With Spain leaping into the war against me (again), I could tell it was going to be one of "those games", where the AI civs do everything in their power to irritate the player despite having no ability to do real damage. I experienced this in Epic 29, and it bugged the living daylights out of me. So here we go again - how many more techs do I have to research for the spaceship? I had Computers, Rocketry, and the Ecology branch up to Synthetic Fibers at this point. That only leaves about 10 more techs to get through then... 
So the plan at this point was to defend as best I could at Rubber Foxhole for now, but to try and use the bulk of my airforce on a campaign of punishment against Spain. Turning the whole southern landscape into a sea of bombed-out craters would at least put me in a good mood. Spain still hadn't recovered from the last war, but sure enough a wave of Conquistadors poured across the borders of my civ on the first turn of war. At least they'll get locked into wartime mobilization and Fascism soon enough again, and do horrible damage to their civ... Unfortunately though, I wasn't able to do anything but defend against Spain initially. That's because on the very next turn in 1745AD, the Zulus signed Rome into war against me too. Now a three-front war, and things are looking more dicey. I'd better call off any elaborate plans for destroying Spain, since I need those bombers over at Rubber Foxhole! One good sign was completing research on Synthetic Fibers in 1750AD and dropping research to 0% for one turn to finish upgrading the rest of my infantry to mechs.
The following few turns were full of carnage, but by 1756AD, I had mostly absorbed the incoming stacks of AI units and survived over at Rubber Foxhole. Here's how things looked over on the other continent at about this date:
Notice that there are no AI units in that photo. This is partly because it was taken at the end of a turn after I had killed them, but mostly because I had destroyed the initial swarm of AI units by this point. I've already rebased most of my bombers back to the Spanish border in preparation for my vengeance campaign. I have my original Infantry Army, plus a 20hp Army of all Elite* Guerillas that I named the Legion of Heroes. There are also some mechs and TOW on hand in case anything gets out of hand. So despite all the irritation of these war declarations, I had the situation completely under control by 1760AD. The Zulus even weaseled out of their alliances and signed peace with me in 1758AD; it looked like the worst of the danger was past.
Then, the Great Betrayal occurred:
Joanie... why?
How could she turn her back on me? After all the time that we had spent together? Professor Mursillis' heart was broken. The other researchers all turned out to be devious double-crossers. The only solution was to construct a great spaceship and leave this planet - alone. From this day forward, Mursillis knew he would have no friends, only temporary periods of peace with individual rivals. It seems that was the best he could hope for from this cruel, cruel world. (This more than anything else shows how random the signing of military alliances are in Civ3. In any kind of realistic model of diplomacy, France wouldn't have launched an attack.)
Sad as it might have been for Mursillis, France's entry into the war against me also promised to cause fairly serious military problems. France was the second-strongest nation in the world, with over 100 Infantry and untold centuries of peaceful construction in its past. Now I could easily defeat France by itself, but fight Spain and France and hold down Rubber Foxhole as well on the other continent? That would be a bit tricky. Uh-oh, here comes the big French stack of units!
The situation is definitely no longer under control. All those bombers that were going to nail Spain are rebased back to the French border, needed for much more important defense duties taking on this stack. Izzy, in other words, has her bacon saved a second time by the entry of France into the conflict (I tell you, she's the mastermind behind this whole thing! The other AI civs are just dancing to her strings). In addition to the slow units in that one stack, there were also about 20 cavs in my territory too, and legions of Frigates and Ironclads pestering my shorelines. Argh!
The saving grace for me was my Modern Armor. This could have been much more dangerous otherwise, but I had recently discovered the things and got to use them in a big way here. Since I had saved 4 empty armies before to put them in, and Armor promotes so easily from winning multiple battles in one turn, it wasn't long before I had four 20hp Modern Armor Armies running around, the 1st through 4th Armored Divisions. Although the terrain on the French border was very mountainous, I whittled down that huge stack with a combination of artillery and bombers, and used the Armored Divisions to kill off the damaged units. It took a fair amount of time to kill off that stack, but it too eventually died without doing any more damage than the Spanish one had centuries earlier.
Let me say a word or two here about the naval fighting that was going on at the same time. All the AI civs had built huge navies, and so I was forced to build a larger navy than I would have liked to counter them. Using mostly Destroyers, I hunted down and sank enormous numbers of AI galleons, frigates, and ironclads. Bombers were also extremely useful for this task. It was somewhat interesting, as I hadn't experienced too much naval combat before in Civ3, but mostly still just tedious work. It would be nice if the AI could use its naval units in SOME kind of intelligent fashion, if it had SOME goal beyond bombarding cities/tiles and having NO effect whatsoever, but no such luck. I built my navy to kill their ships just so I wouldn't have to watch the bombardment animations on every interturn.
By 1772AD, I had largely cleaned up the French stack, but the slaughter had sent me to stage 1 war weariness, forcing me to raise the luxury rate to 20%. This was bad, as I couldn't get out of these wars and I could be forced to spend more and more of my income on luxuries (less and less on science!) Rome, which started with more than 70 Infantry, was down to less than 50 by this point, and in Anarchy on its way to Republic (yes, I know, weird choice - I was expecting Fascism). France had already gone from over 100 Infantry to 65 in just four turns of fighting. This is all brutal, but at least I'm making some progress.
Uhh... another opponent? At least the Iroquois are weak and backwards; I don't know exactly where they are on the tech tree, but most of the other civs have recently entered the Modern Age, and they definitely haven't. That Iroquois blight on my territory is toast though; I capture it on the first turn of the war and keep the city. Against the rules? Maybe, but the Iroquois had clearly over-reached on that site and stuck a colony where they couldn't possibly protect it, so I saw no reason not to grab it. It looked much better under the Hittite flag anyway.
Enormous numbers of Iroquois outdated units would show up in a couple of turns at Rubber Foxhole - and I mean big quantites of Spearmen and Longbows! Rome and Spain are both gassed at this point, only sending a trickle of units per turn. France is still producing sizable numbers of units, all marines since they don't have oil for tanks or planes. Spain is sending their excess oil to Babylon (I know this because my spy shows that Babylon has planes), so let's hope that I can at least stay out of war there... Wait, why are these units moving after Rubber Foxhole... Aww, nuts!
Rome signs Babylon into war against me. 
This is very serious, Rubber Foxhole is under attack from Babylon, Rome, and Iroquois, and I'm fighting Spain and France on my own continent as well. On the first turn of the war, Babylonian BOMBERS smash Rubber Foxhole, destroying the civil defense and airport. Then, on the next turn, they take out the barracks and the HARBOR, cutting off rubber access to the rest of my civ! At the same time, huge stacks of Babylonian units pour over the border, meeting with the Roman trickle and timing their arrival at the same time as the Iroquois mountain of outdated junk. Oh, this is not good. The only way things can get worse is if...
They are ALL at war with me! I have an Always War situation situation on my hands here. I know we weren't supposed to open the F4 window while playing, but I couldn't resist doing it for a second to take this picture:
This was not what I had in mind when I signed up for this game!
Now that I've gotten the bad news, I have to start pulling my civ through this, making sure that it survives until I can launch the spaceship. Rubber Foxhole has got to hold, so I send most of my bombers back there from the French border (fortunately, their large stacks have been killed off by this point). Babylon's bombers are causing nightmares for me, so I order up the immediate construction of large swarms of jet fighters, who manage to turn the tide within a handful of turns by shooting down the incoming bombers on air superiority missions. "Control the skies" indeed. It was a good thing that I'd taken that additional Spanish oil earlier, or Izzy might have sent it to France (which could have caused major problems). Zulus also had oil and rubber, and eventually started sending tanks, but they were too far away to send their planes after me, except for one aircraft carrier which my navy managed to sink. Zulus lacked coal though and never got rails, so I don't know how they managed to be as competitive as they were.
The Iroquois army was pathetic! Take a look at what I saw when I finally got a spy into their capital:
At least I managed to get a good laugh out of that one! On the main continent, I just concentrated on defending my cities, except that I captured the French city of Bayonne (which was completely surrounded by my cultural borders and was an over-reach by France). This allowed me to ship several armies over to Rubber Foxhole to deal with the heat coming in from the 4 western civs. I would eventually send the 2nd and 4th Armored Divisions over there, plus the outdated cav army of the 1st Mounted Guard to deal with older junk units. Once the Babylonian airforce was shot down, I was able to rebuild the harbor and airport and thus reconnect the severed lifeline for my civ. Mari and Carchemish were razed to the ground to clear out some cultural space for Rubber Foxhole, and give me some warning of incoming units. The fighting was a constant grind, but I was able to survive and turn the tide as those initial AI stacks of units were used up. The biggest enemy was war weariness, which was beginning to hamper my research efforts dramatically. Getting back the ivory resource near Rubber Foxhole helped out tremendously (and I don't want to think about conditions if I hadn't gotten Sistine).
A typical turn at the Foxhole as the 18th century draws to a close. The AI is still bringing units, but they are now down to trickles. I have my Infantry Army, my Guerilla Army, my cav army, and the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Armored Divisions on hand to help deal with any stragglers left after bombardment. Without those armies and the lethal bombarding planes, I would have been very hard pressed to hold on to Rubber Foxhole. Warfare in Conquests is simply too easy with those over-powered armies, I really would have preferred that that particular change had not been made. It would have made this game harder - but more interesting.
Flying in the face of all logic, the AI civs continued to refuse to make peace with me. Their culture was dropping at an alarming rate from all the mobilization - I could win a 100k culture victory if this game went on long enough! (Just for reference, my culture was increasing by 570 points/turn and #2 France was going up by only 197/turn). I also watched amusingly as Babylon swapped to Fascism and took a massive population hit; Rome took over the #2 population stat on F8. What a horrible government, but at least the AI doesn't use the whip as much now as they used to in earlier builds of Civ3. Babylon eventually completed the Manhattan Project in 1802AD (uh-oh! I deliberately didn't build that one!) but no one nuked me. Finally, finally, Babylon was the first nation to drop out of the Grand Alliance and ask for peace in 1806AD. I signed gladly, and experienced a massive drop in war weariness. Most of my unit losses had been due to Babylon's airforce in the first couple turns of that war. Everyone else... kept on fighting.
One thing I did get to experience for the first time in ages was Radar Artillery, and wow are those units ever good! I built a couple in Epic 2 (where building AEGIS Cruisers got you scenario points) but never used them there. The extra shot (3 instead of 2) and ability to fire and then move (or vice versa) is very strong indeed. Too bad they come so late as to be useless in most games... One final thing I got to do in the last turns of the game, with all invasions from AI civs gassed, was finally bomb Madrid back into the stone age with my bomber force. Izzy had escaped my wrath for the longest time, but I made sure she got some of what she deserved in the final turns of the game!
My bombers blew up every single city improvement other than the wonders there, killed most of the defenders and redlined the rest, and killed off some of the city's population. (This was only from 2 turns of bombardment too; given another 5 turns, I could have done some real damage.) Look, the #1 most cultured city in the world, with all those wonders in it, is only getting 17 culture/turn. Seventeen! And look at all those entertainers! 
Tarsus was on pace to pass it in just a couple more turns.
Speaking of Tarsus, the city went on to build Copernicus, Newton, and SETI in the course of the game. Here's its science output at the end:
Not the most ever, granted, but pretty darn good for a city that isn't the capital or Forbidden Palace and isn't at a coastal or river site!
In 1818AD, I discovered Satellites and used the leader that had been sitting around forever for exactly this purpose to rush the last spaceship part. Hmm, let's check that space race, shall we?
Professor Mursillis, I think we're pretty safe to launch!
