I am a huge Civ fan, but I have not actually played Civ III.
I have played the rest of the series from the start; my personal favourite is Alpha Centauri where the whole thing just seemed to be atr perfect balance and with that slight obscure interest to it with the alien setting, but still with the basic Civ ideal.
They fully deserve their place as some of the most classic games of all time; Civ itself caused a major games revolution when it was released.
But my brother got Civ III and said he was disappointed with it. As I do not have infinite funds I did not risk buying it myself... sadly.
Never mind, still playing Alpha Centauri a lot anyway...
You have to remember that Civ games are not only turn-based, they are not games that you 'beat' as such, which makes them different to many strategy/resource games. You just play through and see how well you do. They are more like board games in that respect- unsurprisingly, as Civ was based on a boardgame of the same name (that I also have). Ironically, they are now making a DIFFERENT board game out of the computer game... hmm...
i haven't played civ III so much as to see if it really has some improovements.
I remember not liking something about call to power II. hmm..i think it was something of me attacking with tanks countries that hadn't discover gun powder yet....yes, that's it. Or was it the other way around. no matter..pretty bad tempo.