Civilization III; Firaxis balked at fixing the fundamental flaw of the series: micromanagement in the form of unit movement. Every unit must have orders, at some point given by the player, and every turn the player is forced to watch them move. Even the automated workers; they removed the "don't zoom to units with orders" preference from Alpha Centauri. Now turns can last for up to five minutes without the playing doing anything.
Why can't a player make as few decisions as he/she pleases? The civilization's ascent should be controlled by broad choices, with the player micromanaging when needed. While Firaxis took this approach in the form of "governors", they are a pain to customize, next to useless because of this and there is no way you can turn them off, at least in the unpatched version.
Firaxis lying about its multiplayer capabilities was the harbinger of the game's quality, which, even patched, remains at beta. Relative to the hype surrounding it, it is perhaps one of the worst games ever released... though it does beat the **** out of that farce known as Call to Power.
