Civilization 3: Conquests Expansion Pack

by Atari

Product Features

• Expansion pack for wildly popular strategy game
• Includes seven new civilizations
• New units, disasters, techs and wonders
• Plenty of new abilities and game options to explore
• For one or more players using LAN or Internet connection

Product Details

• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B00009THFF
• Media: CD-ROM
• Release Date: November 4, 2003
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (54 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #20,706 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)
  • #29 in Software > Outlet
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

Civilization III: Conquests takes you on a journey through the ages as you pursue victory through conquest!

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

133 of 136 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars How To Screw Up A Really Good Thing, February 12, 2004

By 

Blake Watson "===Blake===" (Winnetka, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Civilization 3: Conquests Expansion Pack (CD-ROM)

This is a GREAT expansion pack. Particularly if you skipped "Play The World" (as I did). There's more, more, MORE of everything, and enough interesting gameplay tweaks that it makes Civ 3 feel like a brand new game.

What makes it so good?

* New tribes to play. Or, perhaps more importantly, new tribes to play against. The Mayans can be a terror.

* New tribe attributes. Seafaring! Agricultural! OK, that doesn't sound that exciting, but it definitely has an impact on gameplay and strategy. Agricultural favors the AI such that the new Killer AI tribes are almost always those with the Ag trait, like the Celts.

* Boosted navy! Combined with the Seafaring, navy is still underpowered, but way better than before. On an archipelago map, seafaring can mean the difference between a breezy success and a slow slog.

* Boosted airforce! Bombardment in general is boosted, so everything from catapults to stealth bombers feels a little more useful.

* Fewer resources! Wait, fewer resources? Well, not fewer KINDS of resources. Just fewer all around. You either have to learn to play very nice with the AI or very mean.

* Entertaining scenarios! From the cradle of civilization to the 20th century, you can have your turn (sorta) re-enacting historical events. These can be fun, fast, intense, changes of pace from the epic game.

* New techs/wonders/governments! The unit-producing Statue of Zeus and Knights Templar are a hoot. The Temple of Artemis is amazingly powerful (but very short-lived). The Internet--well, like all the modern wonders, it seems a little too late. But it ain't bad. Fascism is a blast to play if you want to live out your Great Dictator fantasies, but you can see the AI self-destruct with it, too, unfortunately.

So, how was this Really Good Thing screwed up? Bugs! Bugs o' plenty! If you're a casual player, playing particularly on Chieftain or Warlord levels (maybe even Regent), you might not notice the bugs. Not at first, anyway. There are patches, oh, yes, there are patches, unofficial though they may be. But the situation seems to have arisen because the game was yanked out of public beta toward release-time, then tweaked and re-tested internally. Unfortunately, this game is too deep and often too subtle to be effectively tested by any in-house crew. Result? They managed to break trade, corruption and resource-distribution in the final release.

An official patch will eventually be released. Probably before the summer. Until then, you have the choice of living with bugs, or living with a beta patch (which might introduce its own bugs), or simply waiting to get the game.

There's an even more serious problem, really, underlying these changes. Trade is absolutely vital with the resource reduction. Either you find a way to trade, or you find a way to conquer, which may not be a play style you want to be forced into Every Single Game. The problem is, the trade and diplomacy systems are not sophisticated enough to meet this increased need. If you need iron, but it's all being traded, you can't offer the AI any incentive to trade it to you when the current deal is up. Those deals get made in-between turns, so you often don't have a shot.

So these fabulous changes are not only marred by bugs, the whole game creaks under them. And it's a long way to Civ 4.

352 of 376 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars ***Set Your Expectations***, November 5, 2003

By 

S. Harkleroad "coase" - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Civilization 3: Conquests Expansion Pack (CD-ROM)

I've only been playing this expansion for a few days, but I'm disappointed. Mostly by one thing: there's some misleadin' goin' on. For one thing, this expansion includes both the features from Play the World and the new items. This is OK; this was explicit in the product description. Unfortunately, it didn't differentiate between what is from PtW and what is in Conquests, so "five new Wonders" means "four new wonders--oh, and the one from PtW."

Fair enough. It isn't that big of a deal. But it also lists all kinds of things: you can trade salt! And exotic birds! And you can switch to the Tribal Council government! Except for one thing--whoops!--these are only available in the specific campaigns in the game. They do not show up on the normal game. This infuriates me, because quite frankly what's left ain't worth the thirty bucks I knew I'd regret putting down for this. The non-campaign specific features that are added aren't even close to being anything more than what should show up on a patch.

Firaxis has done this to me before, and I'm starting to feel like a punching bag. They do put out an excellent product, but they rake you over the coals with crap like this. (The Civilization III Gold pack--which had Civ III + PtW, but not this product--conveniently came out about a week before Conquests was announced. Thanks, guys!)

I'll be the first to admit that there's a handful of good things to come out of this. Two new government types (Feudalism and Fascism) are nice, though they don't seem to be much of an alteration of existing governments. New civilizations keep things interesting but are by no means all that impressive. The new civilization attributes (Agricultural and Seafaring) are kind of cool. I think the new specialists (Policeman and Civil Engineer) will be helpful, but I haven't been able to use them to their full potential yet. But that's it. Everything else that's new are just refinements and settings. The few things that are wrong with Civilization III are still wrong (lousy alliance AI, dragging end game, impossible-to-please diplomacy, inherent bias against any type of victory except bloodlust). I like the new additions. I don't like being fooled.

34 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Solid with a few minor flaws, November 20, 2003

By 

Matthew J. Rowland (Lees Summit, MO United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Civilization 3: Conquests Expansion Pack (CD-ROM)

I will start off by saying this is a solid expansion pack. Is it worth the money? I say, "maybe." It is definitely worth it if you don't already have PTW. Otherwise, I'd knock off 10 dollars. But anyway, on to the review!

The additions to this game are very nice indeed. The new civilizations are well balanced and very well thought out. They have their strengths and weaknesses of course. Two new civilization bonuses are now here: seafaring and agricultural. In my opinion, these SOUND weak on the surface, but they are very useful underneath; they are self-explanatory as well; one helps your ships and gives you extra commerce in the water, and the other lets you produce more food.

There are a few new units in the main game, the greatest addition being the TOW infantry in the Modern Age, with an attack of 12 and defense of 14. The best thing about them? This unit is in the Warrior-upgrade line; meaning, your swoardmen/med. Infantry/guerillas can be upgraded to units that humble the 16.8.2 Tank. (Note: they have a bonus against armored units, but Modern Armor still outclass them when the MA attacks).

I have a few complaints: The AI still cheats. Those who play the game know what I'm talking about. Also, new wonders (and a few other ones), and new city improvements do not show up when you take a bird's eye view of an individual city. The maximum allotted time to research techs has been increased from 34 to 50! That's insane. There's nothing worse than researching a tech in the first age and waiting now sometimes 50 turns. Spearmen are still too powerful. I can't explain this, but Civ III vets will agree: I have never seen a unit with such a lousy defense rating destroy so many good offensive units as the damn Spearman. I swear I've had more Tanks destroyed by spearmen than infantry. I understand the paper/rock/scissors for determining who wins each "round," but you'd think Firaxes would include modifiers for units that are, say, 2 complete ages ahead of the other.

But the main complaint I have is the lack of information regarding the new units, buildings, wonders, resources, etc. I was really excited to hear there were about 10 new resources to trade. Unfortunately, these are limited to the scenarios and are even very difficult to add into your own scenarios. In scenarios, whether a pre-created one or one you create, you no longer can build your palace, and the bird's eye view is completely gone. These are oversights that are annoying at most, but still...

Overall, this is a great game. Hopefully they will have a patch soon that will address some of the minor annoying things that can get in the way of an overall enjoyable playing experience.