Yes, I do admit to being addicted to this game upon purchase (part of it because it was the only computer game I had at the time), but I soon grew tried of it. You begin by choosing your civilization, which ranges from the Romans to the Americans, twelve in all. You play the roll of their greatest leader, for example, if you choose the Americans, then you are Abraham Lincoln. If you choose the Romans, you are Julius Ceaser, etc. Then you may choose the geography for the world. You can choose Pangaea, or the present. Then you begin.

 

You start off with a scout and a settler.The settler's job is to find a suitable spot to build your first city, or your capitol. If you select your capitol city, you can choose to create more settlers to build more cities, or warriors to fend off invaders. When your capitol is selected, you can also create walls, famous statues, and much more. And if you take good care of your city, your people will offer to expand your palace, which consists of selecting a color for your building, a building type, and then building it one piece at a time. To complete your palace, you must take extra good care of your peoples. And, believe me, it will take a long while for this to happen.

 

The units in Civ 3 move according to a "turn" based system. For example, you select your unit, and then right-click where you want your unit to move to. Above the selected area wished to move to, a number is displayed, telling you the amount of turns it will take to get there. The unit moves to the selected spot, one turn at a time. This makes the game much more time consuming, and makes it very difficult to defend your city if your only soldier is far away.

 

The AI in Civ 3 are not stupid. They can be very unfair. For example, the enemy's Swordsman can defeat your musketman (one of the first guns). These kinds of flaws in unit balancing are persistant during the game. You can also garrison your units at your cities to defend them. But, the enemy garrisoned units are very close to invincible. It took at least five of my men to defeat one garrisoned enemy unit, and there is alsways more thean one unit garrisoned at an enemy city. This makes taking over an enemy city very difficult, and takes away some of the fun of doing it. Another aggravating feature in Civ 3 is that cannons and missles are very innacurate.Cannons usually always miss their designated target, or just don't cause any damage at all.

 

Civ 3 has a trading feature, where you can trade things you have mastered with the other civilizattions for things they have mastered, but you have not yet. For example, writing for horseback riding. But trades in this game are not so. It is more like: Writing for you and horseback riding and 200 gold for them. And if you try to make it even, they are insulted. Another large flaw in Civ 3.

 

The graphics in this game are very appealing. Though you can't zoom in, they do look wonderful. The music is merley ok, consisting basically of drums and some kind of wind instruments.

 

Overall, Civ 3 is not "Game of the Year," or "The Greatest Computer Strategy Game of all Time," but it is not a bad game. It is mediocore. Ok. This game is recommended for one who needs a challenge, and has a pretty good computer.