I started my first game as the Iroquois on a large map, with roaming barbs, standard world settings, and at the warlord difficulty. I had originally said I would go for regent or whatever, but after hearing all the reports of people who were able to play before me, I decided to go a little easier.

I founded my capital, Salamanca, near a river (no flood plains) with 3 wheats and 2 spices nearby (1 in my radius). I thought it was great luck. I started exploring with my scout and built a warrior for defense. My worker was sent to irrigate the wheat, build a road to one of the spices and around to my next city's location. I built a temple while waiting for my city to reach 3 pop and then built a settler.

(Since I'm writing from memory, this report might not be be too detailed.)

Generally I kept the same or similar build order in all of my cities, and I must say the computer learns fast from your preferences and will automatically change from say a warrior to a temple.

After my second city was built, my explorer found the Americans south of me on my continent. We traded techs and later after he had mapmaking we traded maps. The northern part of the continent is roughly oval shaped and attached to the Americans part by a strip about a city radius wide.

I concentrated on building cities on my part and the Americans beat me to the strip between us. I received a few techs from goody huts and a conscipt warrior. The barbarians were fairly active and they are fun to hunt down. If you dont hunt them down they constantly send units at your city a couple at a time. I never lost a battle against them though probably due to the level and the fact that they are conscript. My conscipt warrior won and became regular.

My problems: I can't research fast enough. I think my next game I will go for libraries first. Normally in Civ 2, my research is faster than I can build improvements, but in this game I've actually built barracks in most cities and have started pumping out combat units for no particular reason. More on this later...

The Americans: After I traded maps, I found the Americans had 9 cities to my 6. This concerned me, I had realized at one point that I wasn't expanding fast enough because I had become distracted. My capital easily had grown to size 9 though while all of the American cities were size 2 or 3. Some of their cities were not well placed (probably level again).

So I had some choices to make. Do I go for Monarchy and hope for better science and such, or go for Horseback Riding and build my Mounted Warriors? I went for Horseback Riding. Luckily I had two horse resources in one of my northern cities. (By the way my continent is in the Northern Hemisphere so the northern coastline is really useless as far as growing cities. Mostly mountains and tundra.) Right before I got Hb Riding, Abe started smarting mouthing off at me, even though they were in awe of my culture. He said he wanted Philosophy, "Don't think of it as paying tribute, think of it as contributing to world peace."

That was a big mistake for him because I couldn't build ships yet and had no more good city sites. So asap I built vet Mounted Warriors in all of my cities. With about 7 or 8 of them and a few spearmen for defense I rode down to the border (I even got an Elite from hitting a barb, I didn't think that would be possible.) So I declared war. I figured it was bound to happen eventually and I might as well start it while I had an advantage with my Mounted Warriors, which my foreign advisor said the Americans were afraid of. I didn't really need anything other than more cities. I had found an Iron deposit near one of my cities, so the only really interesting city the Americans had was deep in their territory with around 4 dye. (I really like how resources are clumped together and unpredictable.)

My boys easily took the first two American cities (Detroit and Chicago I think). They were relatively poorly defended and size 2 or so. I took control and they settled down only one turn later, I'm sure because they were so small. So I just kept marching forward. It had been so easy that any fears I had about conquest were slipping away. Then, I surrounded Miami. I swept in with my Mounted Warriors against their Spearman... and all of my units lost. I think they have 2 spearmen and a barracks since they heal so fast. Fortunately, my horsies have two movement and withdrew before dying.

This is when I had to stop. I wish had more time to play, but I might not see it (more time) until this weekend. So my plan now is to take my units back and heal them, then return for another assault. It may be Miami, but I might skirt around some of their frontline cities in hope of taking a more poorly defended city. I could even bring my forces to bear on Washington...

Well, I'm going to make some additions to my rambling story.

First, I'm a little surprised, after reading other's stories, that I haven't taken over any American cities via culture. Do the borders have to expand while touching for this to happen, or are the chances less definable. The reason I bring this up is that I had one city next to Chicago with the Oracle and a temple. I built three wonders in all. The Pyramids are in my capital and the Collosus is in my number 2 city. I also entered into my Golden Age with the building of the Collosus, which happened about a turn before my first mounted warrior's battlefield promotion. I wish I knew how to take full advantage of a golden age.

I also wish my research allowed me to take full advantage of the Iroquois. Granted building a temple in my cities was real easy. But I just wish there were more religous buildings out there that I could pump out.

My next game will be with a civ with a middle ages UU I think. Though with my research it might not be too effective. I 'm around 200 AD and still in Ancient times.

Me think you did a good job for the first game... My first game was, well, let's not talk about that !
Just two points :
- expand fast... why do you need one 9-city when you can have four 3-cities instead ?
- don't do full-scale attacks : it's waaaay easier to defend then to attack.

Thanks for the feedback, Diety.

My plan which I'm still working on was to build two settlers in each city, so my growth would be double with each new generation. Like this: 1,3,7,15,...

Unfortunately, it's hard for me to stick with this in Civ3. I suppose I should change it, since some cities grow slowly, while others like my capital in this example grow without bounds almost. It would have been quicker for my new cities to just concentrate on production, while my bigger cities took care of all the expansion.

In other games, I've had a lot of problems defending so I don't totally agree with the other part of your post. Particularly against the Aztecs. They just send a horde of Jaguars and archers, that walk behind my lines destroying stuff until I'm too weak to defend anything. My method in dealing with them from now on, is cripple them before they cripple me, even if they don't start agressive.

I've noticed research is alot harder than it used to be, it almost seems like there is some built-in restrictions to it...I seriously doubt that I will ever be rolling over phalanx with tanks again, unless the civ involved never bothered to upgrade them.

I find that massive attacks actually are the only way to go, converse to Diety. If you are going to wage war, you must do it whole hog to have a chance of holding what you've gained. That and sometimes it is better to raze a city than lose 10 troops when it converts back to its old civilization (yeah, you LOSE all your troops in a city when it converts back, very annoying, it would be nice if you had an option to crush the resistance or something, especially if you outnumber troops to civilians by 3:1!) This can happen even if you have cultural superiority. :(

Wars have to be fought with extreme care...if you cannot hold your gains destroy them so that the enemy will not get them back...if you have a potshot at an enemy worker or attack unit (something with a low defense) take it. Always try to cut his roads to the front with bombardment, its really easy to get swamped and cut off from reinforcements in enemy territory especially now since units always attack with full strength regardless of movement. Bring up your own well protected settlers and workers to increase your in-roads...else see a neutral civilization plant cities in all the lands that you've opened for colonization.

Make sure you have a solid treasury, you'll need it to build temples, defenders, barracks, etc. in all the towns that you found or capture...that or take his workers and use them to rush build in Despotism or Communism.

Demand the moon for peace, unless you are losing...oftimes you can get a good deal (like all his techs, gold, resources and a city) if you are ahead of him...

Lastly if you are waging war under Republic, get luxuries from everyone else that you can trade with, anything to hold off your own people rebelling...then make peace after you make a few conquests, wait a few turns to build up those cities and proceed to press on...this keeps your people from open rebellion.

Of course on higher difficult levels I dunno if a war strategy is possible, especially if you are the sole combatant on your side, but you can convince/coerce rivals into fighting each other, its just very expensive from what I've seen.