I guess I need to find a copy of Alpha Centauri too.
You don’t HAVE Alpha Centauri??? :eek: :eek: :eek: 
:eek:
Alpha Centauri was the best Civilization version they made. The fact that they couldn’t call it “Civ 3” because of stupid wars among the copyright holders simply meant that Sid and Brian were allowed to let their minds get truly freaky. I have never, in my entire history of gaming, ever had as much fun, as I did playing that game for the first time, or for the first year, for that matter. If you do get it, play it for a while as Alpha Centauri, before you add in the Alien Crossfire expansion. 
As for warmongering, I’m in the prefer to do the building and expanding, not the beat up on the helpless cheating AI schlub thing. But for me, certain persons always get a smackdown if I can accomplish it, right off the bat, no questions asked, cause I know they will be a pain in the arse later if I don’t. Alexander and the Greeks in Civ 3 or Civ 4 have to go ASAP. Same with the Russians. I don’t care whose visage is staring out of the screen at you when you contact them, they are gonna make life miserable for you if you let them, so just pound them early and eliminate that problem. 
It’s really good, I agree. It might be hard to get by now, and the graphics are a little outdated, but the game is great. If you run XP, there’s a patch on the firaxis site.
I just re-installed it. Might be the Deus EX of strategy games.
This hits me hard, since those are my two favorites to play. And as rivals, I find that the Greeks are usually willing to hang out in my nerd clubhouse and trade techs with me to our mutual profit, and usually by the time I meet Russia, she’s already pounded into irrelevance by someone else, and is happy for any friends (or at least, non-enemies) she can get.
The only folks I categorically distrust are Aztec, Germany, and Japan, and even then, I find that they can make for very good mercenaries to sic on my enemies: I often end up spending an age or two hiding behind Montezuma, and by the time he’s finally wiped out, I’m ready to fight my own wars. Oh, and Persia can be problematic, too, but as long as you can cut off his supply of [del]testosterone[/del]iron early, he’ll behave himself.
Ummmmm, no, I don’t have it. Should I go and commit harikari now? Or should I go search Amazon and eBay? I do, in fact, run XP home.
I almost always get along fairly well with the Greeks. I don’t trust the Portugese any further than I can throw them, the Japanese leader is a suspicious bastard, and Montezuma is clearly who Niven based his Kzinti on, he’s always ready for a fight. Cleopatra just about always likes me, and so does Catherine.
I finished up the current game last night by dominating the globe. Now I’m Chinese.
It’s not so old that it doesn’t work on XP :). I dunno about hara-kiri, but you really should check it out if you’re into Civ, it’s probably one of the, if not THE best iteration of the game there is. Lots of great ideas in it that were never replicated, and the space setting is refreshing compared to yet another trudge from Hoplites to gunpowder to the Manhattan Project.