I most definitly miss the videos of Civ 2. The music for some of them was really cool. And the council was alright. Afterall you could always turn them off if you didn't want them. Personally I was let down by the splashed in Civ 3. I never had a factor of "awe" when i saw the CGI, as opposde to the awe i recieves when i built, say, the Pyramids in Civ 2. Of course i was younger, but still, I think the videos added production value to the package. It gave the gamer something interesting to really draw him into the world of the game, especially if he was a first time player. There's something personal about having a council talking to you, and ambient about the videos, as though you're there. Sadly, i feel these conveyances are absent from Civ 3. It's too easy to just look at the splash and think, oh, this is a computer game. Dont get me wrong, I'm not dillusional about the fact it's a computer game, but, still, we play these games to help us escape from the world at large and I feel the videos in civ 2 helped us do that and the "splashes" in civ 3 are detremental thereof.
