I saw a link over at the gamefaqs board to a strategy guide at www.hurricanegaming.com that has a lot of ideas about playing Civ 3. Just passing the word along, I haven't looked at all of it yet.
I've downloaded and finished looking through the guide now. There are a lot of good ideas for a starting or mid-level player, and the layout is nice too. I'm sure that a lot of the ideas will eventually be common knowledge or improved upon in the forums, but it's nice to have a printout handy. Cool enough.