This was the map from 2270BC, a few turns after I founded my second city:
My warriors had nearly finished scouting out my continent at this point, and it wasn't very pretty. This was about the nicest part; to the west was mostly plains and in the north it was all tundra. The small southern pennisula was mostly forest, which was difficult to clear in the early game. There wasn't much food at all. And of course, there just wasn't that much land anywhere because this was clearly an island that we started on. This was not at all like a Pangea map, and it shows the diversity of games that Civ3 can create just by swiching between different maps.
My Russian workers hooked up a gems resource as their first action, something I would never have set my starting worker to do while there were still worked tiles to be improved. This allowed me to reach size 2 without needing military police, and size 3 with one defender. I estimate that this saved me well over 100g over the next 20-30 turns, making my worker purchase worthwhile just on those grounds. I used those guys for the entire rest of the game though, so I think I got the better of that deal. Delhi went on full settler mode after building its granary, usually building 2 warriors in between settlers. Bombay built a temple first, as I like to do in newly founded cities.
When exploring with my warriors, I found this in 2190BC:
What? The AI taking and defending a strategic chokepoint? I believe this was a coincidence, but it certainly caused me a bunch of trouble. I couldn't even see what mainland Russia looked like; this was a very nice move by the AI. I was both frustrated and impressed. Also note the incredible city site to the north with 2 cattle and a wheat in range(!) Too bad the tiles were all plains there though. Getting this site was a top priority.
I continued expanding and producing settlers. Science was set as close to 100% as possible, since it's not like Catherine was going to give me a fair deal or anything like that. By 1725BC, the granary had made its presence felt and allowed me to catch up to Russia in number of cities, despite their far stronger starting position in terms of growth. Here is the map from that date, which also gives the first real impression of what the continent I was on looked like:
Madras had a decent site, but really lacked for food. Bangalore's location was low food, but had enormous potential for shields. It was a future project at this time, but would grow into a truly powerful city. I stationed a warrior next to Kiev so that I would be able to see any Russia settler/spearman pairs streaming out of their homeland (whatever that looked like!). The dyes were about the only positive thing in the north; I wasn't enthralled with my starting continent, to be blunt.
I kept on expanding and Russia, from what I could see, well... wasn't. Was it because I had bought the workers from them early on? I'd like to think so. In any case, they started getting quite a ways behind. Here's the map about 20 turns later, in 1275BC:
Calcutta was founded solely to get the whale resource in its 21 tile city radius (+1 scenario point). Since the only way to get that whale was to found a city on the tile where Calcutta is or the one northwest of it, I'm guessing that everyone founded a city on one of those two spaces. It wasn't a terrible site, but there was about 5-6 tiles of overlap with Madras, something I obviously wouldn't have had otherwise. Lahore was founded to get the dyes in range and so at least on city could be on fresh water. Unfortunately, with tundra surrounding it on all sides, I couldn't take irrigation from that little lake to the rest of my cities (*sigh*). Of course, neither could anyone else in the competition... Delhi was NOT building the Pyramids, but was instead prebuilding for the Great Lighthouse, which both contained scenario points and is very powerful on archipelago maps. My only fear was someone finishing the Pyramids before I could get the tech MapMaking.
Where was Russia? That's a good question. At this time, I had no idea what their homeland looked like. Maybe there was a lot of land that I just couldn't see? Or maybe I had just crippled them pretty badly. In any case, a settler/spearman pair showed up around 1100BC, and others began apprearing after that. It was time for the warrior dance to begin:
The Russian warriors are guarding settlers, of course. This picture is from 825BC, by the way. My warriors were doing their best to stall the Russian settlers for as long as possible so I could get my settlers to choice city locations first. This was actually my only source of amusement for quite some time; it's also considered a fair tactic for the Epics. How successful was I? Go to the next page and take a look at the map from 730BC. 
