This is quite a while ago so it won't be a great story but I'll do my best. I think it was a FreeCiv game, as I think I traded in my copy of Civ 3 a long time ago.
Anyway, I built my English Civilisation up on a medium sized island, think South America, swiftly dispatched the one or two opposing Civilisations on my island and proceeded to expand and cement my control of the land. All the while, once I'd established the extents of the island I started working towards sea units.
On launching my first Trireme I instantly found a roughly similar sized island directly to the north, exploration revealed that the island had another two Civilisations on, alongside an area an unclaimed area ripe for the taking. I set up a city or two, which was swiftly destroyed by me enemy. This sparked a 1000 year war, the battle ebbed and flowed until I developed gunpowder, built an immense army and effortlessly steamrollered them. With both islands (roughly half of the world) under my control I shifted into development, exploration and diplomacy mode, mapping out the world and developing my cities.
By this point I was the dominant Civilisation, but had no allies. There were two major and one minor Civilisations remaining in the rest of the world. The Chinese had three cities on one small island to the South West of my territory and before switching completely into peace time mode I decided to remove one final enemy and take one last piece of land. My somewhat outdated army easily conquered the Chinese cites and I sat back to bask in my glory.
Unfortunately for me, the Chinese had formed an alliance with one of the remaining major Civilisations who immediately declared war on me. Before I could react, huge numbers of modern troops were landing on my shores, my ancient (warriors in some parts) defensive troops were no match for their industrial era military. City after city fell, all over a land grab for an entirely unimportant piece of land.
Lesson learnt, let sleeping dogs lie!
