I had a much better experience with Civilization III last night than the past two times I've played. You'll recall that I'm a new player, so I'm trying to learn this complex game by a combination of frantic manual reading and muddling through game play. Some advice for the novice Civ-player: start with actual game play on the easiest settings, NOT the tutorial. It was a much more rewarding experience to get through an hour of the game without three other cultures ganging up to annihilate me. I tried Chieftan-level on a large, continental map with two other cultures. A really easy scenario, but that was the point. I finally managed to get the hang of creating new cities - the issue before was that it wasn't entirely clear that I should build several cities. I thought I was just supposed to wait for Rome to expand! I'm still not entirely clear about how to use luxuries that you find on the map. Do you have to build a colony to use it or just a road to it? I did manage to quell a few uprisings in my cities by giving them access to ivory and garrisoning a warrior there. This is a great game, like a detailed and expanded version of Age of Empires. I think Cossacks tried to do the same thing, but ended up being plodding and neverending instead of complex and challenging. Give Civ III a try if you haven't already.