All kidding aside, my friend, you are suffering from the Soviet syndrome. The USSR attempted to maintain (and continually expand) a military which was beyond the capacity of the economy to sustain. They tried to achieve military superiority to a coalition of nations having considerably greater economic strength. Everybody who played suffered economic damage. The USSR suffered most, because it spent the most as a percentage of GDP. Eventually, their economy collapsed. Civ games don't model economies in a level of detail to show exactly what happened to the USSR, but what is happening to you is as close to that as the Civ3 system will come. I'll bet the Politburo wanted a "gold cheat" real bad, too
Not carrying about "the rest of the stuff" is part of your problem. There is an old saying "amateurs study tactics, professionals study logistics". At a grand strategic level like the civ games, "the rest of the stuff", i.e. your economy, is logistics.
During the 6th Century AD, the Eastern Roman Empire under Justinian was engaged in an attempt to recover the territories formerly comprising the Western Roman Empire. During the fighting in Italy against the Ostrogoths, the Franks decided to take advantage of the weakened state of both sides and invade Italy themselves. They crossed the Alps with a "6 figure" all-infantry army and absolutely no logistical arrangements. In those days, supply of armies mostly relied on "foraging", i.e. ripping off the local farmers. Cavalry performed this vital function, as they could range about the slower troops gathering food. Bringing food in wagons didn't work well, because a horse-drawn wagon with the tech of the time consumed a wagon-load of fodder every 40 miles. Ships worked good, as long as you stayed in wagon-distance of a port. The Franks brought no ships, no wagons and no cavalry. Northern Italy had no where near enough farmers in any one spot to feed 6-figures worth of Franks. The Franks lost half their army to starvation & disease, and the rest was incapable of fighting so it was obliged to go home without ever engaging the enemy. That's what comes from not caring about "the rest of the stuff".
I suggest you do one of the following:
1) Go hunt up a copy of Empire - same mechanics of combat as the Civ games (air units work as in Civ1/2, not as in Civ3) but no "the rest of the stuff" to worry about. Cities produce units. No gold, no tech, no buildings or citizens or unhappiness, no nothing but modern Civ-type units fighting over cities.
2) Learn to care about "the rest of the stuff". Balance your budget - adopt a better government that makes more gold, build money-making city improvements, commerce-building terrain improvements, disband some of those excess units, etc...
3) Go into the editor and roll your own cheat - if you are playing a "game" instead of a "scenario", and changes you make in Civ3mod.bic will apply if after you save Civ3mod.bic you relaunch Civ3 and open your saved game. You can change whatever government you are using to "all units free", then make units to your hearts content without paying a single gold to support them.
