Sid Meier's Civilization® III Complete

Must be played at a lower resolution leading to many crashes.

This entry into the franchise has some of the most polarizing randomness and baffling game balance I have seen.
For a whole quarter of the game, the Swordsman is the only unit that reaches attack 3, where you can finally attack into a standard defender with acceptable odds. Swordsmen also come with defense 2, placing them even with said standard defenders. Since swordsmen require iron to produce, it leaves you with a perilous issue: once you discover iron, you might as well quit if you can't reach any of it.
World wonders are already an aggravating concept that the Civilization franchise loves, where once one player builds a very fancy pyramid, nobody else can get the benefits of a very fancy pyramid. This can be annoying, or in Civilization 3, it can straight up win the game. If anyone else gets the Statue of Zeus, you might as well quit, since fighting through the flood of 3/2/2 (as tough as a swordsman, but faster! and with a trait that makes them get more health, so they overperform for their stats.) units it makes is impossible even through later eras.
The empire building is less satisfying than later entries, since most buildings are useless, and any city that's not in the small ring around your capital will struggle to produce anything heavier than a daisy chain. You will need to build every city you can fit though, since if you don't take that land someone else will.
The baffling game balance does not stop in the ancient era. Units like the bomber can wipe out an army, ruin a countryside, and blast a city to smithereens from an unreachable distance. Once an empire is covered in railroad, it's impossible to make progress attacking it, and they will have enormously higher industrial capacity than anyone else since their tiles are all giving extra food or production.
There's more to say, but I don't know about it, since I saw enough in just a few attempts at playing.

Love it! It's easier than Civ VI. Haven't tried VII yet

It's just like I remember it. There are some things you need to fix before playing this game, sadly.

Resolution is wrong for modern systems.
1. Browse the game local files.
2. Find the folder Conquests and open it.
3. Find the file named conquest.ini and open it with notepad.
4. Add KeepRes=1 at the bottom of the file and save.
5. Start the game and enjoy normal resolution

Into movie is kinda broken.
1. Find the file named conquest.ini from before and open it with notepad.
2. Add PlayIntro=0 at the bottom of the file and save.
3. Start the game. Now the Intro won't be playing.

When you open diplomacy, there is a sound bug.
1. Go to https://www.indirectsound.com/
2. Download the file and browse the game local files.
3. Find the folder Conquests and open it.
4. Extract the dsound.ini and dsound.dll into the Conquests folder.
5. Start the game and the sound bug is now fixed.

Enjoy the full experience with this old great classic game on modern systems.

Maybe it's just nostalgia, but this is where Civ began and peaked for me. The aesthetics and the gameplay is unmatched. I'm not as big of a fan of modern Civ as every one else seems to be. This game is just so excellent. I will pour hours into this so easily. I honestly love this game with my whole heart. Playing this with my friend when I was younger is such a good memory for me. Love it.

Still the best after all these years. I'm sure there are great things about the newer ones but none have struck my fancy like this one.

I played this game since before I lost my virginity. Launching it and playing it for few minutes, felt exactly like losing it once again. Why can't civ 7 be like civ 3?

It's hard to believe this game is more than 25 years old now, I have been playing it since I was just 7 years old and have been hooked to the 4X genre ever since. For me, CIV 3 is one of the best civilization games out there(second only to CIV 4 which builds on 3 in every way). Why could this be the case when 5, 6 and 7 appear to have so many more features and are graphically way more appealing? I'm not sure why this game hooks me harder than the newer ones, but if I had to guess it would be its simplicity.

At first the game feels a bit overwhelming and confusing, the newer titles don't give the player too many opportunities to make mistakes that could mess up their entire nation, but CIV 3 allows the player to make basically whatever decision they want, whether its for good or for worse. Want to build your cities stupidly close together? Go for it. Want to recklessly stack troops wherever you please across the map? No ones stopping you, except for maybe the mediocre AI. Units especially are extremely easy to build in this title and have low upkeep, which means you can build massively sprawling armies to destroy your enemies. This led to people complaining about "stacks of doom" which were removed in CIV 5. But I truly believe that the "off rails" experience CIV 3 provides is superior in its own way.

The game doesn't cap how you build your armies, the game doesn't stop you from having too many cities, the game doesn't have overly complex diplomacy systems, or complicated cultural management, or stupid city-states(why do people like these so much?). It is simple but without its limits and that is what makes CIV 3 so special. No other modern 4X game can match that experience because now it is all about providing the best new features, with the best graphics and overly complicated game-play mechanics. Instead these newer titles should focus on refining the creative sandbox of what it meant to build your own civilization from the ground up, without doing so, they will never touch CIV 3 for me and the unique experience it continues to provide.

Ugh, it feels good to just dial it back for a bit in a world of overly complicated mechanics and graphics-focused games.
Just found this today on sale for a whole .99 cents and couldn't pass up on it.
Just like most of the rest of the community who play Civ, I did in fact load this and its older siblings up into my Dell with the CDs and vanished from the world for ages. I only had about 70 mins before this review but that's all I needed to be able to say it plays perfectly and is a wonderful purchase for its price for those of us that have loved the early days of Civ and society builders; and would like to revisit it.
Newcomers; just understand where the guts and core of the game are pure, the graphics are dated of course as it was released in 2001. There's no real "Hey! This is how you play!" you just kinda have to go with it and use the codex to dig deeper into solutions.
Cant wait for this to be my newest cozy game for when i need to just relax and revisit the golden years.

Screen resolution was messed up, making game unplayable. Tried many different ways on Google to remedy, none worked.

Got refund. Very disappointed.

Spent probably thousands of hours on this back in the day. The best way to describe it? Like an autistic child given complete freedom… to the point of insanity.

As a title older than me, it's off course far more simple than the newer titles, Civ IV, Civ V and Civ VI.
But I like the experience old games give to me. So I gave it a try for a couple hours, and thats it. May be worth for 1$, depends on how you look at the old games. Don't compare with newer titles, do not expect more content, better gameplay or something.

I love this game so much, my dad played it, now me, i've been playing it since 3 years old, i'm 17 now, its an amazing game and will always stay with me, its just perfected, the newer ones feel too cartoony and i hate that, this is the best one. if you want to have fun in the civilization franchise, buy Civ III.

EDIT:
I dont only have 423 hrs, i play on 3 different accounts, 3.4k hours in total (reminder, its the best game ever)

doesnt work with ubuntu operating system

I have played all the civilization games from the first one to the 6th. The third one is probably my favourite. The AI isn't the best, fair enough, but it's not too complicated like the more recent versions of the game.

People call civ 4 the ultimate classic civ, but honestly, civ 4 is more of a weird inbetween than it is a true classic game (which IS why it's the best one) This however, is probably the best true classic civ game. CIV 1 and 2 are really fucking old and dont really even run on modern systems, and their UI is nightmarishly old. this game was the first one to have a functional UI, and somehow, is still better than civ 7's on launch despite being from 2001. it's also extremely moddable.

I played the heck out of this game 20 yrs ago, staying up way too late. Just bought it again, civ3=1/good nights rest=0. whoo hoo!! lets take over the world!!!

Honestly, I never got into CIV IV & V, III is just my style of retro pixel-y graphics, combined with stupid bugs & mechanics. Yes sometimes the mechanics are opaque, and difficult to understand, but simultaneously, it is a shockingly deep game that is hard to match. Personally, I find the easier difficulties much more relaxing, and have lost an entire night to a playthrough several times so far. 10/10

dont buy this damn game my friend loaded into a russian server at 3am and we tried to play together and it messed with out computers now my intel core processor has diabolical aids.

Worst Civ in my opinion, and this version is super buggy.

Just the best turn based strategy/ empire building game ever.

Also the best version ...

Play this game if you want to know what it feels like to be colonized!

Very nostalgic S-tier civ game 10/10 go re-live your childhood and buy it already

This is the peak of Civilization, I say this as a completely unbiased person. We have MILF Montezuma and GI Jeanne d'Arc, stacks of 20 spearmen treading through nuclear waste, railroad spaghetti so good it'll make your toes curl, man's first interpretation of facial micro- sorry, macro-expressions, ... This game is the meme that keeps on giving and I will forever cherish it. ♥️

It's also legitimately fun to play, not just funny. I found Civ 6 so bloated and busy with its many menus and DLCs that it sort of turned me off. I was surprised to return to this fossil of a game and then have more fun with it overall. Civ 3 also has a couple of features that aren't in the series anymore, like having a city view, designing your palace, the civ leaders and your advisors having a wardrobe update every era, ... it has spirit, it's a vibe.

Great game. Very simple compared to later editions. Very addictive.

Would rate "Just one more turn" / 10.

great little time waster that you can play at your own pace

Civ III is one of my all time favorite games. While I've enjoyed the whole sequence, Civ II and Civ III are still the best.

a classic for sure. been playing since the 00's on and off

Game is broken, failed to work on Linux and Windows 10 with config change.

This remains my favorite version of Civ. still fun and addictive after all these years!

Simple game, uses a lot of time and I have time to kill. Need to do some tactical and strategic thinking but not over much. Just Playable.

I love this game! It is an amazing turn-based strategy game, starting at the dawn of civilization and ending in 2050. It is a perfect blend of obsessiveness and strategy, and not as expensive as the later civilization games.

Probably one of the best turn based games ever besides BG3 and DOS2

great way to kill time

Oldie but Goodie!

It's very nostalgic. You have to take your time to destroy your opponent.

like game play

Playability / Enjoyment 6/10
Graphics / Sound 2/10
Woke / ESG score 0/10
Story / Writing 2/10
Replayability 8/10

The best thing about this Civ version is how fast it plays. Being a lot simpler than the later games, you do not have to wait ages for each turn to pass. The simplicity also is an enjoyment benefit, as some of the later games (Civ 6) traded fun for complexity in my opinion.

Great game and still one of my favorite Civilization games.

So good it's addicting

Cannot find the edit feature.

Of all the Civ games III is still my favorite; it has the right mix of features without being clunky and unweildy.

Fully does not work on Windows 11. After fiddling around with the game files and even installing a mod to get it to simply open properly, upon trying to load any map the game just freezes permanently. Perhaps there is an arcane way to get past this hurdle as well, but I'm struggling to justify the effort. As it is this game should come with a warning that it is not expected to function on current operating systems.

Great game

Great experience. Some History education as well

Best of the Civ series. Sometimes simple and to the point is better.

great

The best Civ game. Follow Suede on youtube he has great videos on the game

always

Old but gold, is a bit of a pain to get work properly though.