Pictures speak for themselves:
...especially when I've stuck words in big red letters all over them! 
What an unbelievable coup, I'm still amazed at how I was able to get this wonder from the position I was in back in 1525BC when I first investigated Madrid. The things that you can do with workers if you manage them properly (and pour ALL of your civ's resources into speeding along one city's development) are just amazing. I stopped expanding for 500 years to get this wonder, so it definitely represented a significant sacrifice. I certainly didn't expect it to be this close when I popped the settler from the goody hut!
Tarsus' victory is only half the story, however. The larger issue is how Madrid, a city with much better land and no corruption, managed to piss away an insurmountable lead and lose the wonder to me. Izzy had to settle for the Oracle - take that you Spanish cow! I reloaded back a turn to investigate Madrid and see how it was being managed - or mismanaged, as that would be the proper term.
Wow, that's so amazingly bad, I'm almost appalled to look at it. Madrid, with some of the most fertile land you'll ever see, sitting in the freakin' Garden of Eden for all intents and purposes, is stuck on 9 shields/turn, not growing, running TWO entertainers, and failing to make use of a mined iron hill tile! 
What a great picture showing the ineptitude of the Civ3 AI when it comes to city management/tile improvements. (Seriously, I wish Civ3 AI Programmer Soren Johnson could take a look at this 
). And even with all that, I won the race by 4 turns. That's it. As I identified back in 1525BC, I had no chance getting this wonder, and it's only due to atrociously horrible AI management of its cities that I ended up with the Pyramids. I won't get into what needs to be done to fix things, as that's a matter best left for another day, but let's hope things improve in Civ4! Still, building the Pyramids was nothing less than a major, major coup for my game. Other than Hattusas, I had no granaries anywhere, and now I had them everywhere for free! THE PLAN succeeded after all.
For comparative purposes, there's Tarsus the turn after building the Pyramids. THIS is how you squeeze water from a stone in trying to get every last possible shield out of a city when even one turn could make the difference between success and failure. Tarsus has good land, but it's not great like Madrid; every single tile is being used to gain as much as I can. Even after corruption is factored in, it's making 11 shields/turn compared to Madrid's 9! Amazing, simply amazing what some elbow grease can do for your cities. Keep in mind that this size is not sustainable for Tarsus; it doesn't have enough food to support itself, and I'm running 40% luxuries (!) to keep it happy. When I revolted to Republic, it starved all the way down to size 7. But, like a sprinter in a race, it only had to maintain that burst of energy long enough to win the race - what happened afterwards was unimportant. What an early-game success story to look back on! This was undoubtedly the highlight of the entire game.
So now that I've succeeded in my huge early gamble, I can go back to expansion and revolt over to Republic. I waited just long enough to pop out an extra scout to form a blockade, then revolted, drawing a friendly 3-turn anarchy. Let me say something about my blockades here; I was definitely manning them in neutral territory to slow down the AI from settling and get as much of the good land as possible for myself. Take a look:
I had indentified early on that a city plus four units could block the east off entirely from France, in a move that I will always think of as the "Urugharakh" strategy after he played it to perfection in Epic 9. I was planning on getting a city at that river site down by the incense, but as you can see from this picture, the French have gotten there before me, thanks to building all those workers (instead of settlers) to help Tarsus get the Pyramids. As a result, the two cities you can see here would go on to form my eastern border with France, confirming the western orientation of my civ that's been going on ever since I sent that first scout west. I would get a ton of cities to my west, but only one ring of cities to the east, something which I think will be different in other games. The inserts show the other two blockades I'm manning; by moving the warrior out of Tarsus, I can completely block off the finger of land in the middle of the continent, and my two scouts are sealing off a narrow part of land in the extreme west. Everything north of these blockades I plan to get for myself.
At the time I came out of Anarchy, the AI civs had actually out-expanded me. You won't see THAT happening very often on Monarch! But now that I was in a Republic, Hattusas dramatically saw its food and shield production increase (it could get to +9 food/turn if I wanted it to!) and could start producing settlers at a 4-turn rate. Ugarit used its free granary and floodplains tiles to produce workers for the next 1000 or so years, and I was finally set for expansion. Hittite cities started sprouting up all over the map rather quickly after that. Most notable was the founding of Tyrana in 750BC, which was on a lake by the iron to the west, and on the site which I had identified for the Forbidden Palace as early as 1500BC. Hattusas, Tarsus, and Tyrana will be my three strongest cities by far throughout the game.
Everything was quiet for centuries at this point. With no need to check diplomacy, the turns just flew along. It did feel strange to still be in the thick of a landgrab when in a Republic and this late in the game. At some point, Isabella traded me Construction for Code of Laws, which I was happy to accept (although I rather suspect I had a monopoly on Code of Laws when I made that trade). I got Map Making last in 190BC and entered the Middle Ages - yes, Map Making! I didn't want to drop the cost of that tech and let the AI civs get galleys, which would ruin my blockades. I wrote down that by this date, I already had the Forbidden Palace due date down to 17 turns, thanks to a courthouse and some nice worker actions. If you've read my other reports, you'll know I love the early FP, it's a very strong move. Iroquois (who?) built the Great Lighthouse in 170BC, so I expected contact before too long. All the other Ancient Age wonders starting falling around this time too, which was more or less what I expected; I had no chance to get any of them with the prebuilding/project swapping variant, so let it go.
The AI civs also started following me to the Middle Ages around this point, which I discovered by hearing about massive barb uprisings. Look at my poor warrior in this picture:
This is not what you want to see next to you when you take a step into the fog! The barbs actually caused me quite a few headaches (even for Monarch) in this game, but the messed-up coding for the barbs in Conquests kept them from doing any real damage. It's a good thing that barbs in Civ3 don't pose any real threat to your cities, or I would have had to build a LOT more military!
A lot of cities have been founded since the last map of my civ, so I'll post another one from 90AD. Usually, I get maps from big dates like 1000BC, 10AD, etc. but this game was lulling me to sleep so much, I forgot the 10AD pic and had to settle for this one.
That map looks a lot better than the previous ones. I've expanded far out to the west and north, and am still moving in those directions. The Forbidden Palace is almost complete, which will make those western colonies highly productive one day down the line. Thanks to the location of Ugarit, I'm squeezing in some fishing colonies on the western coast, because the alternative is to waste more tiles than I want to. Also notice that I still have my blockades in place with France and Spain, although the one in the southwest is slightly off-screen. My goal at this point is to get the entire western jungle and the whole tundra north, mostly in the hope of finding invisible resources there.
The times stay quiet. I continue settling and building peacefully in harmony with my neighbors. Spain builds the Temple of Artemis in 260AD, and France cascades to and builds the Hanging Gardens. This kills off the last of the Ancient Age wonders - expect that the French city of Orleans cascades to Sun Tzu's. That's it though, Orleans is the only city working on a wonder of any kind. Now I also have plans on building this wonder, since the Pyramids/Sun Tzu's combo is pretty darn good if you can pull it off. I discover Feudalism in 280AD and investigate Orleans to see if I have a chance to win the race. It's not even a contest; Orleans is a tiny size 6 city (with no aqueduct to get bigger either) and it will take it forever to finish the wonder. Tarsus begins work on Sun Tzu's, and it shouldn't be a contest to get it first.
Except that Madrid also starts Sun Tzu's the next turn, prompting some actual competition. It's that Izzy again, always trying to wreck with Professor Mursillis' experiments! I tell you, I am NOT writing a recommendation for her next research grant! Investigation of Madrid proves, however, that barring a golden age Spain will not beat me to the wonder. Tarsus is completely safe, unless some civ in the fog gets the wonder (but since almost every wonder has been built on my continent, I feel safe in assuming the other civs are probably behind in tech). In other words, this won't be as nerve-wracking as my first wonder race (fortunately!).
A wonder race was in play, but otherwise things continued to be peaceful. The Iroquois founded a city on the extreme western tip of the continent in 340AD (but right on where I was planning to put a city on my dotmap, interesting), and so I went over to say hi. According to F8 they had as much territory as I did, not sure how that was possible. Maybe they were the big dogs on the other continent? France also stuck the city of Bayonne in the northeast via galley at about this time, which would remain an eyesore for centuries to come.
A few words on research are in order. I turned off science completely for a long stretch of time in the early Middle Ages. Basically, the idea was to slow down the tech race as much as possible to allow my civ the chance to grab more wonders. This might not be quite in the spirit of the variant, but I saw it as Professor Mursillis getting so wrapped up in these wonder pet projects, he forgot to continue with his own research. That's one way to be absent-minded! At this point in time, Sun Tzu's and Knights Templar were in play, and I was trying to kill the cascade with them. Therefore, I was waiting for Tarsus to finish Sun Tzu's and see what happened with the cascade (remember, I don't know what techs the AI civs actually have) before choosing to pursue either Theology (Sistine) or Invention (Leo's). It was a good plan in theory, we'll see how it plays out in practice.
This is basically what my civ would look like for the rest of the game. You can see the Iroquois and French blots on my map in the minimap; I would get one more city up in the tundra in the north (settler was on its way when this was taken), but otherwise this was it. I'm researching Chivalry because the AI civs have already gotten it (know this from work on Knights Templar) and I figure I may as well follow them rather than run more cash. I had been using the cash to rush cultural buildings on my borders hoping to flip the French colony of Bayonne and the Iroquois colony on my west. In fact, since I had so much cultural pressure on both for so long, I'm quite positive that culture flips were turned off for this game. If not, then I had really, really bad luck on the flip rolls. Hopefully Sirian can fill in that detail after the game is completed. Also note that I'm running 20% luxuries because I can't trade to import more luxuries from other civs.
One thing I had spotted was cultural borders out under the fog to the west. I sent a suicide galley northwest from Karatepe (you can see the path on the minimap) and found Roman/Babylonian borders - but it sunk before I could make contact. So I rushed another and sent it - also sank. Third - Davey Jone's locker. But the fourth galley finally made it and I contacted them both in 580AD (well, you know what I mean). Neither civ appeared to be particularly strong, France and Spain were clearly the dominant AIs in the game and the only ones who could affect me for the forseeable future.
No surprise there, I was confident I would get the wonder and I did. The important thing was what happened with the AI cascade. Spain, apparently lacking both Theology and Invention, cascaded to and built the Knights Templar in Madrid. Haha, what bad luck for Izzy again. I get Pyramids and Sun Tzu, she gets Oracle and Knights Templar! What's more, not only did I pull off the super combo, but I got them both in the same city, not too shabby. I knew I would get great things from that goody hut settler, and sure enough it paid off.
So Spain was out of the wonder race, at least for the immediate future. So is everyone else who had started Sun Tzu's, except for the French. That dinky little French city of Orleans, however, did cascade to Sistine's. Hmm, so can I get this wonder myself is the question. Orleans has been on one wonder or another for literally ages, but it's still only making roughly 6 shields/turn and I'm confident that I can beat it to Sistine's, which of course would also be a huge boost to my happiness-challenged civ. 4 turns to research Theology (umm, again, I can't start the wonder until I have the tech) and then full-blast on Sistine's in Tyrana, my Forbidden Palace city. Workers are rounded up from around the whole civ to go and work on improving Tyrana for what promises to be another close wonder race. Orleans has already got over 350 shields accumulated, so this is going to go down to the wire again. Now the ideal goal would be to have Tyrana build Sistine and Tarsus build Leo's, snapping the cascade right there, but that was a bit unlikely given my prebuilding restrictions (if I could prebuild, Tyrana would be completing Sistine's right about now and snapping the cascade here and now!) But those are the rules, and I was sticking to them.
I decided to go for a different strategy. Orleans had so many shields accumulated, it was clearly going to get some wonder. Therefore, I decided to do this. I would build Sistine's in Tyrana myself, then let Orelans cascade to Leo's, and build Copernicus in Tarsus myself, snapping the cascade right there, from which point in time I should be able to get all the other wonders. It was a good plan, with the one hope that no one would research Music Theory and throw Bach's into the mix. Nothing I could do about that however other than hope and cross my fingers. Somewhere around 650AD I met Shaka, bringing me into contact with everyone. The Zulus also appeared to be a minor power who would have little effect on the game, being stuck so far away from me. Back at home, still building peacefully, the only drama taking place is in the wonder race.
In 720AD, I finished researching Astronomy and could begin work on Copernicus in Tarsus. At that date, I had 17 turns to finish Sistine's in Tyrana, 19 turns to finish Copernicus in Tarsus. I want to have them complete the same year for cascade purposes, so can I slow down Tyrana? Orleans is due to complete Sistine's... also in 17 turns. Uh, no, I don't think I can slow down Tyrana then. (Again, if I could have prebuilt wonders, this would have been vastly easier). So with 17 turns left, I am tied with Orleans and need to drop another turn just to be on the safe side. What to do... I end up raising luxuries to 40%, allowing me to run WLTKD in both cities, and dropping the due date by a turn. Another move from the Civ3 bag of tricks that you can pull to lessen corruption somewhat (although the effect is nowhere near as noticeable in the early builds of Civ3, where it could massively cut corruption).
Bad news in 770AD as France starts Bach's, and Spain soon turns up with it shortly thereafter. It looks like I'm going to lose Leo's and Bach's here, but with me being unable to prebuild and only able to react to the AI civs, there's only so much I can do. By 850AD, so many civs are building so many wonders, that I have no clue what the cascade is going to do. I'm hoping it will fall a certain way, but a lot of that is just guesswork. Tyrana is right there on Sistine's, but so is Orleans. I'm going to get this wonder, right? I can't lose over 500 shields and get NOTHING from it!
