Do NOT buy this game if you have any reason to leave your house. If you have a job or a social life or a friend then leave this game on the shelf and reach for something that won't suck your free time into the limitless, gaping hole of addiction that is Civ 3.
I'm not joking. Put it back. Don't do it. Think of your family. They might want to see you again one day. Your mother will be crying as the police drag you, kicking and screaming, from your computer to the rehabilitation centre.
There is hope for those who are follish enough to try it once. Some of us have made it out the other side, and are satiating our desperate thirst with a diet of console games, but deep down in our hearts, we are jealous of those still there, at their computers, thin and weak, having not slept in a month.