Originally posted by: Cabages
You have no idea how much I needed this topic. Without the manual for this game, its like shooting in the dark.
My biggest question was just how the hell trading between cities works. I'll have to read through this thread when I get some time.
trading is fairly straghtforward in civ4. trade routes are automatically established when you connect to other cities (your own or the AI). the top 3 yielding trade routes are the ones counted each turn and pay in
commerce points.
you connect to other cities either by building a connecting road, sharing a river and/or lake, or, for overseas trade, port cities can establish connections after the discovery of (i think) navigation.
also, you want to connect all your cities back to the capital which will then act as a hub so that the commerce your trade routes and cities produce will be spread throughout your civilization. Commerce points are what is split up on the tax slider--commerce becomes either revenue, science or culture.
and to the OP, you mentioned you were playing on warlord, you might consider starting with settler and then chieftain so that you can acquire basic city/empire management skills. Beyond the Sword is difficult, i was playing and winning at monarch level in Civ 4 prior to the expansion, after BTS i had to drop down a level to prince. the AI was heavily modified for the BTS expansion (the new AI started as a mod developed by a non-firaxis employee (i think Blake is his screen name at civfanatics) known as the 'better AI').
playing on the beginner levels will give you some breathing room because the AIs will not research near as fast, they will not be near as aggressive and they will expand at a much slower rate. this will give you plenty of time to produce your settlers which should only after you have built a couple of warriors and a couple of workers. your very first build should be a warrior for exploration, and maybe even two. the goody huts are worth their wait in gold and are only available at the beginning so get them while you can.
there have been studies about the optimum start builds, and generally speaking it is either warrior warrior worker worker. or possibly warrior worker warrior worker. this is a baseline and might change if you have seafood squares that need to be worked, in which case yo uwant to research fishing (if you don't already have it) to build fishing boats because those fish/clam/crab squares are extremely valuable. you will see that opening strategies change depending on which squares are available (eg gold, stone, corn, pigs, flood plains etc), and so just remember to be nimble and let the environment steer you towards which initial techs to research and which projects to build.
but as a general rule, you should build warrior warrior worker worker (or even another warrior before the last worker). consider those first two warriors to be your explorers and try to keep them alive and wandering as long as possible. do this by using the terrains for the defense bonuses they give (hills, jungle, forest, opposite side of river all give defense bonuses) and not using those warriors to attack anything. the goal should be to explore as much territory as possible before it is claimed by the AIs...as soon as their culture occupies the terrain you cannot traverse it except by declaring war (because this will be before you can agree to open borders through diplomacy).
as others have already stated, the beginning game will make or break the rest of the game. the first 20 turns are probably the most important, and after that your next 100 turns will also heavily influence the rest of your game.