strategy

While maintaining the majority of the original Civilization 3 game, Civilization 3: Conquests adds new civilizations for you to chose from, new wonders to build, new improvements and terrain, and conquests and much more (250 additions by Atari/Firaxis' count). Additionally, if you've never purchased the "Play the World" expansion it's included in this latest pack.

If you were to look at the laundry list of new items in the game you might say to yourself "oh, same old, same old," which, and I'll be perfectly honest here, is quite true. The game play is almost the same as the original Civ 3 title, yet the subtle changes to the game keeps the game much more interesting to play. You're given more options in how you would like to develop your civilization and new strategies to explore.

While I've had a tremendous amount of fun playing Civilizations 3: Conquests, I can't help but which Firaxis took the genre even further with more detailed country controls and details that would really bring about more of a simulation feel to the series. Regardless, Civilization 3: Conquests is quite worthy of the money spent on the purchase, and if you're a fan of the Civilization series, I highly recommend it.

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.

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. Also, the game does slow down on bigger maps,

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 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; 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. If you wanted, you could 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.