Is there any reason to want Civ III if you have Civ IV? I'm asking because Civ III is only $2.49 on sale at Steam until later on today and I was thinking of picking it up unless its just redundant given I own the newer one.

The main reasons one might want to get it are either nostalgia or novelty (i.e. you want to play Civ, but something just a bit different from Civ IV). In terms of mechanics Civ IV is superior in pretty much every way, and Civ III has certain aspects that can be quite annoying (trying to manage corruption/waste for any decently-sized empire, and having to constantly clean up pollution in the late game).

It is a complete different gaming experience as all for every part.

In my opinion, IV is currently still the best, but I know a lot of other people prefer III.

Give it a go, if you don't like it, it was just $2.49 :)

wouldn't call to power 2 be a better choice if you want something different

I think polloution was a nice game mechanic.... I always used it to downsize enemy cities and just take them over easily later :)

It has been awhile since I've played it, but I remember enjoying Civ III more than IV.
I recommend it. It is different enough from IV that you won't feel like you have two versions of the same game.

That sounds good. Thanks for all the feedback guys.

Now, does it run okay with Windows 7 64 bit? The Steam store page is saying Win 2k/XP (only) but that isn't always accurate.

I ran it on Win 7 x64 and I don't remember having to do anything special to get it to run.

EDIT: Bear in mind that I have the CD version. I imagine that the Steam version is the same though, except the CD version does a CD check on startup.

[url=][/url][url=][/url][url=][/url][url=][/url][url=][/url] I haven't had any problems running Civ 3 on Windows 7 x64.
However, the game was originally locked to a default resolution, which you might find bothersome. (1024x768 I think)
You can change that by adding a line to one of the .ini files.
More info can be found in this thread: http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=885318

Cool. Thanks very much all. I am going to pick it up. It looks like a steal for the low price. :-)

I bought Civ3 Complete from GamersGate, and it played okay on my Win7 64bit machine, even though the game's info page state that it wouldn't run on Win7. There have been reports from people who couldn't get it installed (and in one case we couldn't solve the problem), so there may be risk. Even for me, the installation wasn't flawless; the installer asked me to insert a CD. But I simply pointed it to the directory of the downloaded files, and the installer then closed. The game itself worked fine for me though.

Regarding the original question: Civ3 is an enjoyable game in its own right. As others mentioned, it does have some game mechanics that can be quite frustrating, but for the current price, I'd recommend it too. :)

I just got out of bed to write this.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Definitely get Civ III. Personally, I think it is the superior game by a mile (over Civ IV and V). I wouldn't recommend Call to Power and SMAX, those two can be a little primitive in terms of mechanics (especially the latter).

Civ III is to me the best game mechanically. If you need help with any aspect of the game, head over to Civfanatics.com and there are lots and lots of guides there explaining every single game mechanic.

The game crashes for me occasionally (Win 7 64bit) on both machines that I play it on, but this is fairly infrequent (maybe once in ~10h of gameplay).

And yes, for that price it's an absolute steal!

Thanks for climbing out of bed and your comments! Consider it done! I just bought the game. Now it is time for me to climb into bed! I have a bad habit of being up all night.

Does someone know about mods for Civ3? I really enjoyed some of the big mods for Civ4 I have tried so far (Rise of Mankind: A New Dawn, Fall from Heaven + Rise from Erebus), and maybe there are some awesome mods for Civ3 as well which provide additional diversity.

There are, absolutely. :)

I think the most popular "expansion" type mod (i.e. a mod that adds more techs, units, buildings etc. while staying close to the original design principles of the game) was called "Rise and Rule". There was also a fantasy themed mod ("Master of Myrror") that I enjoyed quite a lot. But the modding community for Civ3 was huge, it's hard to pick out single mods. Check the subforums in the Civ3 modding section of CivFanatics for the largest selection of Civ3 mods.