, then
ii)offer C+D and ask for A. The answer was NO
iii)Offer C and ask what the opponent had to offer for that and the answer was ... A+B!!!
Try that with A technology and C, D some of your cities. Also there are no spies and caravans, wonders can be built solely by 1 city and no other city can help building the wonder, culture and many other new features. I dislike most of them but somebody else may like them. The most obvious and irritating thing is that the game has nothing new to give but simply some unexamined new features just to justify a new version of the great Civilization 2.
Rating:
Summary: Fun fun fun!
Review: I played this game so much that I got tendonitis in my shoulder (my mouse arm). Unlike other simulation type games this one is a battle to take over the world. And if you're similar to Pinky and the Brain you'll understand what a joy that can be!
Rating:
Summary: Boy, did I buy it when I bought this stinker...
Review: After wasting hard-earned cash on this awful excuse for a strategy game, I have vowed NEVER to indulge in impulse buying when it comes to this stuff... Being a fan of the genre that CIV3 absolutely fails to live up to, I'm always on the lookout for good "pure" strategy games, without what I consider to be boring first-person shooter scenarios (call it an old addiction to those insane Avalon Hill games I used to play in college). Give me a global arena, unit-size movement, and chess-like game play any day. I've played CIV3 a total of three times (if you include the demo) since I purchased it. After my third game, which I thought was ridiculously easy to win, I uninstalled the software and seriously contemplated pitching it in the trash. Where to begin? OK, so the theme is pretty cool (otherwise I wouldn't have bought it), but the execution is uninteresting, unchallenging and unfun--if not downright idiotic: AI that still allows you and your opponents to build primitive units into the future. Makes perfect sense that a city in the 21st century would have BOWMEN defending it. Yeah, right. What makes strategy games work are their verisimilitude, or at least (like any good game construct) internal logic and consistency. You never seem to go broke. Let your economic adviser complain about income--if it every reaches zero, so what? Nothing happens. (Try playing Europa Universalis2 and you'll understand how critical, challenging and fun it is to try to keep your treasury intact.) Diplomacy is non-existent: After a few attempts, I gave up on using it at all because it really didn't matter what my relations were. And just to make it remotely interesting (a stretch) I would often declare war for the hell of it. Zzzzzzz..... Unit combat is completely inane: have your tanks battling a spearman on a horse (oh and it's the year 2210). Better yet, have a dozen tanks fight a dozen horsemen and sit back and be utterly annoyed that it will play out the combat ONE UNIT AT A TIME. What about the very real option of being able to apply overwhelming force? Not in this crap game. Another example: I pitched several infantry units against ONE tank and lost... Sure, I expected attrition, but because my infantry would engage one by one, instead of all at once, they got anihilated. City management and research was kind of interesting (IMO an old spaceciv game from 1995 called "Ascendancy" was better at this), but because most of the game is geared toward combat, there's next to no redeeming value for this waste of CD-ROM stock.
Rating:
Summary: Great Game. Awesome. Addicting.
Review: When I first installed it and it crashed the first time playing it, I thought, okay, here we go, ... But, like most cpu most games, they probably released it before it was done. I went to Civ3.com, downloaded the patch, and now it works fine. No problems. I have a Pentium II 866mhz, 512 sdram, 32Mb 4X agp videocard, so the system is not that new. If you're having slowdown problems, buy and install more RAM, it's cheap, and easy to do. Now onto the game. It is awesome. I never liked Sim games, but I figured I'd give it a shot since you can buy it now for $20. I was up till 3am last night playing until the Aztecs killed me(I knew I should have taken them out when I had the chance. The interface is easy to use and there are advisors to help you when in need. I can't wait until I really learn how to play using diplomacy, trade, embargos, and espionage. Buy this game. Get the patch. Enjoy. Thanks for playin'.
Rating:
Summary: JUST A BAD FANTASY GAME PRETENDING TO BE HISTORICAL
Review: Civ 3 remains an unworthy successor to the great Civ 2 for many reasons. I could go on at length about the flawed concepts and bugs within Civ 3, but I will keep this short. Civ 2 was FUN; Civ 3 is not fun and can be very irritating with cumbersome interface, in-your-face AI, tedium, and other wacky things. Besides that, the history and "realism" has been made a mockery of. Civ 3 doesn't even pretend to attempt to simulate history or even give the appearance of doing so. So much of it, from stupid unit values to pathetic naval warfare, is just NOT HISTORICAL. Civ 3 is in actuality, a bad fantasy game pretending to be historical. Well, superficial graphics of Joan of Arc or Gandhi won't do it for me. No sale, even with its crummy expansion, PTW.
Rating:
Summary: It's kind of good...
Review: I really like the improvements they made on this game over the previous Civ games. I like the idea of getting resources in order to make certain units. I like the way they break down the Wonders, give you better options on productions, I like the cultural boundaries idea. What I absolutely hate is that I can't seem to have too many units or I lose money like crazy. And if I try to send a pretty large group to capture a city, the enemy always move about 20 units against my 10. And my ten get destroyed WAY too easily. Even if you play nice and have just enough military to keep your cities secure, the other civilizations will come at you with enough force to destroy all your cities in one sweep. And yes, this is at the easiest difficulty level. I have yet to find a way to successfully wage war, even if I'm using muskets and they have warriors. And they always seem to be right there with you in technological advances. Shouldn't the easiest level mean the other civs are a little stupid and slow?
Rating:
Summary: Great Successor, Great new game
Review: I bought Civilization 3 when it first came out, back in the day. Frankly, it stunk. It wasn't fun, there were balance problems, and it was impossible to create a global empire. You know what? Things have changed. There is a patch out for this game on the official site, and it makes a world of difference. There are additions and fixes to the game that address all the playability issues that I had when I first played. The other thing that changed was me. I played Civ and Civ II, and I loved them both. They were basically the same game, but Civ II was _more_. It was more complicated, more advanced, gave you different options. But it played about the same way. Civ III is different. It's a similar game, but it's not the same-old from the first two repackaged in new graphics, with more options. The concepts are different, the way you build your empire is different. It's a game that appeals to you in the same way the first two did, but the strategies are new and different, and it makes for a really rewarding gaming experience. I've recently started playing again, and I'm hooked all over again. This is still a great game that's a lot of fun to play and really hard to pull yourself away from.
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