SHHHHHHH! Not so loud… You don’t want to bring the Wrath of Smart™ down on these boards, do you?
I’ve never played it except on the console, but I’ve heard it claimed that part of the problem is that the keyboard is digital, and you really need an analog interface for lots of the controls. The PC Vice City’s helicopters are said to be very hard to fly for just that reason; there’s no moderation; you go UP ! or DOWN !.
Tradeable resources were not a part of Civ II. That was first implemented in Civ III.
I must have missed it when that was ported to the PC. 
Nope. Civ II had bonus resources that made a particular tile more productive (which, I believe, was also in the original Civ) but the resources were not tradable, nor were specifc resources necessary to the production of certain units. This alone was a massive shift in the gameplay, as did the implementation of national borders and the concept of cultural conversions. I’m also not so sure what was so unfathomable about the combat system. Although, it does remind me of another innovation in that game, the great leaders. Not as huge a deal as the other factors I’ve mentioned, but still significant, especially after the second expansion.
Big Rigs must be metioned and underlined. Do not miss out on GameSpot’s very illustrative and funny video review:
Outpost sounds right.
Amazing cutscene graphics for the time but everything else was awful.
Hehe - having the most powerful nation in the world by far until you discover you have no oil or rubber, but your opponents are plenty. Took a bit of getting used to, that did
Reverting to the ‘my battleship has been destroyed while bombarding a Phalanx’ and 'my Mech Inf has been taken out by 3 Warriors" mode of Civ 1 was unfathomable to me. It stopped runaway victories by anyone getting too far ahead technologically, but it was damn frustrating.
What frustrated me personally about the combat system in Civ III was that weight of numbers would win the day almost every time, irrespective of technology levels. I played it for a couple of months, and repeatedly encountered this. The example that really sticks in my mind was this. I’d already achieved conscription, and so my border cities had 4-5 riflemen each, fortified behind city walls (I don’t think the walls had been obsoleted yet, but I could be wrong). My aggressive neighbor declares war, pours over the border with what must have been 20 chariots. These chariots roll up to my city and win.
Now, technology is not and should not be a guaranteed win - we’re all familiar with battles like Islandhwana. But chariots attacking riflemen in prepared defensive positions in a build-up area ought to be slaughtered 999 times out of 1000, and that just wasn’t the way the system worked in Civ III. I had that happen to me again and again, and it was frustrating enough that I gave up on the game. Civ IV improved on this, and while I still didn’t like the combat system - I just don’t want to have to pay that much attention to it - it at least made some sense to me.
Granted, because I loved Civ II so much I bought Civ III as soon as it was released, so I was playing it without benefit of patches. I wouldn’t put Civ III in the worst games ever category - it was just a significant disappointment after Civ II and SMAC.