Should I Buy CivIII?

[Harovan]

A yes from me too.

I have also gotten my money's worth with CivIII. You can get a lot of fun with it if you use it wise, but a lot of frust if you use it wrong though. Read the Apolyton strategy forum mainly, mostly the older threads, to get "the feeling". You may do this even not possessing the game yet, just to look if this is what you want. And look out for fixes and patches, it's worth the effort .

OT: Charley, what did you smoke? Can I have a toke of it?

[yin26]

Standard Yin Answer: The game as it stands is a Beta. If that doesn't bother you, give it a go. If you like games to be complete, well thought-out and challenging in the good sense of the word, wait for the Gold Edition.

[DrFell]

One word: Probably not

[Libertarian]

You can get a lot of fun with it if you use it wise, but a lot of frust if you use it wrong though.

Right.

While you slog through your turns in the modern age, Wiglaf, keep in mind that your strategy morphs from the boring exercise of building a civilization to the rewarding experience of cleaning pollution as you chase down that enemy settler who escaped four thousand years ago to a tiny arctic island on your pangea map.

[Be Quicker]

Although it is rushed, I am still mightily enjoying it. It is definitly a good Civilization game, albeit not so earth shattering as its predecessors. Its quality is IMHO for example illustrated by the fact that since playing CivIII, I would not want to return to playing plain vanilla CivII. The best reason not to buy it is to exert the little power that you as a costumer have, and "punish" them for bringing out a rushed product by not buying it. In the end, I thus would say, WAIT.

[Fidel]

buy it

[Libertarian]

Yes, Infogreed deserves your hard-earned cash.

[Grumbold]

Civ III is a playable game, but if you only have the money for one pick and you do not yet have EU2 I recommend you try that first. Then buy Master of Orion 3 if it has been released and lives up to expectation. By the time you have the money for a third game, patch 2 should be out and thoroughly understood.

[Skanky Burns]

As much as I hate saying this, Id recommend waiting until at least the next patch and/or editor is out. The game is good, but not anywhere near where it should (and could) be.

[Willem]

Originally posted by DrFell
One word: Probably not

Aaah, that was two words.

[DrFell]

Darn, I knew I shoulda counted.

[kailhun]

I only have a useless answer for you: it depends.

If you're looking for a civ3 type game, then civ3 is probably the best around. I play it a lot and usually manage to work around the problems.
For example, the fact that seed numbers are saved in the saved game file now means that the combat will be the same every time. So if you're looking for a leader run test combats until you find one you win, reload and do that one again with an elite unit and maybe you'll get a leader. You can cheat with saved seeds as well as without, the cheating is just different.
Civ3 is not brilliant. It is more a civ2.5 (as has been said before). It reminds me more of a testing ground for new ideas (diplomacy, luxuries, resources, insane corruption) than a really new game. a 'let's see what the punters make of this' type game.
But, when push comes to shove, I play it and I enjoy it.

But, if I were in your position and could only buy one game at this point it would probably not be civ3. It would be Medal of Honour. Although the grass is always greener and maybe I will be disapointed once I have MOHAA. Who knows?

Robert

[Be Quicker]

I would conclude that a tentative consensus is emerging to wait.

[Pingu:]

I'd say buy it (as long as you don't have any major work projects/essays/exams/ social life commitments in the next month or so).

This game is so good.

If you're computer is less than sh$t hot, don't worry you can still play with 16 civs as long as it's not on a huge map, as I think it's map size more than civ number that slows the machine down.

Pingu:

[Wiglaf]

I guess I'll wait for the next patch and then buy it, just because it's hard to be totally sure. All the review sites are giving it near perfect scores, though...ign, gamespot, avault, etc. If it's even a minor improvement to civ2, I'd like it (it's not a huge step down or anything, is it?), but for now I'll probably look into EU2 and watch civIII closely.

Thanks again.