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oh..my god Civ3

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: November 29, 2001
Author: Amazon User

If you want to play with a cheating stupid computer, Civ3 is your best choice

I have played Civ 3 for about a damn week and found it fligging interesting

Fire Firaxis

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 4
Date: December 06, 2001
Author: Amazon User

(...) Firaxis!... I hope you have a shameful, broke Christmas!!!
Your public sentiments exactly?!?! I would have been better off buying a Yoko Ono record! May your offices be your (...)

Civ III - Civ I with better graphics, ho hum

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 3 / 5
Date: November 25, 2001
Author: Amazon User

I couldn't wait to get my copy of CIV III. To listen to the hype I was sure this was gonig to be a great game. I loved CIV II and surely this was going to be even better.

What a disappointment. The ONLY thing neat about the game is the diplomacy and even that drives me nuts sometimes. We're back to individual units in combat so there's no real benefit in having a large force. Don't even think about being peaceful in the begining of the game. The only way I do well is to attack attack attack. The combat system doesn't seem balance either. (see all the other negative reviews for why, my comments would just be a repeat of theirs.)

I wish I could get my money back. Definately a game that will collect dust soon as I (strangely enough) go back to playing CIV II. They may have fooled us into thinking this was going to be a great upgrade/next version but I hope when CIV IV comes out, we have learned our lesson from CIV III and just walk away. (...)

Fire Firaxis

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: December 06, 2001
Author: Amazon User

FU Firaxis!... And have a shameful,broke Christmas! Your public sentiments exactly?!?! Would have been better off buying a Yoko Ono record!

The Recent Trend...

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 8
Date: November 03, 2001
Author: Amazon User

The recent trend seems to be that almost every developer feels his product can walk on water and regardless of bugs or gameplay issues... releases it. This product is no exception... in fact it helps cement the trend into almost a rule. Perhaps next year this game, after being patched and repatched, will live up to 1% of the hype. Civilazation 3 from "The Great Sid Meier", bah... perhaps when he was innovative and spent time on his products! This game is nothing but a testament to his ego and disdain for his customers. Avoid this product like the plague... if you want a good CIV play experience pickup CIV II on discount... you'll wish you paid more for it, because it is what this game should have been.

I wish this were a great game... but it isn't...

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 9 / 19
Date: November 20, 2001
Author: Amazon User

I am amazed, completely stunned, by the scope of the failure of this product. I expected SO much more from Firaxis...

Civilization has long been my favorite game, and the latest incarnation is clearly subpar, for all but complete newbies to the franchize.

Let me see if I can count the most important ways this version sucks...

- Fixed resolution of graphics (my god, what's up with this?)
- Gameplay logic that defies common sense (archers defeating tanks?!?)
- Complete lack of a micro-econ simulation
- The sim is likely to end LONG before any modern day epoch is realized
- There are no real changes from the original, just token improvements to the current tech tree
- There are no advancements beyond the modern epoch
- Scope and complexity of management sim takes DAYS/WEEKS of continuous gameplay to resolve; who has whole WEEKS to play a single game expect some out-of-school teenager?

I could go on... but its just not worth it... my advice is that everyone go back to the game "Colonization" (circa 1993) which is far superior in just about every way to this Civ3 junk...

Sid... hang your head in shame

If you can't do it better, don't do it at all!

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 1 / 3
Date: December 10, 2001
Author: Amazon User

What a waste of money. The only thing in this that is better than civII is the borders,and the updated look. I'm still on the easy level and cant see how the other levels are playable when in the easy level you cant even get to end of the science tree before the game is over. Unless you build more than 50 cities. With that number of cities each turn will take roughly 20+ minutes, much longer if your at war. The whole game is not playable without the govener function on. You will forget what you wanted to do on that turn because you will be getting your cities out of civl disorder... The trade function is pointless, because no one will trade fairly. For example I was asked for three luxurys, two civ advances, and 130 gold per turn in excange for one luxury from them! You would be better off taking their city(s)... Resorces are crazy. Even with 50 cities you will find yourself searching the globe to get what you need to build units. Yet some of the AI players seem to always get them in their borders. Don't bother to build a colony, the AI players will just take it over by building a city next to it, and your S.O.L.. When I read about CIVIII a year ago, I thought this was to be less about war and more about deplomacy and trade, but neither works well in this game. So you have to battle it out which doesn't even work well(read the other reviews). It's not much different than CIV II, except that this one is a disapointing update. Hopefully next time if they can't do it better, they won't do it at all.

It's a good game, but doesn't live up to the hype

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 43 / 45
Date: November 04, 2001
Author: Amazon User

Everyone talks about what a great improvement Civ-3 is over Civ-2. Well, I've played the game almost non-stop for the last 4 days and have realized that it's pretty much the same friggin' game with just a few tweaks. A quick patch could have made Civ-2 into this same exact game, but then they wouldn't get our ($).

But the game has some good aspects to it. First of all, the graphics have gotten a huge face lift. They aren't groundbreaking visuals, but they're a welcomed upgrade. Also, the animations for the units is done just right. Certain sound effects though are a little wierd (why the hell does a riflemen sound like he's firing his gun when he's just walking?). The music isn't unbearable as with most strategy games. In fact, some of the tunes are pretty nice to listen to. The addition of culture is nice as well, your boarders can expand simply by having a high culture rating. This allows for some huge and productive cities and it also lets you conquer enemy lands peacefully (your culture can spill over into neighboring territory).

Now the gripes:

The diplomacy system was supposed to be a big improvement over Civ-2 but it feels like the same system just with new leader portraits. You can request things like access to lands, trade embargos & mutual protection acts... so that IS new. But the system is generally pointless. The CPU players will always make heavy demands, often wanting to make trades heavily in their favor and rejecting anything reasonable. If you play on the easier levels, diplomacy is useless because you will surpass the other civilizations to the point where they have nothing to offer you. And if you play the harder levels diplomacy is STILL useless because the CPU players will surpass you and not want to hear a word you have to say. I also noticed (and this is on all difficulty levels) that nations that you haven't pissed off have no problem giving you their entire treasuries. Every game I played I would contact another civilization every few turns, demand a tribute of all of their gold, and they ALWAYS just hand it over. Maybe it's a bug, but I've yet to be rejected.

On the harder levels, the game will seem more like it's cheating rather than giving you good competition. You'll notice that no matter how quickly you work on that wonder, somebody ALWAYS beats you to it (and always by like 2 friggin' turns!). The computer musters up troops by means totally unknown. In a game as America, I was at war with neighboring Aztecs and they kept sending in hordes of their special unit guys. This wouldn't have seemed strange except for the fact that they had NO gold in treasury (they kept giving it to me when I asked for it) and all of their cities were size 3 and smaller, which means SLOW production. So how in the world do the Aztecs keep raising all these troops? The world my never know.

Combat itself is also a little unbalanced. How in the world a Russian Cossack (a guy on a horse) can slay a German Panzer (a friggin' tank!) is a mystery to me. But all to often you'll see archers beating riflemen or cavalry slaying tanks. I don't care how good of a horseman you are, you're not beating a tank! Not only that, but the special units are unbalanced. Some civs, such as Aztecs and Zulus, get their special units earlier in the game. This gives military dominance to the player who wants to use these civs. But then you have civs like America and Germany who get their guys later in the game, making them the dominant force in the end. So if you wanna play the Zulu, you'll get your little super-warrior guy in the BC times, but that won't do you much good against the American F-15 or the German Panzer later on the game (although it seems as though a Cossack is quite the match!).

Anothet thing, the Civlization characteristics are useless. I saw no difference in the speed of workers with an industrious nation. As for militaristic civs... I was playing as Germany (who is militaristic & scientific). Not only was I behind in technology to non-scientific civs, but non-militaristic civs would whoop my but in battle with the same units. Meaning that if my swordsman fought an American swordsman, I'd lose the battle although Americans aren't militaristic. The only real difference you'll notice is that Religious civs never have anarchy and Scientific civs get a free advance with every new technology age. Other than that, the other characteristics offer no real edge or personality.

All in all, the game is good only because it's the same thing as before. The new additions aren't necessarily good ones (such as not being able to rush Wonders), but I guess they had to make SOMETHING different. A lot of the streamlining takes away from the game (such as getting rid of spys, now you just pay to do espinage activity) but it's still fun. Is it better than Civ-2?It really should be, but in the end it seems as though Civ-3 is just lacking that fire that Civ-2 had. It has the ingredients of a good game, but that's because it's basically just Civ-2 with an extra layer of icing on the cake.

But you'll notice that the game doesn't quite grip you and keep you playing like Civ-2 did. You won't be able to put your finger on it. You might never really understand why this game isn't addictive when it very well should be. But as you play it, you'll never be able to escape the feeling that Civilization III is just missing... something.

Not as much fun as hoped

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 14 / 17
Date: November 14, 2001
Author: Amazon User

I've been playing Civ (in one version or another) since the original came out long ago. I've been looking forward to playing Civ3, well, ever since Civ2 came out. I've been disappointed. Overall, lots of nice new features, but several items make this game unplayable. The killer flaw, to me at least, is the new role that corruption has in the game. No matter what kind of civilization you have, once your society gets big enough, and no matter what improvements you have, you will have overwhelming corruption. Playing a democracy, will all Wonders, and all city improvements, and 50% of the people in the town as entertainers, still have revolts and 98% corruption in dozens of cities. Not fun, and not realistic. I'm hoping that a patch will fix it, but considering they already have a good chunk of my money....

The Game is good, but the LE is a waste of money

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: May 02, 2002
Author: Amazon User

The games is good, a lot of bugs, but still a good game. Limited Edition, is only a tinbox with a poster inside, the rest you'll get with the standard package. [$] for a lunchbox is a bit over the top.

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