Noob needs guidance

[Picstr]

Hey all, really enjoying civ4, however I'm now at a loss for which direction to go for certain types of victory conditions. I am not very good. I've won space race thru warlord and thats it, every time I got close on noble I ended up getting ambushed by my 2 closest civs.
Let me get to my problem. I end up researching everything, my goals during this research only effect what I need at the time, Oh and I've read where with civ4 "It depends" is the new buzzword, and I understand that, but is there a proven research track that would benefit(for example) a strict warmonger strat?
If I were to go for culture victory you just go for alot of wonders correct? What about your army though? Wouldn't your defense capability suffer? Bottom line is right now I'm really not researching towards any real goal except for more gold per turn and better army units.
Oh and I've been playing kind of an isolationist as American since I had a couple of games where I opened borders and the other civs took all the good land and ended up attacking me.
This post post probably reads a bit scatterbrained, but if my strategy is research everything and build everything then I contend that it isn't a very good strategy.
Picstr

[Tinus]

My favourite three tips in improving my civ game are:
1) read around this forum, it's got great tips for just about anything, except for "what strategy makes sure I always win?".
2) Second and more useful tip is increase the difficulty settings of your game!
3) Find out on this forum how to get a good start: a good start is da bomb.
(this post might be helpful)

I tend to play an easy game first to get to know the mechanics (again) and than crank it up a couple of notches and get humiliated by the AI's. You might not like it at first, but learning by getting your ass kicked, finding out why and trying other/better things is the best learning experience you can get.

[Jedoc]

It is perfectly feasable to play an isolationist stance in this game, but it certainly makes it more difficult. Open borders automatically generate foreign trade routes in your cities (as long as you are connected to the other civ through roads [or coasts, with Sailing{or oceans, with Astronomy}]) which are much more profitable than domestic trading routes. They also allow religions to spread naturally from your lands to your neighbors', and vice versa. If you founded a religion, that means free recon, and more gold once you build that religion's shrine. Even if you didn't, more religions coming into your cities is never really a bad thing. And third, it actually makes it less likely that your neighbors will attack you. I mean, if you're blocking off an Iron resource that your borders won't reach for a thousand years, by all means, keep your borders closed until you found a city there. But beyond that, I've found that closed borders only cause trouble.

Have fun.

[Picstr]

Good tips all thanks fellas, I'm about to continue a game that I deliberately started slow (rather than rush cities) we'll see how this goes, I guess my problem is there seem to be to many directions to take and the kicker is they all "might" work! Thanks again.
Picstr