Sid Meier's Civilization III Complete

One more turn...one more turn...This is the terribly familiar chant of the Civ III newbie, staring at the clock, watching the sun rise outside the window, promising himself to save and log off after one more attempt to colonize a land, build an institution, establish relations with a rival nation, order research of a new technology, harness a new natural resource...or win a nuclear war. The creator of the game, Sid Meier, made a nasty remark in his promo DVD about how the addictive element of this game was its propensity to allow users to 'play God' (shades of Red Dragon!). Alas, friends, sad but true.You get to select one of over thirty nations and pick as many rivals as you like in a game of world conquest that begins in 4000 BC. Your settlers, armed with sticks and stones, build their capitol city, the first of many that establish your fledgling nation. Eventually your little country makes contact with a neighboring state, and thus begins the quest. You can outlast your rivals by becoming culturally dominant, politically superior, militarily overwhelming...or even win the game by being the first to land a man on the moon. The game ends in the year 2050 AD, over a course of time extending through the Ancient Era, the Middle Ages, the Industrial years, and modern times. Just as in real life, your empire can choose many paths to follow, and hundreds of possible scenarios will lead to just as many different conclusions.The game can be played on maps of different sizes, land masses, climates and topography, which adds to the diversity you can factor into your matches. I'm not one for fantasy football, but imagine if you could choose between outdoor/indoor, grass/astroturf, sunny/snowy. You can pick from a tiny map, ensuring a short and sweet game, or a huge map which can turn this into an epic odyssey. Smaller continents challenge navigational skills and make demands on overseas trade and travel; warmer climates create huge areas of untamed jungle hindering farming and transportation. Older maps make for larger mountain ranges that are great for military defense but hard to traverse during peacetime. You get to play Mother Nature and decide how hard it'll be for your world to make its way through history.One reviewer compared this game to a cross between chess and Risk, and that analogy is not far off the mark if you include Life and Monopoly. Unfortunately, this game may not be for the ADD Generation, a fact substantiated by Meier's deviation back to the style and content of the earlier Civilization II in producing the later versions of Civ IV and Civ V. These games lack the depth and realism of Civ III and, unfortunately, are obscuring the greatest of all PC games with the passage of time. Obviously this is an effort to reach out to the growing population of attention-deficients, and the world is losing out on a wonderfully unique gaming experience as a result.The graphics make one wonder why on earth Meier and Firaxis (the publishers of the game) reverted to the cheesier graphics of Civ II in the IV and V upgrades (?) after achieving what could arguably be considered perfection. The tiny workers in this version dig, cut, chop and run throughout the game; horses gallop, wakened warriors yawn and stretch, soldiers awaiting combat rustle their weapons impatiently. It is a Lilliputian world which can utterly captivate and enchant if it were not for the greater challenges ahead - namely, a collusion of AI (artificial intelligence) adversaries preparing to crush you and your civilization into the virtual dust.If you've ever marveled at how games like Chessmaster could both condescend and overwhelm so as to make you feel there was another person on the other side of the screen...you ain't seen nuthin' yet. Meier's multiple personalities can be friendly, manipulative, double-dealing and hostile, and for a newbie it can be extremely difficult to keep in mind that one is dealing with AI as the game progresses. A friendly AI appears as a straw to a drowning man in times of trouble, while hostiles can distract a player to sacrificing the game in seeking revenge for a treacherous act. You may even find yourself feeling a twinge of guilt in nuking a close and trusted ally to gain a final victory. Those who doubt will find themselves trying to remember after their first epic struggle: it's only a game, it's only a game. One side effect of getting hooked on this game is the remorseful feeling of devoting so much leisure time to such a trivial pursuit. Consider this, brethren: how much more wasteful is playing chess, or sudoku, or even poker, pool or backgammon? It can be argued that Civ III can consume the better part of a week per game, but if this game sharpens your wits, lifts your spirits and enhances your real-world creativity (if you can develop a civilization, why not your backyard garden?), well...more power to it.Addicts will find a number of webpages and websites devoted to the game, as one becomes consumed with exploring different strategies and tactics in attempting to rule the world. Some versions come with manuals, which are downloadable in PDF form on many of the aforementioned sites. It helps newbies avoid figuring this complex game out from scratch, which can alternately prove frustrating yet astounding at times.This game has been compared to strategy games such as Men of War and Rome; I bought a copy of Rome and have yet to open the box. Beyond Civ III, there is nothing else.One more turn...one more turn...

I started playing Civilization 3 about when it first came out and then upgraded to the Conquests expansion some time later. From the first it was a very addicting game, though I did always find myself wanting a better and more tactical combat experience - this did not take away from my overall enjoyment of the game, however. With the separate releases I found that the game would begin to work more and more slowly as I progressed though a game, this problem seems to have been addressed in the "Complete Edition", however as even once the whole map has been settled I have noticed no slowing down whatsoever, and the game moves just as quickly as it did at game-start.

Edit 12/2018. I finally beat it all by myself, without resorting to Internet forums, cheats, strategy guides, etc. I just had to learn all aspects of the game, and how to think of them all at once all the time.I run it on Windows 10 Pro with Compatibility (right click properties for the desktop icon) set to XP Service Pack 3.I tried this game when it was first released with many bugs and found it almost unplayable. Then I downloaded the patch and things worked fine, but it seemed that the game was biased against me.So I sold that copy and forgot about this game until this version came out. I figured that after all this time and feedback they must have fixed this game or tweaked it a bit at least in the gameplay area, but I was wrong.This time I played the game very well only to get to the modern age and find that the only pool of oil is halfway around the world and one of the other "superpowers" has it. The opponent then builds tanks, which I can't, and destroys me after I've wasted (oops, I mean invested) many hours of gameplay.It seems that you either:1. Become a complete fanatic and study the fan sites and discussion boards and learn the specific peculiarities of the various civs and wind up playing it for years. (In other words, put in the time required to complete a law degree at night but rather than a new career you've got civ geeks you can chat with.)2. Realize after playing for so many hours that the whole soundtrack is playing and looping in your head that the game is still flawed. It could have been tweaked a bit just to make it reasonably winnable. (Like, maybe distribute resources something like they are in the real Earth, with oil in a number of different continents.) But, the people behind the game didn't, and they got your money again, and you sell the game used and recover most of your money before the next version of this game comes out -- which it now has with apparently lots of bugs -- so I'll wait a year or two until it's fixed and buy a used copy and try again.And, you correctly guessed that I chose option 2.So, it's a five star fun game that could have been great with a little more fine tuning, but ends up being an exercise in futility.

Ok... so, I am able to get the COMPLETE SET of Civ lll in one shot AND I can do it for $5.99!!!!I mean, really??? I could not be happier with this purchase and as another plus, UK United Kingdom got this to me in Canada in 4 days. They are awesome and now have become my go to for gaming software. Thanks guys!

I think this is the best version of Civ as after they started tinkering to much I like my nuclear missiles in this version. It works on my win 8 laptop no problem so it will keep me happy and a bonus I don't need STEAM to play it like everything coming out seems to need these days and I like single player also or network with my sons not multiplayer on the Net

It is a complete collection. If you are a fan of civ3 you should definitely buy it to get all of them. The problem is that, you need to put the disk in every time you run the game. This is annoying while you can download *** to fix.

What can I say, this is one of the most fun, immersive, and addicting game ever created. The modding community for it is spectacular, I highly recommend everyone to visit civfanatics.com for the dozen of game mods made for this game. World Prestige mod is a must play, and I also had a lot of lost hours with the Fallout and Far Horizons mods.

a classic