adventure

This is an incredibly absorbing and eerily lifelike game. When I made a deal with England knowing it was only to buy time so that I would attack them I actually felt guilty.

Some answers to the critics here... Boooring obviously never learned how to play. He should try researching and changing to a more productive form of government. Tank loses to spearmen. Actually that's rare but not unheard of in real life, too and he needs to remember that, although it's represented as a single figure each unit represents a squadron and a badly damaged squadron of tanks might well fall to a health squad of spearmen if they're smart enough to get inside their range and swarm them.

There are a lot of improvements over previous Civ's making the game worth buying. Particularly better trade, better graphics, many more diplomacy options, significant civilization style, attribute and strength differences.

Brickbats.
In many ways the port to Mac is REALLY bad carrying over all the Windows quirks and inconsistencies instead of porting it to a true Mac application e.g. writing their own dropdowns, eliminating the Mac menu and creating their own (with options missing) not using real windows, taking over the whole screen etc...

This game is so good that sooner or later you're going to want the upgrades, Conquests and Play the World and the likelyhood is that you won't be able to get them on the Mac.

Well the game is pretty cool, but there are a couple of problems i have faced:
1. the game speed is pretty slow, and i have a new computer, powerbook g4, and something like 500 MB(?) of space.

2. You cannot move your guy without holding down the 'fn' key in the lower left hand corner of the keyboard, because the game interprets the left arrow on a G4 powerbook as being a 'page up' key. What i have had to do is just use the mouse keypad for everything involving movement.

other than that, if you got a normal keyboard, the game should be cool. So definetly get this game if you have a desktop, and if you don't mind pointing and clicking, try your luck with a laptop.

If you are using Mac OS X and you want to play Civilization, you want to play Civ III. (Alpha Centauri used to be my favorite "Civ", but it doesn't work as well in OS X/Classic.)
There are enough variables that this game can keep you occupied for months! Because of the way the game is designed, if playing one tribe gets boring, try playing a different on instead. Each tribe has its own advantages and disadvantages.
If you are intimidated by all the variables and complexities, don't give up. Save your game frequently, and if you start losing, you can always replay from an earlier save! This also gives you the advantage of being able to see where your opponents and the resources are. Or try the faqs online on websites like gamefaqs.com. (matt123456789 from Granite Bay, if you still have your copy, try the faqs.)