The Modern Era is the final era in Civilization III and could be the one in which you spend the most time. It's an era dominated by city improvements such as Spaceship Components and is home to the pinnacle of military hardware. By the time you make it to the Modern Era, you'll have a pretty good idea of the type of victory you're aiming for, so it's time to put your opponents out of their misery.

In order to accomplish a Space Race victory, you need to focus on securing the advances needed to acquire the ten components for building the spaceship. The first advance is Space Flight, which allows for the Cockpit, Docking Bar, and Engine. Next, the Synthetic Fiber advance enables the Exterior Casing, Stasis Chamber, and Storage components. The Superconductor advance bestows the Fuel Cells and Life Support parts. Finally, the Laser advance allows for the Planetary Party Lounge, and the Satellite advance bestows the Thrusters. In addition, you'll need to enable Rocketry for Aluminum and Fission for Uranium, since they are the two strategic resources that are required to construct the spaceship parts. As you can tell from this recipe, the Spaceship is a massive undertaking.

Suppose, however, you've been fairly civil to your neighbors and don't have the industrial base to construct what are essentially ten wonders back to back. Perhaps then you should look to make your civilization the world's inspiration. Beyond being the gateway into nuclear war, the Fission advance also permits the construction of the United Nations. Once constructed, you are guaranteed a pole position in any Diplomatic victory race. If you're behind the eight ball, you can sometimes perform a miracle with the United Nations Wonder.

Most competitive civilizations are no doubt experiencing some awful pollution by the Modern Era. Fortunately, there are a number of advances that enable improvements to help combat this production hurdle. It all starts with the Ecology advance, which enables the construction of the Mass Transit and Solar Plant improvements. The Solar Plants are especially useful if you've got coal plants and factories boosting your shield and pollution production. Solar Plants allow similar production boosts without the pollution. Follow this up with the Recycling advance, which allows the construction of Recycling Centers, and you're well on your way to having a large city and low pollution.

Combat becomes exceedingly lethal in the Modern Era. Nuclear submarines enabled by Fusion and Tactical Nuclear Missiles enabled by Space Flight create a pretty potent one-two punch. These vessels are invisible except to other submarines and AEGIS Cruisers, so you can safely moor them off the shore of your rival. While they can only carry one missile at a time, a small wolf pack of four submarines can absolutely decimate important enemy cities. ICBMs are even more devastating. Enabled by Satellites, they can deliver a nuclear payload to any location on the globe.

Precision bombing comes onto the scene with the discovery of Smart Weapons. This advance allows Stealth Bombers and Fighters to target only city improvements, which reduces the risk to the general population and can ensure that those cities you're planning to capture are still fairly intact at the end of the siege.

For good old-fashioned slugfests, the stars of this era are Mechanized Infantry and Modern Armor. While they require a lot of prerequisite strategic resources, they're by far the most dangerous, non-nuclear military units on the battlefield. Mechanized Infantry have more than double the defensive value of Infantry, and Modern Armor's attack is a third stronger than a normal tank.