Hello all,
I bought civ4 in 2007 and played it "a little", too much but not that much. I used to play at marathon speed because I was afraid of building an obsolete army and wanted the "sword and bow" era to last more.
In october 2012, I discovered RFC historical civ4 mod, playing a civilization and then reading its real history with interest. Then after playing 2 or 3 civs, I came back to civ4 vanilla and tried to improve my skills (after all no reflexes are required).
So, I played civ4 again and read all the enlightening introductory courses from civfanatics, especially "Sisiutil's Strategy Guide for Beginners" and "Sulla's Civilization IV Walkthrough". Now I use the following settings: shuffle map, normal size, normal speed, random leader. Current difficulty: prince (not winning all the time, but comfortable enough to try monarch soon).
Today I submitted a "GOTM 85" game, just for fun, hence the registering.