I've been playing at least six hours a day since purchasing the game on Tuesday. I've got nothing but love for it--might go down in history as one of the great strat games of all time. I probably spent the equivalent of entire days of my life on CivI and CivII, and I would honestly love nothing more than to do the same with CivIII.
In my previous games I never saw much combat, as I fell so far behind in the tech race that I just threw in the towel after roughly an hour of play. Tonight, however, I finally came to realize the necessity of trading technology with other civs. And it payed dividends in my warlord level game. I was running equal to my two main competitors (the Babylonians and the Greeks) in military tech and ahead of them in the political field and wonder race(I had republic--they didn't. I had Pyramids, Hanging Gardens, Colossus). And so it was actually with great a sense of euphoria that I plunged headlong in to war after a Greek settler kept marching across my land. I was looking forward to a long, drawn out struggle, winning some and losing some, taking cities and maybe losing a few. Alliances and counter-alliances. All in all, a glorious campaign to serve as my baptismal conflict in CivIII.
Well.....
Greek spearman vs. my veteran horsemen unit(fortified in mountains)=My loss, with spearman unit's health barely edging into yellow.
Greek warrior vs. My elite spearman unit fortified in city with walls=My win. However, spearman unit has a tiny sliver of red left on health bar. Same enemy turn a horsemen unit destroys said spearman with no apparent loss of health.
At least two battles with horsemen vs. my veteran horsemen (and yes, one in which the Greeks did attack across a river. In both instances, my units were dispatched with virtually no health loss to the opposing units.
And so on and so on. Eight or nine seperate battles total, and I (the defender often fortified behind city walls with equivalent military techs) lost all but two of them. The thing that is so completely ridiculous is that most of these battles were not even close!
I have read a post by Soren Johnson on one of the boards (here or Apolyton) claiming that the A.I. doesn't cheat until regent level difficulty. Huh-uh. There is no other plausible explanation for these ridiculous outcomes save one--the combat algorithms are massively screwed up. Either way, the discrepancies in combat results coupled with the corruption mess make for an experience more frustrating than fun.
I'll have my life back for a while...because I'm not playing CivIII until this is fixed...