A demo? Compare with SMAC. Im not sure if I remember this correctly, but I believe there was a SMAC-demo a few short weeks (2-3?) before the game was available to buy in the stores. Civ-3 has no official release-date yet - perhaps in conjunction with the upcoming christmas - I dont know.
Anyway, read below from
THIS SOURCE:
Quote: "As with all Firaxis games fun is first so we are keeping some stuff and discarding others. So while the game is playing well and really fun we are still not ready to put it to bed. It is still changing regularly even though we reach new milestones every day. Most recently we have gotten the incredible new map generation system working beautifully and the terrain looking better than any we have ever seen.
We are also happy with the way the diplomacy and trade systems are working.
E3 will be the first public showing of the game so people will be seeing everything for the first time. We have refined and improved the light-hearted elements of Civilization and the depth of Civilization II - then added many new features we have gathered from years of player feedback to make Civilization III the best Civilization experience ever."
[This message has been edited by Ralf (edited May 18, 2001).]