Compared to Civ 2 Gold or Civ 2 ToT, the original release of Civ 3 was a joke. Hacked out multiplayer, modding was really hard to do (still rather hard to do, no convenient text files to edit
), combat is greatly screwed up in Civ 3 compared to how it was in Civ 2, lack of a scenario folder until one of the expansions, absurdity of how the resource system is set up (didn't find any iron or gunpowder? Too bad, you are screwed), those stupid cultural victories ruining otherwise good games, lack of the ability to use 4 maps in one game for different planets or different layers of a planet (or other ideas), lack of an events system, lack of most of the cool abilities added in Civ 2 ToT, and so on. Certainly, it has a few nice features, but they are far outweighed by the lack of the ones they cut out and the fact that you must spend a huge sum of money to buy the game and both expansions, even though there is really nothing new added in the expansions that was not in the Civ 2 expansions.
