Its all about borders.

[dizidave]

Slightly dramatic title considering the content

Anyway, just a quick point, a big factor of doing well is using the physical land borders (ie the sea). Thers no point in having your civ on some continent and have x, y and z, civs bordering yours. If you have only 1 civ that you border then you are less vulnerable. Your less likely to annoy another civ, and it may be possible to almost completely control your land.

eg, if your border isnt too big, say 10 squares or less, which is quite feasible, you can build a row of fortresses and have units fortified in them to provide a physical barrier to your land. Thios stops the AI roaming around your territory and amassing troops too close to home. It also stoips them building crappy little cities right on top of your resources.

They can still come in from teh sea but its far far less likely.

 

[Stone]

That really makes very little sense unless you are on a TINY map, and even then marginal. Your maximum numbers of cities is maybe 4 and even then they will still be touching. I agree, it is all about your borders, but being on a island with little or no contact with the outside world will put you to far behind on harder difficulty.

The most important boarders are your culture Zones of control. Those little cities, that in Civ2 where a nightmare, I just wait to take them over culturally and get a free city. If they are placed near my cities, that means they are far from the enemy capital and will come to me soon enough.

Civ3 is all about land grabbing. I space my cities far apart and try to lock key resources early. At the higher levels you might have to use some military to take the land, but you can make peace easy enough. Then as time progresses I fill in the gaps if need, but what I find is that I hold a large percentage of the land mass and with low city density. Close together cities will kill you when you start building hospitals and have cities with 25+ populations.

Ringing your city with fortresses and units is a waste or resources. All those units out there cost money, and don’t do anything. The only time I would do that is if I can close off a whole continent with 1-2 units. But that is just plugging a hole.