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So far it's great!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 34 / 60
Date: September 16, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I'm a long-time fan of Civ, including Civ III, and I'm in the beta test program for this expansion pack. While I'm not allowed to say anything specific about the game, I think it's safe for me to say that I can't wait to have a copy of the final version. Civ Conquests does everything right to make some bite-sized chunks of Civ -- now I find myself playing the scenarios all the time instead of the main game, just because I can finish them faster. If you've ever played and liked Civ III, there's absolutely no reason not to pick this up.

New Improvements for Grand Old Game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 25 / 26
Date: November 14, 2003
Author: Amazon User

CIV3 Conquests is the second expansion pack for the original Civ3 game, and the improvements are welcome. In addition to some intriguing new scenarios (not yet tried by this reviewer) Sid and the gang have tweaked the game play, and added new civilizations, bringing the total up to 31. Two new civilization characteristics have been added, agricultural and seafaring (note that the English from the original game are now seafaring), and several new resources have put in appearance in the main game: I have noted the presence of bananas and tobacco. And as if those endless jungles are not sufficiently maddening, players now have marshlands and volcanos to deal with.

There are two new, even harder game levels for the maschoists. And there are several new wonders. The tech tree has been made more logical, too. Now you can't trade maps until you research navigation, and to trade communications you have to have the printing press (also logical). Best of all, perhaps, watercraft appear early in the game with the curragh. Although you can't load units into these, they can still map out a lot of territory for you before you can build galleys (which these upgrade to). Maybe now you'll not be so quick to throw up your hands when you discover your civ. is alone on an island and reroll.

Early wonders, which expire before ye hardly knew them now play a part later in the game too, as they become tourist attractions.

There are two new governments, feudalism and fascism, when turn up at appropriate places on the tech tree, and you'll probably want to experiment playing some of the new civs--especially if, like so many people, you decided to skip the "Play the World" expansion pack. All of its civs are included here, as are the improvements introduced in that expansion pack, among them the ability to move all units in a stack with one mouseclick.

Enjoy!

Gives new life to the old formula

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 24 / 24
Date: November 24, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Buy Conquests if you've played Civ3 to death (can such a thing happen???) and are looking for a new twist -- namely, professionally-made scenario packs that evoke major eras of history.

I'm a Civ3 addict, but sometimes the "Epic" game goes on way too long. Conquests offers 10 scenarios that focus the game on specific objectives / limits that let you sit down and finish a game in "only" a couple of hours. This solves a major problem for me -- once I pause an epic game (you know, when you need to sleep, go to work, whatever), I sometimes can't get back into it.

The scenarios each offer custom units, techs, rules, and even music to set the right mood. For example, the Mesoamerican conquest (Incas vs. Mayans vs. Aztecs) encourages warfare by rewarding players with culture points for enslaving and sacrificing the enemy; treats jungle terrain as grasslands for production purposes; allows you to build cities on mountains; and features its own, vaguely Andaean/tribal, music track. I've found the first conquest, where you must build the Seven Wonders, most fun because it's the smallest, and I like shorter (less tedious) games.

If you're looking for exciting expansions on the original or PTW game, let your budget tell you whether it's worth $20 to get a handful of new civ's and Great Wonders. But if you're looking to breathe new life into the game, definitely get this.

(This hardly bears repeating, but the new scenarios also make great templates/inspiration for the beefed-up scenario editor, for all you modders).

Missing Bonus Disk

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 20 / 57
Date: November 12, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Did anybody receive the promised Bonus Disc? It seems Amazon is denying its existence and Atari says that Amazon should have it. The link on the Civ III site is gone and it isn't in the google cache.

Extremely addictive, and it makes CIV 3 complete

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 20 / 22
Date: June 23, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Although I am a long time fan of Sid Meier's games, I was somewhat disappointed with Civ 3 when it came out. However, this expansion pack more than makes up for it. If you've got Civ 3 I highly recommended that you get this, as it adds many more civilizations, scenarios, units, goverments (feudalism and fascism) and building options, and other things that probably should have been in the game in the first place.

The only negative things about this are that it doesn't allow palace building in the scenarios, and the "events" from civ 2 that made the scenarios so exciting are absent. Had these been included the game would have been a lot better. Also, the game does slow down on bigger maps, even on a fast computer.

Concerning the January 10, 2004 review, I hardly think CIV 3 compares to GTA Vice City in terms of violence and depravity. I'd much rather have young kids playing this and learning about history, world cultures, and science than running around shooting people and stealing cars. (Not that I have anything against GTA Vice City, which is a game I also happen to enjoy; GTA & CIV are different games for different audiences, and it's not fair to compare them) The Meso-American cultures practiced HUMAN SACRIFICE. If you don't like it, don't practice it. In the game, if you want to you can use democracy to usher in a new era of global peace and freedom, or you could be a fascist dictator and destroy your enemies with nuclear weapons. How you play Civ is up to you, and that's part of what makes the game so much fun.

Civ III Conquests: A Big Improvement

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 16 / 17
Date: December 17, 2003
Author: Amazon User

When the original Civ III came out, I was a little bit down on it. There were a number of features that I thought should have been carried over from the old Civ II game, and I also thought that there were a lot of cool features that could have been used from Alien Crossfire as well. The thing I hated most, however, was the ridiculous "cultural conversion" feature that, in my opinion, detracted from gameplay.

Civ III: Play the World corrected most of these problems, added new units and tribes, and was a much better game overall. Civ III: Conquests has continued this upward path. I love the new tribes (especially the Incas) and techs, as well as the new wonders (such as the Temple of Zeus and Knights Templar) and the wide variety of new units, including the more numerous barbarians. These new features improve the regular game, making it both more enjoyable and harder to win.

I was a little sad to see a couple of my favorite tricks go by the board, particularly the ability of a militaristic civilization to build Great Wonders easily by sacrificing a military great leader. The new rules, and the advent of the scientific great leader, make the whole Wonder-building thing a lot harder. I also still think that the AI Civs are cheating too much. Their trade deals are almost always one-sided, unless you are about to wipe them out, and they have total knowledge of the world map, something that the human player cannot achieve until he has discovered navigation. They also seem to have an almost magical ability to manufacture combat units without the necessary resources, to trade techs with each other but not the human player, and to complete Wonders just before the human player does. Of course, this is counterbalanced by the fact that the AI is still capable of immense tactical stupidities. AI development still has a long way to go, and I hope we won't have to wait for the invention of the positronic brain to get there.

Finally, even though I am more comfortable playing a militaristic expansionist civ like the Zulus, I do agree with other reviewers that one problem with the game still is that the royal road to victory lies through conquering one's opponents, not outdeveloping them. This is particularly true at the higher levels, where the AI civs seem to be a lot more aggressive.

All in all, though, I'm pretty happy with the game and would highly recommend it to veteran Civ III players. I have just begun to explore the game, but am looking forward to discovering all its new secrets on my own -- at least until I break down and buy the newest strategy book. Sid level, here I come.

IT CAN BE DONE!!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 15 / 18
Date: December 20, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I've been playing CIV III PTW since day one and I don't know where these people are getting you have to play "conquer the world" to win the game. I've won several games by being the first in space (it does depend a lot on how you play the diplomacy game, if you say you are going to do something with a race and then stab them in the back, yes, you can expect war quite often because the AI is not forgiving and when you LIE once, thas all folks hehe). Oh sure you have your wars, but, you don't have to conquer anyone, just a couple of hits to their cities and usually they are ready to make peace. Then you just continue on until you create your spaceship and fly away from it all. I've had games where I sat right in the middle of two major powers, but, because of my diplomacy and SHARING, they never attacked me, cause I played nice ;) Conquests is no different, though I do wish the elements of Conquest were ALL added to the origional game, but, still if you like scenarios, you will like Conquests. Let's face it if you are CIV fan, this is just another one of those MUST HAVE's. And remember if you want a good non-conquer game, learn how to play diplomacy. ;) There's a game within this game, you just have to figure out how it works, those that can't seem to win by any other means that conquer, just don't know how to play. ;)

Where are the Hebrews?

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 10 / 49
Date: November 25, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I'm looking forward to purchasing this product, as I am a big Civ3 fan, but without even buying yet, I already have a criticism:

WHERE ARE THE HEBREWS? Where is a civ that represents the Hebrews/Israelites/Israelis?

8 new civilizations on PTW & 7 more on this expansion pack. 6 out of the 15 new civs from the expansion packs are from the Middle East/N.Africa (Arabs, Ottomans, Carthinagens, Sumerians, Hittites & Byzantines). At least 3 of the classic civs (Egyptians, Babylonians, Perisans) are also middle eastern civs. That's NINE civs from the Middle East and no civ for the Hebrews?!?! C'mon Sid.

The Hebrews/Israelis the one civ I've looked forward to Sid Meier adding to the game. Yet, again I am disappointed. Perhaps they can provide it in a patch or something. What's a Jewish civ3 fan to do? I guess I'll have to buy it anyways.

awesome expansion for civ addicts

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 8 / 9
Date: December 31, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I have never regretted buying Conquests the day it came out, even though I see now I could have saved $20 by waiting. The seven included scenarios are incredible, and each requires new thinking -- in the Mesoamerican scenario, for example, you can settle on mountains, and your javelin throwers can "enslave" the enemy, converting a defeated warrior into a worker. There are new mines to build and treasures to transport in the Age of Discovery, and you win by building ancient wonders in the ancient Mesopotamian scenario. Some of these changes are in the epic game (new wonders, new civs), but most are specific to the Conquest scenarios. There are a couple of bugs but gameplay is incredibly addicting for anyone who already finds they spend too much time trying to build one more Immortal so the Persians can kill those pesky Hoplites and destroy Greece... again.

Civ 3 redeemed

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 8 / 17
Date: March 08, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This game has got me back interested interested in the Civ series, after a long year of waiting, the make or break game in the series came out, and it made it.
I first got interested in the series when I bought Civ 2. This game was awsome (the best strategy game of the century). It wasn't like anything I had ever seen before, with nearly unliminted and addictive game play, and the coolest scenarios I have ever played.
When I heard that Civ 3 was coming out I got excited. Once I bought the game, I was initialy unenthused with some of the features, the bugs, the lack of any scenarios, and the lack of a cheat menu (was the best thing to cut down a learning curve). Once I got the patch I got excited again, with bugs fixed and I got an aquired taste (the cheating problem went away once I got past the learning curve). I still had a problem with the no scenarios, but I downloaded some online that were alright but noting compaired to the other games.
Then came a disaster that could have ended the series, Play the World. This game compounded the problems with Civ 3, including adding a laundry list of new bugs, and a silly multiplayer that was seriously lacking playableity. They did make some gameplay adjustments but all together it hurt the game more then it helped it.
With the anouncements of Conquests, Civ 3 would either become the greatist game of this century, or end the series. It was the former. They totaly reamped game play and added in a ton of new features, and made the multiplayer very good.
But I was most happy to see the biggest thing Civ 3 was lacking, scenarios. Not just 2 like civ 2 but 9. And these wern't just regular average joe scenarios, these where true historic scenarios done in perfect detail with the objectives shifting from map to map. You can play (the most memerable scenario in Civ 2) World war 2 on a gigantic map totaly realistic with riged deplomicy and focusing completly on military. Or you can play the constantly shifting alliences in the napolianic wars that consentrate on depolmacy. Or even the famed rule changes in the Mesoamerican Scenario.
All in all this expansion not only elivates Civ 3 to the status of Civ2, it easly serpases it as best scenario game ever.

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