dear god......i suck

There's a huge bonus to defenders right off the bat in Civ 3...and if it's in a city, you're hosed.  Artillery is your friend.  The only time you can assault things without artillery is if they're in a field somewhere.  You want to haul artillery around with you in about a 2-1 ratio of troops...4 tanks, 6 infantry?  You need 20 artillery to beat down the enemiy's defenses before wasting your units in an assault.

When you are marching, always try to end your turn in a forest, across a river, or on a mountain in comparison to your enemy.  Don't attack your enemy if they are in those positions.  There's a LOT of How to Fight around here...try and find some good long threads...

Start with Kanda's Art of War:  http://www.1bcciv.com/Topic1027480-16-1.aspx

Start off by learning the interface...  hehehe.   Some of the troups most people would possibly think are attackers are meant to be defenders.    Each unit has three numbers in the lower right of the screen...  first is attack, second is defend, third is movement.  Use those to figure out which to attack with.

On Cheiftan four or five warriors should be able to take an enemy capital if you find it quick...    But thats another discussion. 

You have two options to winning a war easily.  Lots of "lessor" troops, or fewer "better" troops...   Tech gets you better troops.  it's up to you which way to play...   It is entirely possible to kill the modern era troups with warriors and catapolts...  just need tons of them.   But a single tank can take out 100+ ancient units in the process of being killed, it isn't "fun"... 

1> build your first city. Que a Warrior, A settler, A worker. Employ this for each city you build. After you finish the worker in each city its up to you what you build. But a barracks, Granary, temple, marketplace are all essential in my opinion. Forge's and Factorys should be built as soon as discovered as well.

2> As units go, at the start i would only keep 1 unit in each city. Once i encounter anothe civ i would up this number, with a higher number in the borber cities. 

3> when building cities choose the best location. There are a number of factors to consider in this. Overlap. Each city has a radius. In civ 1 & civ 4 its a cross, in the others its a diamond of 2 square radius from the city. You can see this if you either highlight the grid(i would recomend doing that in the beginning) or in the city screen. Resources, these square's will give a boost to a city that has them in their city radius. Use your workers to upgrade these tiles but be sure the upgrade gives you the resource. Join all your cities with roads asap.

4> Diplomacy. Not always in your control. If you have an aggressive neighbour dont think appesement, it didnt work for Chamberlin it wont work for you. If they are aggressive build an army and attack first. Dont nessisarily destroy them as this could out strain on you cities and leave you weaker, but if they sue for peace take it, it will give you time to train more units and heal damaged ones. then attack again. I personally leave the strongest factions till last as i find it better to end the game with a challenge. Dont give anything away for free, and unless you are in a very dodgy situation dont ammuse their threats.

5> Gold. you need lots of this, it funds research and can keep an angry population under control. Also good for unit upgrades, which arent important for somepeople but i find it very nessisary.

6> Research. I wont even try to tell you the best techs to research first as there is none. Everybody will have a different recomendation. I just try and get all the money making techs first. thats all. with them my research rate will increase and i have little worries after that. Tech-Trading is very important, if isolated you will be left behind. No neighbours? Great! but build a boat, make contact and start trading techs but remember dont give out any tech to anybody.

Thats just a short brief of how i approch a game of civ. I would be more the civil servent than the warmongerer so these tips my not be for you, but i always find a core of strong citys early will give you a good boost. And as for wonders, if you can build them do, they are usefull. Anyway hope this helps.    

Normally people spread out three diagonal, one horizontal...the classic "fat x" layout.  This means your cities will be able to use a maximum of their city squares.

This is TRUE, late in the game...that's what you want...but before aqueducts, and then hospitals, there's no reason to do that...your cities won't get over 12 without an aqueduct, so you might as well build little camps in the holes between cities.

I copied and linked and junk...sorry about the weird highlighting and such

See here:

http://www.1bcciv.com/Topic1031552-20-1.aspx

What this is is Take your standard city, then move two squares diagonally...on the second square, build a city.  Repeat for the other three diagonal squares from the main city.  You can also do them straight out but the gist is to make your cities a max of two squares apart.  The main city will produce city things...granaries, barracks, wonders, etc.  The ones that are satellite cities, use to produce settler pairs and military units (so build a barracks in them).  Make new 'real cities' two squares past the military camps in classic Fat X overlay fashion...then use THOSE to make city things and wonders.

Your cities won't need all their squares until you get hospitals, so you might as well pack stuff in in the early game.  Being so close means you can more easily defend and the sheer numbers lets you build a lot of military units. 

When your main cities start needing their full radii, draw down the populations of the camps (what I call the interstitial cities) with workers and then abandon them at the end or make a last settler/worker to destroy them.

I was initially resistant to the strategy...I liked having my cities evenly spaced so that every city had its full territory with no overlaps and no land left unused (as much as possible), but I ended up trying it for fun...and then didn't look back. I use it with every single civ.  What their traits are don't matter. 1) With the cities so close together, any individual city that is threatened by an attacker has at least 1 other citiy that can get troops to it in a single turn, even if they're ground units with a move of 1...three cities can have defenders there within two turns.  In the early game that's HUGE maneuverability 2) The question of Military or Improvement goes away.  You can build all the barracks, granaries, temples, Wonders, libraries, what have you in your 'real cities' and your military camps (after the barracks) can crank out nothing but military units.  Example: a)First builds: Washington will be my first city.  I build it, then whatever defensive unit I want, then build a defender/settler pair.  I then move this pair diagonally up and right one two squares and build New York (which I rename Camp 1 so I remember it's not a city and don't get confused in the lists). I then go to build barracks in Camp 1.  Washington produces another settler pair (settler and defender) while I wait for this to finish. b)Second builds: Washington finishes its settler pair and I send them diametrically opposed to the first one and build Camp 2 down and left two.  Washington then starts a granary or temple.  From this point forward, unless I have nothing else to build in Washington, I will build no more military units.  Meanwhile, New York (Camp 1) has finished its barracks and immediately begins making a new settler pair (defender first, since I want my population to have handled the settler production by its finish). c)Third builds: Camp 1 and 2 send their first settler pairs to the other points around Washington.  I now have a big X with Washington at the center and Camps 1-4 at the points.  Anything that tries to attack a point will have Washington's defender to deal with as well and if they go for Washington, two Camps can attack to defend it. However, if none of that is happening, Camps 1-4 then all start building settler pairs, so I have 4 settlers in production.  These guys go diagonally one more away from Washington and then straight over one in the same direction to fill in four new 'real cities' at Classic Fat-X locations.  I now have Washington with maybe 2 improvements built and working on a Wonder, and then have the four new real cities (New York, Phili, Boston etc) building their first improvements and the Camps building the next wave of settlers. 3) The culture borders fill in faster.  And if I've built...um...whatever wonder that is that gives you temples automatically, my culture border SCREAMS out...making it harder for the AI to settle.  Not only that, if my military camps spread culture borders this way, I can build cities to encroach across culture borders that I couldn't have before. 4) The Camp cities produce a road for free...it's not much but it's something...   That came from here:  http://www.1bcciv.com/Topic2220892-20-1.aspx   Aintmyprob is the guy who first brought this method here and stridently preached it from the mountaintops...we converted slowly...but after we did, the religion spread fast. The main help for you guys asking about war is that this allows those camps to build a barracks and then nothing but military units ever...you can crank out a war machine AND make a civ.

It isn't gonna help you to win if you don't understand the basics...  Which is what I thought the post was about.