Gamespot says: "Just about the only disappointing thing about Civilization III is..."

[yin26]

LOL!

"By the way, they forgot to program any AI. That's right. There is no AI in this game. Everything else is great."

Ah, well, if that's only 1% of the review, MUST BE GREAT!

[yin26]

As a side note: MP *will* be free for me one way or the other since I simply refuse to buy the game until a stand-alone version with MP is released. Is this message boring some of you? Ahhhh, I'm heart-broken.

[Darkknight]

I'm one of those who doesn't really care much about multiplayer. PBEM would benice but anything else my 28K modem couldn't handle so I never had my hopes up about the MP side.
I tried to play CTP2 MP loads of times but it always crashed on me
I do like succession games though and I'm hoping to start one after a few weeks when everybody can play reasonably well.

[Father Beast]

OK, I'm an sp only guy, but I have to make a confession. I do play a sort of MP sometimes.

hotseat. it's all I use civnet for, it's the reason I got that multiplayer civ2 hack.

I will play with one of my kids (if I can talk one into it) or play with myself, oddly enough.

Raingoon once said in a column (I think it was him) that shipping a TBS game without hot seat ability was unforgivable.

I have to agree. I don't know how hard it would be, but ANY mp would be preferable to none.

how long before a hotseat hack is available, do you think?

[Bane]

I agree w/ you about Hotseat...I played many a bleary night sessions with my buds and assorted pizza boxes

[Jaybe]

Originally posted by MarkG
actually, what this shows is that the gamespot people havent spent the amount of time needed to find any actual problems

i would be surprised if they have played more than two full games

given that, and given that of course firaxis has done a carefull job (as always) it's hard to find something to write in the "cons column".

so, in order to appear as "fair", what's left for the previewer? lack of multiplayer

if i was undecided on whether to buy civ3, i would rather wait for the comments from players on the first month(and not just the first two weeks) and then decide

Italics added

Two FULL Games! I find that to be an INCREDIBLY optimistic number! I would guess Two FOURTHS games -- unless they just lost the games that quickly.

edit:
(I mean, they just couldn't have had the TIME to play it more, what with trying to figure out how to do things right, etc. Or they played on really SMALL maps).

[The Templar]

Okay, everyone out there who thinks multiplayer Civ3 will be a free patch - you are either being stupidly optimistic or unbelievably naive. It will not be free, it will be at least a $20 to $25 dollar expansion pack (and yes, other things will probably be included) if not a whole new game.

My main concern is that without MP, only the hardcore civvers are going to buy Civ3 and thus it will become orphan-ware when not enough copies are sold to justify continued support from Firaxis.

[Grim Legacy]

Funny as hell. Firaxis tries to 'accomodate' the modding community by making the game customizable and adding a fancy editor. Why? Because they saw the success of HalfLife. Without the mods, HalfLife is just a strong game in 1998. With Mods, the game is the most played game in 1998, 1999, 2000 and 2001. Hmmmm.

The crucial thing though was that the multiplayer side of things was a free download, starting at Team Fortress and evolving into mods like Counter Strike. And THIS IS WHAT MADE IT SO POPULAR! The ONLINE experience.

Asking money for another "late" edition of MP is not going to do good in the long run. They will make some cash, peope will play it... but it's not going to be like CS.

I'd also like to add that SP-folks underestimate the joys of MP. Unless you've seen what it's like to play a game like this online, you can't say "it's not important for me". Play against human opponents a couple of times and you'll note how much fun it is. It's much, much better than playing against the computer.

[Chronus]

As a side note: MP *will* be free for me one way or the other since I simply refuse to buy the game until a stand-alone version with MP is released.

I hope this doesn't mean you'll obtain an illegal copy. You appeared to be such an advocate of anti-piracy just a month ago.

Perhaps I misunderstood your statement?

[yin26]

Oh, sorry about the confusion. I mean I will *wait* to buy the version that includes MP unless MP is announced as a free patch (good luck, eh?). So I'll be suffering for a while (if the game is good, of course).

[DanS]

"Civ3 if the development process hadn't of been messed up at some point should have been able to produce a civ3 with both single player and multiplayer and have those items ready at the same time...if you schedule the process right then both segments get completed simultaneously, its not like they finish single player first and then move on to multiplayer...if the rumors are true that firaxis didn't start on multiplayer till august right before the game went gold then they knew quite a while ago that civ3 wouldn't have multiplayer, and it would have probably been best to let the fns down early"

I agree fully Korn. I think that the reason why MPers are being dissed on these boards, however, is that they are being led by Firaxis itself.

"Civ is at heart a single player experience" is unrealistic at best to those of us who had much more fun on MP than SP, and insulting at worst. It's just a lame excuse (even if this is what Sid himself thinks) and pisses me off every time I read it. Rather than giving us a valid reason, such as there just wasn't enough time to do it properly, they are feeding us a bad marketing line meant to "throw us off the track".

This should be mentioned in every (p)review of the game, and I think that Yin was correct in demonstrating it is being mentioned at least in some.

Perfidious Firaxis.