What are the first five things you build and in what order? I am leaving work in about five minutes and will be playing when I get home. I played last night and seem to be doing alright on Noble, but I am just curious on how you guys are playing early on in the game.

I need Cracker to write another guide to the first fifty turns in Civ4. I just can't decide what is the optimal time or order to build workers, settlers, granarys, obelisks, etc.

I'm still working on my initial build order. It depends a little on what kind of resources I have around me, but so far I have been getting a few military units until I get to size 3, then I build a settler followed by a worker then switch to a building, which one depends on what I have available. I can't decide whether to get the second city at size 3 or 4 but 2 seems too early. I have been playing on Noble and doing pretty well. I fell 5 turns short of a space victory last night (stupid Incans beat me to it) so we'll see what I can do this evening. Oh, and remember to escort settlers and have a military unit near workers as well. Losing one of these units early can be a huge setback.

I manage my own citizens and if I go for growth my freaking warriors take like 20 turns, if I make a worker my city wont grow, if I go hammers my city won't grow fast enough.

Waaaah!

Think getting to size three asap is more important than getting some warriors or a worker out quickly?

It depends.

It depends on what team I am and what the terrain near me is and who is near me.

I almost always build my first worker before my first settler though.

Definately a worker before settler game, the improved resources are big time improved. And getting something like stone nearby gives you some dirt cheap early wonders, stone and a few forest cleared and you have Stonehenge and the Pyramids before you even reach size 7, and thats with 2 floodplains (unimproved however). That was my last game.

It seems to me in my early games that it pays to invest effort in your capital city, and fine tune your research goals as well. That is, research the techs you need to develop the resources you have at hand. Other than deciding whether you want to rush to a religion initially I think going into a game with a flexible tech path is the best option. This is just my early impression, but if this bears out this is a great boon to Civ, every game can turn out different from the very beginning! No more excel driven linear chess like opening moves! Course that may not sound good to you, but I love the prospect. Plus the map generation is sooo much better that this will no doubt be the case.

I try to time my first worker so 1) I start building it right after growth and 2) I get it within a few turns of learning my first tech that will let him improve my land. That's usually agriculture if there's fresh water. I haven't played a game without fresh water at the start yet, but I imagine I'd end up building my worker later if that were the case. Other than the worker I'll usually build one warrior and work on a barracks whenever I'm not ready to build a settler or worker. My settler can come out at varying times. If I see stone/marble resource and it's near another AI I might build my settler sooner to get it because stone and marble are a huge benefit and fairly rare on the map.

Maybe a dumb question, but how can you change the order of items in a city's building queue? Everytime I add something it gets right to the top.

As for a good building strategy, it really depends on your starting location, techs and units. And many things seem to work quite well...for example, as Gandhi I started with 2 agricultural goodies plus elelphants. The very first thing I built was Stonehenge, while researching Polytheism (->1st religion), then the 2 agricultural techs and the wheel. Delhi was size 3 or 4 after all that was finished, I got a worker fairly quick (7 turns I think), and soon after connecting the 3 tile boni Delhi exploded to size 9, before I even felt the need to build a settler.
Maybe that wasn't the brightest thing to do, but I still was slightly ahead of all rivals in terms of score. Nobel difficulty btw.

Build first a temple and the calm of the citizens will ease productivity.

Maybe a dumb question, but how can you change the order of items in a city's building queue? Everytime I add something it gets right to the top.I'm wondering this too.

Build orders are warriors/scouts then worker at size 3, then another build to let the pop grow to 4 or so, then settler. If you have a lot of food though, you can boost the pop to 5 or 6 before making a settler, then build worker,settler,worker until you have ~5 cities.

What I am liking so far
1. Warrior
2. Warrior/Scout
3. Worker
4. Granary
5. Settler

Click to add it to the top of the cue (ie produce it now), shift click to add it to the bottom of the cue.

Click to add it to the top of the cue (ie produce it now), shift click to add it to the bottom of the cue.
Thanks. xcl.