My Typical Civ3 Experience

[GamezRule]

I am currently on the path to domination victory in my first ever emperor game, and I haven't built a single wonder, although ToE looks tempting and I have a prebuild going.

 

[CommandoBob]

I am a huge fan of the Civ series and have been playing since Civ 2. I remember I got Civ2 at Toys R Us in my early teens and practically had to be pried out of the computer chair. However, I have noticed a very typical order of play in Civ 2, 3 and 4. Lately my good computer has been dead, so I decided to specifically talk about my usual Civ 3 gameplay, though this applies to 2 and 4 to some extent.
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Does anyone else share this experience?

This may help, Arathorn's Comprehensive Guide to Variants. Not just Always War but many other different ways to make the game interesting when it has become too same-y.

 

[Ataxerxes]

Same experience here. I mean, I thought Civ3 was great when it first came out, but C3C is much more balanced and elaborate. I agree about map trading. Temporally speaking, humans have been trading geographic maps before there was even regularity in written language, as pictures are easier to understand than representative characters.

You're convincing me I'm not alone. I like C3C the best but miss the map trading.

 

[vmxa]

I have Complete and tried Vanilla once, I didn't really find it fun. Conquests is much more balanced. My only beef is that Map Trading should have stayed with Map Making. I mean, it makes more sense.

That was done to help the AI. They know where things are, but not how to get there. You do not know where things are or how to get there, but once you trade maps....