The build queue lets you queue up to nine in advance, and you have to configure each one separately. Or, you can have them follow whatever your capital city is doing, but that means newer cities start trying to build a Libary instead of starting with the barracks, temple or granary like any self-respecting new city would.
In GalCiv you could say, as a general rule, "all cities must start building everything in this order..." and as new advances were found, you could add to that list without overwriting anything. So you could start with garrison and end with planetary reactor, and have the planets build everything in between, in the correct order. If that feature exists in Civ III, I haven't found it yet...