Hi all.
New member here.
Getting old and bored of console games and burnt out on final fantasy games, so bought civ4. This is my first go at this sort of game and it's a lot more involved than I thought.

I've read about 15 pages of the tips section (really, really helpfull....thanks to all that posted) and have decided I want to start off going for conquest. Followed the advice to start as julius ceasar and go for axemen/praetorians......but never get them as a build option....what am I doing wrong?

I start with bronze working/iron working, find a source and start mining, but just get the option to make warriors or archers. Got as far as 1AD and still no luck. None of the other available techs seem to be relevant.

Also...if you have a square with 1 food and 1 with 3 or a resource, does it matter where you start your city? If you start on the best square, does it lose it's resource?

Are there any must have expansions? I have the basic game with patch. Should I play this first, get used to it, then expand?

I played the intro level and got as far as ICBM's but couldn't see what damage they did. The city defence didn't drop. How do they work?

Sorry there are so many questions. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Cheers....and see you online in about a year when I figure out how to play :crazyeye:

Hi all.
New member here.
Getting old and bored of console games and burnt out on final fantasy games, so bought civ4. This is my first go at this sort of game and it's a lot more involved than I thought.

I've read about 15 pages of the tips section (really, really helpfull....thanks to all that posted) and have decided I want to start off going for conquest. Followed the advice to start as julius ceasar and go for axemen/praetorians......but never get them as a build option....what am I doing wrong?

I start with bronze working/iron working, find a source and start mining, but just get the option to make warriors or archers. Got as far as 1AD and still no luck. None of the other available techs seem to be relevant.

Also...if you have a square with 1 food and 1 with 3 or a resource, does it matter where you start your city? If you start on the best square, does it lose it's resource?

Are there any must have expansions? I have the basic game with patch. Should I play this first, get used to it, then expand?

I played the intro level and got as far as ICBM's but couldn't see what damage they did. The city defence didn't drop. How do they work?

Sorry there are so many questions. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Cheers....and see you online in about a year when I figure out how to play :crazyeye:

1. You have to connect the Iron (for Praetorians/Axemen) or Copper (for Axeman) to your cities, usually by road, to be able to build the units.

2. If you start (i.e. found a city) on the best square, you lose almost all of the bonuses that go with improving the tile. But you do have access to the resource (provided you have the tech prerequisites to take advantage of it).

3. I don't think there are any must have expansions, but Beyond the Sword incorporates all the Warlords expansions except for the scenarios. So BtS tends to be the better option, if you are going to buy an expansion.

Your city square will always produce two food and one hammer (production), no matter where you settle it. If you settle the city on top of a bonus resource, and you have the tech to see/use the resource, then settling there gives you access to the resource and usually +1 food, production, or commerce depending on the type of resource. Settling on a plains hill also gives +1 hammer to the city tile.

Most players prefer not to settle on a resource tile due to the lost production opportunity (e.g., settling on a gold tile loses you about 6 :commerce: per turn, compared to mining it), but sometimes it's the only way to get in the spot you want to settle. Other times, you want access to the resource RIGHT FREAKING NOW, so settling on it gets the job done too.

For this reason, settling on subobtimal tiles (desert, desert hill, tundra, ice, etc.) can be handy, since settling there effectively turns the tile into a useful tile. But the main reason for settling somewhere should be the city's proximity to the special resources on the map. Each city should have as many resources in its BFC (Big Fat Cross -- the workable production area that is two tiles in every direction from the city other than the diagonals).

Yes, I suggest you play "vanilla" Civ IV before getting the expansions. Beyond the Sword is a nice expansion if you decide you want to invest further in the game. It adds a lot of content and cleanup.

Hooking up your resources is the only way to use them.

step 1: research the resource-enabling tech (e.g., Iron Working)
step 2: settle a city so that the resource is within your cultural borders, and preferably within a city's BFC area
step 3: send a worker to the resource tile and improve the tile to access the resource (e.g., mine it)
step 4: build a road from the resource tile to your nearest city. Make sure that city in turn is connected to your trade network. Connections are by road and river/coast (with Sailing). This is very important. If Rome has iron but can't hook it up, it never gets to build Praetorians, which is just wrong on many levels.

Thank you both.
I tried connecting the cities by road and it didn't work. Didn't occur to me to conect the mine to the city.
All sorted now.

Edit.

I will end up getting the expansion. Only had the game a few days and am hooked. Played for 16 hours the first day and it felt like 6. Always a good sign.
Thanks again.