I know this game was finished, like, a year and a half ago... but I just have to say:
WOW!!!
That game was SO impressive, Bamspeedy - and not only that, it was also educational: I learnt a LOT of new strategies and got a LOT of cool ideas for my next game just from reading it!
A comment on the obvious AI problem in civ3 - I really hope that with civ4 we'll actually get some DECENT AI!!! (Reading the info articles about it, Soren and the team SAY that the AI will be much better in civ4... I certainly hope that isn't just the normal pre-release hype!!!) I've noticed that the problem with the civ3 AI is that, as you've made REALLY obvious by your "Beyond Sid" game, they don't actually get any smarter as the difficulty level goes up!!
All that happens is that they just get a few bonuses (or in this case, a massive amount of bonuses
)... but they STILL make the SAME fundamental blunders as they do in CHIEFTAIN!!!
I mean, you can always play multiplayer with humans (lately I've been doing a bit of this for a challenge)... but the problem with that is 'proper' games (no quick-victories, and a decent sized map) take SOOOOOOOOO much time, and frequently because of this they never make it out of the Ancient era, let alone make a start on the other three!!!