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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
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.
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