So I've never played Civ III. I've played 1, its clunky but a classic. I've played 2, its far less clunky and is rather amazing what they did, but have heard little or seen of Civ III. People seemed to just walk over it.

FreeCiv is a relatively decent replacement for Civ 2, with some rather nice graphics.

Damn OP. you had me excited thinking GOG had gotten these games. I will continue waiting for that deal in silence.

You can get a bundle with III & IV and expansions DRM-Free at Amazon. I bought it a few week ago, ripped it to my hard drive, and ran the installer from my hard drive with no issues. I think they had a Civ II bundle as well.

Not in but I liked and played Civilization III quite a lot, I don't really understand why it is so unappreciated compared to the other ones as I can find little to be wrong about it.

I was a HUGE fan of both Sid Meier's Civilization 1 and 2. Then came Activision, with their Call to Power. What a mess.

But soon afterwards there was this small team, Firaxis I think, that came out with the wonderful Alpha Centauri - the true new Civilization, if you ask me.

I forgot the brand, for a while. Actually, after Alpha Centauri, I didn't think I would need a new Civilization - hell, that's a perfect game!

I skipped Civ 3 and 4. I have Civilization 5, just because I got it free (there was this promotion "vote and get Civ 5 or Mafia 2). I even bought the 2 expansions, just to have a "complete game", and I played it a little. It felt different, obviously, but I liked it!

Now I'm really curious, I would like to know how the brand evolved. I will buy Civ 3 and 4, probably, when I will have more money and time to play.

If you spare me the first, I won't cry ;)

It may only be under-appreciated here in this thread. The game and its expansions sold well. The modding community is still vibrant though so many years having passed, and despite the release of two successors. When Civ4 came out, a significant number of players tried it, then went back to Civ3.

People will disagree, and people will hold different opinions of what they personally like; but i watched this all go down on the nets biggest Civ site and i think it safe to say that Civ3 was generally well received, post-patch.

Sorry about not being back at 3PM yesterday, small family emergency (all is ok).

PM sent to "winner." My apologies to others that may have wanted it.

The winner being me :) thank you very much, OldFatGuy. I'll let you know what I think about this game!


edit: OldFatGuy is so awesome that he gifted to me a copy of Civ4, too. All hail the Old, Fat, Koala!

Civ 3 is a bit like Call to Power. I liked both a lot, part of my all time favorites.

Civ 4 is the most complex game of the series, completely different from 5 because you have these stacks of units running around and also different from 3 because of less cities and unit promotions.
It's not really unappreciated. Many people say it's the best Civ ever, other say it isn't. It just means that it is a good Civ and this means that it's a superb strategy game and I fully support this notion.

It may be a bit old nowadays. A true heroic classic that has aged a bit. In principle prime material for GOG.

+1 to OldFatGuy!

I have played Civilization 3 more than any other game from the Civilization series. I also have it on Steam but it says it only works on Windows 2000 or XP.

One thing that annoyed me in Civ 3 was the fact that after building or conquering a lot of towns the productivity in those towns was very low because of corruption.
The production was represented by some blue shields and it was minimum (1). The farther the towns from the capital, the worse the production. I understand corruption but from 18 shields only 1 to be used....... oh please.

Congrats, GoatBoy. Hope you'll enjoy the game.

I played Civ3 when it was released and it was ok but I never loved it. Then I was in love with Civ4 which was a major improvement for me but I wasn't deeply involved with it. And then Civ5 appeared and became my #2 gaming title of all time, making me a serious civfanatic.

So I actually just dropped by to tell everyone that going back (at least for a short period) from newer Civ to some older iteration is absolutely possible and even enjoyable, because right now I'm playing Civ3Complete and its a blast.

i totally agree that the Corruption mechanic of Civ3 was poorly done. It's purpose was to reduce Infinite City Sprawl, but they went too far. Fortunately it is very easy to mod a fix with the Editor. Just add the Corruption Reducing flag to some existing buildings -no need to be a modder, just check some boxes. Or go even deeper and create new small wonders and such (like add a Judicial District which requires 3 Courthouses for every district). Or just download some mods which already address it.

It is the Pollution mechanic which i dislike the most! All it does is make work, adds Nothing to strategy. Corruption at least adds another layer of thinking to the game. But Pollution is fixable also.

Hey, thanks for that, I didn't know I can adress the coruption issue by using the Editor. I was ok with the pollution :).

By any chance do you know if the Steam version of Civ 3 works on Win 7 64?

Heh, I got both versions but have never, not once, started 3 so not sure why I got both for Steam, but I'm running Win 7 64 and I'm gonna go crank on my gaming rig and give it a go right now and see if it will run.

Let you know in a few minutes.