Okay so im playing regular Civ4 for about an entire day only be beaten by Ghandi. I'm wondering what i did wrong. i got some question for you guys, so please help me ( I played at Warlord lvl)

1. Do workers build cottages when they're on auto?
2. Whats the diff between a workers auto improv, to nearest city improv?
3. Is slavery something to keep forever?
4. How did i lose?? I was ahead of everyone by 1000 points, even ghandi who beat me in the space race. I conquered 2 nations and became very powerfull but was still behind in the tech tree with ghandi.
5. When i went to war with the Incan empire, they had about 5x more military units than me. How did they produce so many and still be only 2-4 techs behind me?
6. Do i have to research every tech? Are they all necessary?
7. Finally, do i build every possible building? (grocer, market, jail, bank etcetc)

I hope someone answer me becaus ei dont understand whats going on. If theres a way someone can show me how they beat the game in Warlords or higher pls let me know.

Okay so im playing regular Civ4 for about an entire day only be beaten by Ghandi. I'm wondering what i did wrong. i got some question for you guys, so please help me ( I played at Warlord lvl)

1. Do workers build cottages when they're on auto?

No clue; if you know enough to know you need cottages, manage your workers yourself.

2. Whats the diff between a workers auto improv, to nearest city improv?

Workers that auto improve will go halfway across a continent to hook up a resource; workers that improve nearest city stay around their city no matter what, I think.

3. Is slavery something to keep forever?

Slavery is something to use when you need to convert food into production. If you are going to do that the whole game, you keep Slavery. If you have other ideas, get out of Slavery.

4. How did i lose?? I was ahead of everyone by 1000 points, even ghandi who beat me in the space race. I conquered 2 nations and became very powerfull but was still behind in the tech tree with ghandi.

It sounds like you did not decide how you were going to win. The options are:

Conquest
Domination
Culture
Space
Diplomatic
Time

Of those, only the time victory has anything to do with your score compared to other Civs. Most games, you need to focus on winning one of the other ways, as Gandhi did.

5. When i went to war with the Incan empire, they had about 5x more military units than me. How did they produce so many and still be only 2-4 techs behind me?

The Incans are Financial. This means they generate extra commerce, and commerce is divided into research and gold. Compare his sources of commerce (towns, luxury resources, coastal tiles) with your sources of commerce. More income means you research faster anyway and also means you can support a larger military upkeep cost.

6. Do i have to research every tech? Are they all necessary?

No. You need to research the techs that are necessary to win, but that depends on the map and your decided victory condition. That being said, trading is a marvelous way to get all the techs you need.

7. Finally, do i build every possible building? (grocer, market, jail, bank etcetc)

Depends on what you want a town to do. A town that's dedicated to building military units doesn't need gold-multiplying or research-multiplying buildings because it will not be generating much commerce. A city surrounded by towns needs a Markey and Grocer ASAP. If you don't plan on aggressive warring, War Weariness is manageable without jails, but if you plan on precipitating Ragnarok, they're indispensable.

I hope someone answer me becaus ei dont understand whats going on. If theres a way someone can show me how they beat the game in Warlords or higher pls let me know.

Mainly, it sounds like you need to focus on a specific victory condition. The War Academy (link is in the Strategy Article subforum) can direct you to some articles on tile improvements, city specialization, military strategy, etc. Also, the sticky "links to example games" at the top of the forum is nice.

Thanks a lot man.

Im wondering how do you win by cultural victory?
And the diffrence between domination and conquest

Cultural victory is achieved by getting 3 cities to Legendary status.
It's 50,000 culture at normal speed.
Domination requiresyou to have a certain percentage of the total land and world population.
Conquest requires you to completely eliminate all opponents.
I think the original questions were all answered very well.

If you want to know more about victory conditions in-game, just click on the red fist in the top right of the screen.

I advise you to read, in particular, Sisiutil's Strategy Guide For Beginners (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=165632)
EDIT: Corrected link.

The most important is to have a goal. My last space victory at a certain point I started building wealth in most cities because there was nothing worth. One city had good science but with one hammer, the university would take long time to build.... So no uni there. Around the time everyone started to switch to emancipation, I was behind tech, five or six, by the time I launched the AI hasn't all necessary techs to build the ship. The AI was Mansa, a good techer, with almost two times my territory, four or five times my power, more production, more gold, more everything. He even got a tech for free from me, I gave it to avoid war (he had two vassals and was annoyed towards me).

I'll echo one thing, and that is to read Sisiutil Strategy Guide for Beginners. It will absolutely get you though Warlord level with no problems in no more than one or two more games.

I'll also chime in to say that AnitaGaribaldi's post makes a very important, but not always obvious, point: Not only do you need to focus on a specific victory condition if you are planning to actually win, but sometimes your victory may come when you are clearly losing the race towards most of the other kinds of victory. It's all fine and dandy to go around measuring yourself against all the other guys in the locker room, but while you're doing that, the little guy with the guitar will totally get the pretty girl before you can.

1. Do workers build cottages when they're on auto?
They tend to build far too many farms, and not enough cottages.
3. Is slavery something to keep forever?
It's one of the best civics so there are good reasons to keep it for a long time. During late game you will often run Emancipation, however, to avoid the unhappiness you get otherwise. Caste System might also be important depending on your strategy.
4. How did i lose?? I was ahead of everyone by 1000 points, even ghandi who beat me in the space race. I conquered 2 nations and became very powerfull but was still behind in the tech tree with ghandi.
Ghandi probably focused on research and traded a lot with his friends. He tends not to build large armies so he could put his resources somewhere else (buildings, wonders, space ship).
5. When i went to war with the Incan empire, they had about 5x more military units than me. How did they produce so many and still be only 2-4 techs behind me?
If he really had that many units, he probably had worse infrastructure than you. He also probably traded a for a lot of techs. Maybe also your empire was too large at some points so you had to spend a lot of gold on maintenance and hence couldn't tech quite as fast as the others.
6. Do i have to research every tech? Are they all necessary?
To build a space ship you need to research almost every tech. For the other victory conditions you usually do not need many of the late technologies.
7. Finally, do i build every possible building? (grocer, market, jail, bank etcetc)
In some cities it actually makes sense to build a lot of the buildings. Usually your cities will have some kind of "special purpose", however, so you then only build those buildings there that serve that purpose.
Sometimes it's very obvious what buildings you need or don't need in a city. An Aquaeduct, for example, is not needed in a city that does not have any health problems. On the other hand, a city with a holy shrine will generate a lot of gold, so it should get a Market, Grocer and Bank.

I also second the advice to read Sisiutil's beginner's guide. It was the first guide that I read right after I got the game installed and it helped me a lot.

Before you start your next game, decide how you'd like to win.

If you want to win by domination or conquest, take an Aggressive, Organized, Financial, or Imperialistic leader to improve your ability to wage war and manage a large empire. Rome is a great way to learn the conquest game.

If you want to win by culture, take a Creative or Industrious leader, to help generate culture points and build wonders. I humbly suggest Egypt (to get you in the mood for wonder building; also, Hattie and Ramesses are both good for this victory), but there are other good choices here.

If you want to win by space, take a Financial leader, which will help you generate more money for research to win the tech race. There are lots of good choices here, but Elizabeth is a perennial favorite.

By shooting for a victory from the very beginning, you can play your game with a goal in mind. Note that any leader can win any victory condition; it's just a matter of learning to play to your strengths as a newbie.

As you advance in difficulty level, you will have to be more flexible in this due to map conditions and the nature and behavior of the AI civs.

Lastly: welcome to CFC!