Sid Meier's Civilization III

The Good
I'm not sure that there is any gamer in the world who hasn't played Sid Meier's famous Civilization series at least once before, so it's plus sides are very well known. Civilization was the most in-depth, detailed, highly realistic strategy game of its time, Civilization II was better still, and Civilization III truly dominates, unlike many game sequels of its time. Rich with detailed and accurate information on every possible unit, technology, and building type from the hunter-gatherer dawn of civilization as we know it to modern day times in its Civilopedia, not only is it an endlessly playable game for entertainment purposes, but it would also make a very reliable history and science lesson for your children. If I had children that I wanted to ensure were learning as they were having fun, I'd sit them down in front of this game - you can learn more about the history of mankind just by playing this game that you can in any public school history class I've ever heard of!

The Bad
In my opinion, the best thing about Civilization III (and its predecessors also) is also the worst - its endless playability. This is a game you could sit down at after dinner and say "Oh, I'll just play for an hour or so!", and when it feels like that hour is up, you peer out the window and see the sun starting to rise. If it weren't for the educational aspects mentioned above, I'd probably never let my kids play this game. I couldn't count the number of business deadlines and social engagements I've had to reschedule or arrive late to after unwittingly spending 14 hours in front of this game without so much as a snack break. It's harder to quit than smoking. Even if you get so frustrated with it that you almost hurl your PC out the window, I guarantee you'll be giving it another shot within 24 hours. This game is without doubt the most addictive game ever created.

The Bottom Line
The bottom line? If you have a day job, don't play this game. If you have relationship or family commitments, don't play this game. If you have an addictive personality, don't play this game. If you're not willing or able to sit in front of your PC for 12 hour stints at a time due to health/medical, corporate, social, or any other responsibilities, then don't play this game. But if you're a dedicated gamer with a lot of free time on your hands or godlike willpower, then Civilization III and its predecessors are an absolute must-have for your game collection. You haven't played a strategy game until you've played Civilization.

The Good
Like the original Civ, this game is highly addictive.

One of the biggest improvements are the graphics: the previous Civs had poor, blocky graphics that scaled poorly. CivIII uses sprites rendered from 3D models so the graphics are much more engaging. The graphics are also now animated, so when units are fighting, they actually LOOK like they're fighting instead of just running into one another.

Controls are much better and intuitive. Now you can tell a unit to go to a destination several spaces away. Each turn, he will move closer to his ultimate destination. In previous versions, you had to move each piece manually each turn--often forgetting where you wanted each piece to go in the first place.

The AI and diplomacy are much improved in this version. There are also a variety of ways to win and being able to choose which victory conditions apply is a huge bonus. You can also choose which size "world" you want to play on depending on how much time you have to kill.

Cultural areas of influence is one of the biggest improvements. Before, your civilization was much like a collection of city-states instead of a nation. Now your cities influence an area which creates a national border--something sorely missing from the earlier Civs.

There is no multi-player (without the Play the World expansion), but many fans (including me) regard Civ as essentially a single player game: you against the (very good) AI. Playing multi-player Civ in earlier versions, I don't miss it one bit--I hated waiting for other players to move; the AI thinks and moves much faster.

I may be one of the few people who actually likes the music in the game. While I wouldn't exactly want to listen to the music in the car, the music is appropriate for each age your civilization experiences. Having age-appropriate music makes the game even more immersive for me.

City improvement and unit building has been improved. Now you can use a "queue" of things for your city to work on. After its done building a temple, it knows to build a legion. You don't have to use it, but its nice when you know what you want your city to work on next.

One minor plus is that the game remembers which game you were playing last. When you go to load a game, it automatically selects your last save game file.

The Bad
While almost everything about this game is better, there is one issue that can't really be easily solved. As your civilization grows, the nuances of micro-management get more tedious. It seems you have to tell your people how and where to do every single thing. While the game has an "auto-build" option for cities, I just don't trust it. The "mayor" often seems to want to build the wrong thing. While this gets annoying, I don't know of any way they could have solved it.

Another issue has to do with the opposing nations. The computer moves very fast, but as the game progresses you're forced to watch them do every single thing, most of which you couldn't care less about. You can turn off the "watch other players move" option, but then you miss vital events, like the opposing player entering your national border. It'd be nice to have an option to watch for just "critical" events--things that happen in or near your borders and/or in international areas (like the ocean).

I like to Alt+Tab between applications (sometimes I have to--people IM me or I need a phone number). While Civ3 does Alt+Tab successively, the way they use the video resizes the desktop. Therefore, when Alt+Tabbing to another application, I have to resize it to a relatively tiny size to fit in the resized desktop. The only way to get your original resolution back is to quit the game (and then, you have to resize your windows back up).

These shortcomings are really minor, however. The game's pluses for outweigh its minuses.

The Bottom Line
This game is the most addictive of any of the Civ games. While it has some minor drawbacks, I can't play any of the previous versions without feeling they are just plain broken.

The Good
Many things. First, settlers and workers have no defense or attack. No longer can settlers take down bombers. Strategic resources like iron and uranium add much more strategy to the game. Planes are much better. Now, you just bomb stuff instead of moving them. Instead of having super-short range ICBM's, they are capable of hitting anywhere, just like real life. The controls are as simple as previous ones of the series. More than 2 ways to win the game gives it more replay value. Finally, civ-specific troops and attributes give more variety with civs. Other than the things I listed earlier, the game is mainly a better graphics version of civ 1 and 2.

The Bad
No multiplayer. Small AI glitches also make things annoying. They build cities on your colonies, and enemy troops move back and forth on their borders, like they are patrolling. Also, the combat can be incredibly lame. A horde of horsemen will attack and defeat your tanks. Spearmen can successfully defend against machine gunners. This detracts from the realism the games exudes in other areas.

The Bottom Line
If you are a fan of civ2, than this is the game for you.

The Good
The delightful simplicity even with the complex nature of the game. The Civilipedia is very insightful, and helps you a lot when playing the game. Graphics is good (although not excellent) and music is catchy. The way that it makes me THINK like no other game EVER managed to do is remarkable!

The Bad
Slowness of AI turns during the latter stages of the game was a bit bad, but not bad enough to prevent me from becoming a total addict.

The Bottom Line
All I can say is that if you don't know about this game yet, you're missing out on the most important of all computer games EVER. You probably use your computer only for word processing...

The Good
It's Sid Meier's Civilization. That alone means it's a really good game. You know the drill - you play a human race from the stone age to modern times and try to use diplomacy, force, science, etc. to beat the other races in varying levels of difficulty. The game is turn-based and very in-depth, while maintaining an excellent in-game tutorial and learning curve. City management, funds allocation, scientific breakthroughs, wonders of the world, diplomacy and more are part of the game, and depending on your choice of game settings, require an incredible amount of micromanagement. There's nothing that's not to like about this game...

The Bad
...except that it's nothing new. It's Civilization I all over again with a few (albeit good) additional features and, of course, better graphics. I haven't played Civ I in years, never played Civ II, never read the manual to Civ III and STILL managed to play the game flawlessly the first time I played it, THAT'S how similar it is. I know, sports coaches always say "never change a winning team", but come on.

I own - and love - Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri an awful lot... in my eyes, perhaps the best game of it's kind ever. And it's four years old. Now, Alpha Centauri has a lot of features that Civ III does not have - awesome mini movies when you build a wonder, a background storyline, voiceover whenever you build a city enhancement for the first time, better unit experience system, customization of units, etc. etc. As a matter of fact, if I showed both Alpha Centauri and Civ III both games to a person who has never seen either, he'd likely guess that Alpha Centauri is the never, more developed game. That's not a good thing, folks.

The Bottom Line
If you don't own the original Civilization, Civ II or Alpha Centauri, go buy Civ III. Buy it now. It's THAT good, but it's nothing new if you own any of the older Sid Meier games. If you are a Sid Meier fanatic, still get it, the additional features will likely be worth it for you.

Put it this way. I work at a CompUSA and got the game at cost for little over $20. I'm happy that I got it. If I had paid the $59.95 or whatever when it first came though, I would likely have been disappointed since it's not really a new game. Perhaps they should have done it like Microsoft - pay the full time if you're a first time Civ user, or a fraction of the cost if you already have the older Sid Meier Civilizations.

Remember Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace? It was a fun, decent movie... but many people were disappointed. Not because it was bad... but because, goshdarnit, it was Star Wars, and it was supposed to be groundbreaking, not just mere "good". That's the same way I feel about Civ III. It's Sid Meier, it's Civilization III, it's supposed to blow me away instead of just having me say "that's a good game".

The Good
"Civilization" and "Civilization II" remain the landmark classic in strategic gaming, so it must have been hard to improve on them. Nonetheless, Civ III does add some very nice changes; cultural borders add an immense amount to strategy, the new resources system is a tremendous upgrade, and diplomacy is much improved.

What can you say? It's Civ, but they fixed a lot of the problems with AI and tactical frustrations. It's still a remarkably addictive game, the sort that will keep you up all night with JOMT disease (Just One More Turn.)

The Bad
Unfortunately, Civ III has one huge, gaping hole in it; there's no multiplayer mode. No Internet, LAN, hotseat, nothing. This may seem like a bizarre oversight, and it is, but in all likelihood Firaxis's plan is to release multiplayer as a separate product you'll have to buy, despite the fact that Civ III was first marketed as a multiplayer game and the "no multiplayer" announcement wasn't made until AFTER all the preorders were made! This is a remarkably unethical business practice even by the dismal standards of the gaming industry, but more to the point it takes a HUGE amount out of the game; Civ III would be terrific in multiplayer, but as a single player game it's more limited. With multiplayer it might have been the best game of all time. Without it, it's not.

There are a few other play balancing issues, but nothing major, and they'll doubtlessly be fixed in a patch. The music is pretty boring, too.

The Bottom Line
A great game... as long as you don't want to play it multiplayer.

The Good
This game is deeper than the earlier ones without being harder to play. It has nifty things like unique units and special abilities to make each civilization different. It has many things that were sorely missing in Civ2, like better air unit handling and national borders.

The Bad
Despite all the great things in it, this game didn't grab me the way its predecessors (Civilization, Civ2, and Sid Maier's Alpha Centauri) did. It somehow lost that "just one more turn" feeling.

The Bottom Line
Despite its lineage and superficial similarities, this is not really a new version of the classic Civilization. For that, SMAC is still the best. This is a new game in the same genre. It has a lot of cool ideas and features, many of which can be accurately described as improvements, but the sum total of the change is enough to make it play so differently that liking its predecessors will give you much of a hint whether you'll like this one.