One for the purists (Civilisation III (PC))

Member Name: alexlea88

Product:	Civilisation III (PC)
Date:	15/05/09 (3 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Depth, amount of detail

Disadvantages: You really need to put the hours into making sure you play it well

I really don't know what to make of this game. I'm a big fan of god or real time strategy games, but this one has me perplexed.

The game looks great, is pretty straightforward to mater the basics, but the general way it runs leaves more down to luck that real strategy. Maybe I'm not investing enough time and effort into it, but I get the feeling that there's so much there, that I need to really sit down and spend ages agonising over each move.

It occured to me a while back that instead of trying to keep the other races in the dark, that if I was really diplomatic and exchanged technology, then I'd reach the more exciting ages quicker (which was the case) as it seemed to get to 2066 and give up. Again, maybe I wasn't giving it enought time. Also, the AI seemed to bimble along for a while, then start getting really annoying and gamging up on me and declaring war. I'd spend precious time trying to fight them off or appease them when I should be advancing technology.

And in terms of my cities, I didn't get the way that sometimes your citizens became unhappy, it didn't seem to follow a particular path. I just clicked around a bit and everythign seemed to settle down.

Like I said, I was probably not giving it enough time and should have sat down and really taken it all in. The whole premise if great, but the turn based gameplay gets a bit annoying (especially when you have multiple units moving). There really shoudl be a quick play mode where you can just get stick straight in.

If you like resource amanagement games, then I'm sure this will be your cup of tea. As for me, I think i'll have to resign to being stuck somewhere between resource management and real-time strategy: needed more depth in my RTS game, but not wanting to put the time and effort into making sure I'm playing the game as best as I can!

Summary: Not a pick up and play game - set aside the time to master