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Much new features!!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 243 / 277
Date: June 07, 2001
Author: Amazon User

Where Civ II is merely an add on of new improvements, units and graphical improvements to Civ I, Civ III will be that and a lot of new things.

Civ III goes into areas that were not explored by its predecessors, mainly Civ II.

In Civ III, economic and diplomacy will play a much more significant roles. In fact, economic, warfare and diplomacy will be interwined. Changes in one will affect the other.

For example, ivory, a resources that is required to keep the civilians happy, will be indispensible to the success of any Civ III players. If the Civ III players do not have access to ivories, they will have to explore and colonize land that do have ivory, or negotiate trade treaties to obtain ivories. If colonization and trade treaties fails, then players can always opt for war.

This feature will add a new dimension to the gameplay. Players will no longer be colonizing land randomly. They will have to give a careful consideration to whether or not it is good to build a city here to obtain resources.

Diplomacy will also be greatly improved. Players will no longer be negotiating the same items. For example, players in Civ III can negotiate maps for technologies, money for maps, and so on. Players can also request a civilliation to stop exporting certain resources imperative to creation of certain armies to another civilization so that that civilization will not be able to build armies.

There will be empire boarder and cultural points. The higher the culture rating that your civilization is, the more ilkely that a small cities of rival civilization may be assimilated into your empire, thus becoming a part of your territory.

There are many many more new features that will make this game a much more of an empire building game than just a war game. It requires more tactical considerations in the areas of economic, diplomacy and war. no longer is this game just about war. It is aslo about acquisition of resources and development of economy. It is a major step in redirecting the focus of empire building games.

Very, very frustrating -- but still fun

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 69 / 72
Date: November 29, 2001
Author: Amazon User

Like many others, I bought this game with high expectations. I don't think that they were unfounded, given Civ, Civ2, and Alpha Centauri. Here's what I found:

Pros:
-- improved diplomacy
-- improved trade model (see cons)
-- better graphics and sound
-- addition of culture a defininte improvement

Cons:
-- unrealistic corruption levels (98%+ in democracy with wonders in many cities)
-- artillery, ship-to-shore bombardment, and air power very ineffective compared to previous games and real life
-- settlers seem to still need to cross land by foot in 2050 (you think that, eventually, they might learn to use an ox cart. I mean, I usually use a truck when I move...)
--while trade model is improved, can never seem to get other civs to give balanced trade, if any
-- guys armed with stone clubs beat tanks. True, there are a few examples guys on horseback with spears and rocks beating tanks, but this is pretty darn rare, and occurs often in game
-- extreme difficulty getting a leader (which is vital in the game). I've played seven full games so far, and managed to get two leaders....
-- did I mention the overwhelming corruption irregardless of government type, improvements, or military units in city?!?!?!

I could go on and on.... Still, I'm playing the game (and checking the web site daily hoping for a patch that will fix some of these issues...). I also miss the movies when wonders are developed.....

Hope this helps!

Just A Preview

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 121 / 151
Date: September 29, 2001
Author: Amazon User

I have not yet played this game, this is just a preview. The game will be released in the US late October, and will run on Win 95,98,00, and XP, but not NT. Mac will come out Feb 02. Now onto the game:

There will be 16 civilizations, and you can play with them all at once on totally customizable maps. Each civ has it's own special unit and specific traits, however these can be turned off. The Romans special unit is the Legionnaire, the Aztecs the Jaguar Warrior, the Persians the Immortal, etc. Graphics have also been greatly updated. With military, you can have stack units, and form armies. There's also a chance that elite units might turn into great leaders, such as Caesar, Hannibal, etc that can rush build wonders or form armies. You can also make your own units, maps, civs, and governments and add them all in as you wish. The game will ship with 12 scenarios too. However, it will probably not come with multiplayer, but a patch with MP will be released eventually.

Diplomacy is different now. There are alliances, trade embargoes, rights of passage, mutual protection acts, and even the UN. There is also the diplomatic bargaining table, where you can make as many deals as you want. You can offer ivory and gold for the city of Pompeii, or offer the Gunpowder technology for their maps, or pay reperations for war. Anything is interchangeable.

Trade is not done with caravans anymore, but with trade routes that can even be pirated. Resources also come into play. For example, the tank requires oil, iron, and rubber. The Legion needs iron, etc. There are also luxury resources such as ivory, gems, wine, etc.

There are also new units, such as the Privateer. Like I said, there are also 16 unique units. Enemy cities can also be destroyed in war time and their workers can be made POWs.

Workers are a new concept. They do land upgrades and build colonies, while city building is left to settlers. There are also 6 paths to victory, as compared to Civ2's 2 paths. Culture is also a new innovation. Culture points effect your influence on neighboring Civs and are generated by art or religious buildings like temples, colosseums, libraries, etc. With enough culture you can even assimilate neighboring cities. Citizens also have their own nationalities.

There are also Golden Ages, which can either be triggered by wonders or by military gains, and you get bonus production for 20 consecutive turns.

All in all this looks like it has the potential to be the greatest strategy game of all time, and looks worth every cent. I highly recommend pre-ordering ASAP.

Put your coffeemaker into overdrive - you'll be up late

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 58 / 61
Date: December 12, 2001
Author: Amazon User

I read the comments of another reviewer whose thought process was along these lines: "I'll keep playing until I get X, then I'll go to bed/dinner". I had to laugh, because that same thought process has kept me up many a night playing "Civilization 3". There is no way to describe the addictiveness (not a word, but you get the idea) of this game.

Having played the original "Civilization" back in college in the mid-90s, I should have known what I was in for when I got Civ 3. I had no idea how much more addictive it would become in this new and improved version. And what an improvement it is. The graphics are amazing, with highly detailed units (fully animated now) and terrain squares. The user interface is much simpler - no more menu bars at the top of the screen. Visuals of other world leaders are now animated, with facial clues to their moods and attitudes towards you.

Gameplay is also different. There are now multiple ways to win the game including (for the pacifists out there) cultural and diplomatic victories. The ability to build and support various units has also changed with the idea of strategic resources - they appear only when technology that uses them has been discovered (which makes sense - if you did not know what to do with oil, why would it be a resource to you until you could use it), and your access to any given resource at the time you need it may not be easy. So even if you discover Flight, you cannot build jet fighters unless you have access to aluminum (either through trade or by having deposits of it in your territory).

Empire management is done through advisors for domestic activities, trade, diplomacy, military and science (the science advisor is never satisfied with his budget, and always complains that he needs more funding - how typical), and by directing the activities of your workers, military units, civilians and so on.

Having read some of the other reviews here, I have to agree that there are a few quibbles to nitpick over. Like the inequities in battle units - I have had elephants and barbarians invade and take out cities fortified with jets and tanks. Like the slow progress of science even at unsustainably high budget levels. But my complaints are few, and my hours of sleep are growing fewer. Once you become immersed in this game you'll know what I mean.

To answer another reviewer's question, the game runs just fine on Windows XP. I have not noticed any problems with graphics, animations or gameplay (my system is an Athlon XP 1.33 gHz with 128 MB system RAM and 64MB video RAM). "Civilization 3" is a great game for novice gameplayers (it's fairly intuitive and easy to learn) and for fans of the older versions of the game and fans of strategy games in general. Just be prepared to say bye to your friends and family and any outdoor activities. You won't be seeing them for a while.

A Surprisingly Weak Sequel to the Civ Games

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 53 / 62
Date: January 02, 2002
Author: Amazon User

While Civilization III *should* have been a significant update to the Civilization games, it is not. In short, it is a huge disappointment. If you already own Civilization II, stick with it--you'll be happy you did. And if you don't have any Civilization game yet, try to get a copy of Civilization II on Auctions first before you you actually give your money to Infogrames.

The problems with Civilization III outweigh its advances:

1. The game was released with a series of bugs worthy of a beta version at best. For instance, cavalry units can vainquish tanks, archers can vainquish bombers. It's just not realistic.

2. There is new AI for a more fulfilling and complex diplomatic side to the game. That said, you can keep track of only eight civilizations in your diplomacy screen--while you are playing with 16 civilizations in the game. Furthermore, the diplomacy and trade screens are clunky to use. They are reminiscent of Windows 3.1 approaches to UI, not Windows 98, 2000, ME, XP, etc.

3. The Cheat Mode feature has been removed, which was an important learning tool in the last version.

4. No animations in the diplomacy and Wonders. When you build a Wonder, you find yourself profoundly disappointed with the popup window telling you you did it.

5. True alliances are possible, but they are in general worthless because your allies do not consult you on their military maneuvers. You enter an alliance, and you are sucked into a war you didn't want in a turn or two.

6. Air units are less fun to use in this version of the game because of a new one-turn "range and return" approach. You feel like your air units just never fly!

There are some important and meaningful improvements to this game (e.g. diplomacy, cultural wins, culture in general) that should have been in Civilization II, but overall Civilization III is a flavorless and insipid "update" to Civilization II that Infogrames and Sid Meyer released at least 6 months too early. As I said, the game is more like a beta than a final product (there are already three patches to download to correct all the problems). It's just not as fun as Civilization II.

I would dissuade anyone from spending their money on this game--Infogrames and Sid Meyer should be punished for this sloppy and uninspired release. Let's encourage them to focus on quality assurance and creativity for Civ 4. But if Civ 3 portends the future of this series of games, Civ 4 will be a profound disappointment as well.

I cannot recommend this game.

Five stars if it wasn't so ADDICTIVE

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 38 / 40
Date: January 23, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I'd like to address the negative reviews I've read of Civ3 in this forum. It's obvious there's a huge range of reactions. I disagree with anyone who gave this game less than a four, since I think it's a huge improvement over Civ2. From the comments of reviewers who gave this game three or less stars, I can see that they didn't have a grasp of how to play, or what was really happening with the game. Also, I've been laughing my head off at people complaining about Greek aircraft carries blowing up their simple galleys!

First, my gaming experience: I've beaten the game a couple times now at Monarch level, but haven't yet conquered Emperor. The game IS hard, and this contributes to the entertainment I've reaped from the game. The AIs are very aggressive, which means you MUST maintain adequate defenses as a deterrent to war. If you do not have defenses and/or response teams, the AIs will realize war with you will be profitable, and they WILL attack.

On higher levels, the computers are cheating, which means that instead of following the exact rules a human must for production and development, they are skipping steps. The only way to combat this is by using brain-borne strategies the AIs are (currently) incapable of developing. Here are a few such tactics.

1: Surprise attack. The AIs aren't very good at detecting or executing suprise attacks. You can qeue up a huge army on the enemy's border, and as long as you don't cross into it, he won't even blink. Then you drop the hammer and sweep through their territory.

2: Domination of resources. A critical (and wholely realistic) factor in the Civ3 world is the control of limited resources required to building units and advancing. For example, if you develop The Wheel and see horses in open terrain, you had better get those horses, all of them, into your territory before the enemy does. Procurement of horses gives you chariots and horsemen, which have the HUGE advantage of withdrawing from combat when losing.

This example carries over into all other game resources. Without rubber, you have no infantry. Without oil, you have no tanks, no planes, and no battleships. You may have to attack enemy cities that control these resources. Or, you can raid those resource sites, cut off access by destroying roads, which prevents the enemy from using those resources to build needed units until he can build the road again.

3: Geographical placement. The AI doesn't consolidate their empire according to geography as well as humans can.

4: Selling captured cities. If you capture a city, and expect that you can't hold it, it's often beneficial to sell the thing. This way you can get lots of advances and resources for what may be zero cost, depending on how the battle went. Better yet, if the city being sold belongs to a civ with a strong culture, the city may revert back to your enemies, or be capture by your enemies, allowing you to recapture and resell it. Muhahahahahahahaaaa!

5: Save, inspect, reload. Save the game. Spy on an enemy city to determine its strength and the units there. Once you know this, reload the game. This way you save hundreds of gold pieces, but you still know what's there.

These are just a few tactics I personally use. It's impossible to name them all, and considering the depth of the game, I'm sure there are many more out there you can find.

Now, addressing the complaints about the game:

1: Why do I need a better system to play? This is because Civ3 is designed to be BETTER than previous Civs. Better AI, more options to win, better graphics and better interface. This all demands more computing power. If you just want something that runs on a P2 300mhz, why not stick with Civ2?

2: Combat is unrealistic. Not so. In fact, I love the combat simulator. It's all match. One complaint here is that simple units can destroy advanced units. I don't think those who complain are looking at the match, unit type, and geography. For example, how can samurai beat a tank? Here's how.

Samurai attack strength is 4. Tank defense strength is 6. The combat math adds the attack strength, 4, and the defense strength, 6, and comes out with 10. Then it rolls a random number, and say it comes out with 1-4, it will give the Samurai the victory, and the tank will lose one hit point. Now, the tank has a 60% chance of winning the battle against the samurai. The samurai could win. Two samurai would almost certainly win.

Now, this is because tanks are OFFENSIVE UNITS. A tanks strength is halved when it's just sitting there, acting like a pillbox. On attack, a tank strength is 12. So, add 12+4 = 16. A random role between 1 and 16 is thrown. If the number lands between 1-4 the samurai defends. If the number is between 5-16, the tank wins. The tank has a 75% chance of winning. Three out of four samurai are toast.

Realism in attack strengths: Most reviewers who criticize the combat cite that simple units have no way of combatting more advanced units. For example, how is a samurai going to defend against a tank? Well, you're assuming that both parties are on a perfectly flat, open field, and the buttoned-up tank is going against a samurai standing with his sword. In reality, I can only imagine that a bunch of samurai would not do this, but build barriers, try to make terrain traps for the tanks, etc. You also have to factor in the losses from normal breakdowns and maintenance, which can be significant. Also, from my observations, the computer doesn't cheat with combat numbers, but production numbers in the cities.

Also, geography plays a huge part. Put your infantry in a hill and the hill boosts defense 50%. That means defense for infantry goes up to 18. Infantry in a mountain have defense of 24. Try attacking that treat and see how far you get.

Basically, you could put a spearman, defense 2, into a city on a hill. Now he has defense 3. Then, put a wall around the city, and he has defense boosted 100%. Now his defense is six. Try attacking him with anything less than cavalry and watch a Bronze Age spearman tear you a new one. Heheheheheh. Good thing - the computer doesn't like to make walls and barracks.

2. Corruption and waste. If you cities are too far from your capital, you're screwed. You need your cities spaced strategically around the capital, otherwise they don't pay you money, etc. The courthouse option, IMHO, is not strong enough because it barely decreases corruption. The Forbidden Palace, though, is an awesome tool, and virtually eliminates corruption in the cities surrounding the place it sits.

Well, I guess I rambled enough. I just love this game, because there are so many ways to win, so many different paths to take. The only thing I don't like is it's too addictive! I need to sleep sometimes.

The More You Play, the Worse it Gets

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 49 / 59
Date: November 17, 2001
Author: Amazon User

After about a week of playing, I'm getting more and more upset with Civ 3. Here are some of my latest gripes:

- The Culture Effect seems to have problems. In one game, even though I'd built 16 out of 24 Great Wonders and 7 out of 10 Small Wonder, and my Culture, at over 40,000, was almost 3 times that of any other player (according to the Histograph), I no longer took over cities right next to me. Plus, in a war, I kept losing cities that I'd taken over even though they were filled with MY troops, all rebels had been eliminated, I was running under a Democracy (thus immune to Propaganda), and all the people were happy (w/ some as entertainers). Plus, when those cities deposed my Governor, my own national military units just disappeared. This is very upsetting.

- The inability (or more precisely, poor ability) to make actual armies is horrible. First, you can't produce leaders, they just appear (if you're lucky). Secondly, once you have a leader, you can only stack 3 units with him. So, for the majority of the time, you're stuck building individual units and just sending them in a stream to wherever you need to fight. Combined arms is totally missing.

- Corruption makes an empire-building game impossible. I took over another continent. I was ruling under a Diplomacy (From the manual: "One of Democracy's greatest advantages is its ability to squelch corruption and waste. Both are minimal in your cities."). I had Courthouses in every city (it's the second thing I build, right after the Temple). I'd built the Forbidden Palace (which is supposed to lower corruption, though my Capitol was still on my first continent). Upon checking one of my new cities, I found that corruption was eating up 12 out of the 13 shields the city produced. That's a 92% corruption rate. With that kind of corruption, there's no point in ever owning more than a dozen cities.

- Units from previous Eras can still damage more modern units. I can't count the number of times a single enemy spearman has killed my tanks. This is totally unacceptable.

- Diplomacy seems to be brain dead. My opponents don't seem to pay any attention to my past behavior in determining what they're going to do to me. I spend the whole game sharing technology, resources, luxuries, maps, etc with these people and all of a sudden, out of the blue, they declare war on me. I'm not sure how to phrase this. But, they act without any moral feeling (just like computers, I suppose [g]).

- Resource distribution is horrible. In one game, only one player in the entire world had rubber. Plus, because Trade has been "simplified" to the point of disappearance, there's no real insight into how much you've got or when it will dry up. So far, it doesn't even look like the amount you have has anything to do with production. If you have it, it seems you can make as much of something as you want at a time until the resource dries up. In a game I just finished, I was the only one in the entire world to have Saltpeter, Iron and Aluminum (and the Iron didn't show up until late in the game). Also, even though I could see Rubber, Oil and Coal on the map in other nations, none of these showed up for trade until late in the game. All of those resources appeared linked via roads to cities on the coast. Is the AI so brain-dead that it doesn't ever build itself some Harbors for trade?

- The times when resources show up need to be modified. In my last game, apparently, I was one or two Ages ahead of everyone else. I needed things like Aluminum, Rubber, and Oil but they were nowhere to be found. In a frustrating episode, I had Aluminum long enough to complete all but three parts for my Alpha Centauri ship. But, while I was researching my last advance, my Aluminum "mine" dried up. There was no Aluminum anywhere on the planet. I finally figured out that if I gifted a nation with all the technology it needed to advance one or two ages up to, and including, the Rocketry advance, the would finally see Aluminum and put it on the market (I ended up giving that nation 12 to 15 technologies). This is dumb. There needs to be some mechanism to allow me to tell some relatively primitive society that I'll buy that shiney rock from it. Of course, the best way would be to just show ALL resources ALL the time.

- Espionage is WAY too expensive. Doing anything worthwhile, correctly, usually costs thousands of dollars. I rarely have more than 1,000 available. Also, it doesn't make sense. I tried finding a mole in one of MY cities. I failed and a nation declared war on me. Why should my trying to clean up MY ranks bother anyone else? Plus, why should I have to specifically say to do this, and pay for it? Once I build the Spy Agency, this should be standard operating procedure.

I've got another 1,000 words or so of complaints. But, I'm out of space.

I'm so lonely I could cry

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 33 / 36
Date: April 28, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Ok, so in eager anticipation of the release of the third installment of the best, and most time consuming, game in computing history, I went ahead and did the logical thing: I dumped my girlfriend. It would have happened eventually I figured, the choice being the game or her and I figured I might as well make a clean break of it-lest it interfere with the countless months of fun that lay ahead. I eagerly installed the game. A short while later I watched breathlessly as a warrior with a stone axe defeated my conscripted infantryman armed with a modern firearm. Then he defeated a second infantryman and then a third and a fourth. Later on still, I tried to exhale slowly as my hardwon accumulation of ironclads were ambushed and sunk to their last rivet by a lessor fleet of aggressive wooden galleons. Appealing to my neighbors for aid I discovered that it was too late, if only I had accepted their earlier diplomatic proposals-but I had foolishly found their requests for the entirety of my treasury and the secrets of Engineering, Masonry, Conscription, Physics, Combustion, Communism, Democracy, Chivalry, Flight and Gunpowder to great a price to pay.
Now my long empty nights are not filled with the chirpy soundtrack of civ 3 but of the lonely ghostly ballads of Roy Orbison as I cry myself to sleep.

Just as good as the original 2, if not better

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 28 / 29
Date: November 21, 2001
Author: Amazon User

For a decade, since I was 13, I've played the civilization series, and I've greatly anticipated the arrival of the third Civilization game. This is everything Call to Power wasn't, and more. First off, if you take off the good graphics, take away the great AI, and chisel off some other features, you have the same game that you had 10 years ago. But even so, that gaming premise has never grown old. The new resource system is terrific, it makes world trade and diplomacy much more important than it was in the previous two games. The aquisition of precious resources, especially those that pretty much start new eras, such as coal, seem to be clustered in spots. there was a time in my game, when the only source of oil on the entire map readily available was in the hands of my traditional enemy, the aztecs.
Second, wars are much harder to win. Morale and training are much more important than even in Firaxis' most recent god game, Alpha Centauri. No longer can you construct a handful of powerful units, you must build overwhelming armies of top of the line troops to win a war. AI doesen't make this easier, they're pretty smart, taking advantage of terrain, and often having massive armies of their own. Transit times between areas of conflict are also more important. No longer can you capture a handful of cities on the other side of the world and let the cities there build the units for you. These cities are uncooperative at best, often rejoining their mother country if you don't defend them well enough.
Diplomacy is where the game excels greatly. No longer can you establish a peace treaty with an agressive civilization. No, you have to pay them, and guarantee that you won't attack them. The AI is great at diplomacy, and an inexperienced player will soon be surrounded by an AI coalition if they aren't experienced. Resources have a great effect in diplomacy, a civilization with all the coal on the map will often have better relations with other civs.
In general, at its core, Civilization III is pretty much the same game I played when I was 13, but the add ons adds the prospect of replayability high for many players. In other words, BUY THIS GAME. I accidentally stayed up till one on a monday playing, horrible, barely was awake at work....Tip: Never start a game with settings on Huge World, with 70% water, you'll soon find that transit times for ships are unbearable, especially in wars, where it takes 20 years for top of the line troops to reach their destination, and by then they're bound to be outgunned by newer troops.

Check This Out

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 73 / 106
Date: August 22, 2001
Author: Amazon User

How about this. None of us have played the game yet, but we can all rate how much fun it is in stars. What a great deal.

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