Sid Meier's Civilization III

The Good
This game is deeper than the earlier ones without being harder to play. It has nifty things like unique units and special abilities to make each civilization different. It has many things that were sorely missing in Civ2, like better air unit handling and national borders.

The Bad
Despite all the great things in it, this game didn't grab me the way its predecessors (Civilization, Civ2, and Sid Maier's Alpha Centauri) did. It somehow lost that "just one more turn" feeling.

The Bottom Line
Despite its lineage and superficial similarities, this is not really a new version of the classic Civilization. For that, SMAC is still the best. This is a new game in the same genre. It has a lot of cool ideas and features, many of which can be accurately described as improvements, but the sum total of the change is enough to make it play so differently that liking its predecessors will give you much of a hint whether you'll like this one.