Tuesday, June 16, 2015

Sid Meier's Civilization III - Initial Thoughts

About the Game (From the Steam Store Page)

Sid Meier's Civilization III: Complete, the latest offering in the Sid Meier's Civilization III franchise, provides gaming fans with Sid Meier's Civilization III, the highly-addictive journey of discovery, combined with the updated and enhanced multiplayer expansion pack Sid Meier's Civilization III: Play the World*, as well as all of the great new civilizations, scenarios, and features from Sid Meier's Civilization III: Conquests! Sid Meier's Civilization III: Complete provides more ways to explore, more strategies to employ, more modes of play, and more ways to win, all in one box!

Previous Playtime

0 hours

What Was I Thinking When I Bought This

This game is either one of my most sensible purchases or one of my most foolish. You see, I already owned Civilization III, but when I bought a new computer, I felt like it was too much trouble to find the disc, install it, and then put it in the drive every time I wanted to play it, so I just waited until I saw it on sale for something like a buck fifty and then had Steam do all the work for me. It wasn't a huge waste of money, but given my current project, it was definitely a bad tactical move, especially considering that I have other, much better Civilization games that I could be playing. If you ever wonder what a "sucker for completeness" looks like, this is it.

Expectations and Prior Experience

I am a long-time fan of the Civilization series. I first saw the original Civ at a friend's house when I was very young, but at the time, I had no computer and no prospects of getting one. However, the small bit of gameplay I saw intrigued me, and when I finally did get a computer of my own (something like six years later), Civilization II was the first game I bought. Played the hell out of, and out of Alpha Centauri (which totally came out of nowhere for me - I got it entirely on the recommendation of a store clerk - best advice I ever took), so when Civ3 was announced, it was a no-brainer. For a variety of reasons, I did not play it as much as the others.

My memory of the game is that it adds complexity over Civ2, but at the cost of not being nearly so polished. I remember being pretty frustrated by the resource system, even while liking it in theory. Overall, I have no particularly fond recollections of playing it, and a couple of bad ones. However, I last tried it a long time ago, and I've become a much better 4X player since, so it's possible that my impression of Civilization III is not an accurate one. I look forward to being pleasantly surprised.

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