Questions

I've been playing civ 4 for a couple of weeks now and I have some questions:
1. If you start with stone and/or marble does it mean that you have to build like all the wonders? What are the best stone/marble wonders? How to divide wonders between cities? What would be an approximate game plan if you start with stone and marble immediately?
2. If you have lots of floodplains and financial civ is it a good plan just to cottage all fp?
3. At least how many cities do you need to be okay?

 

First off, welcome to CFC! ...and the madness!

It certainly does not mean you HAVE to build all the wonders. It does give you options though. You will hear this often with Civ, but many things are simply situational. I might make a play for certain early wonders like the Pyramids or Oracle, but often times I might ignore early wonders and go out and capture. Some maps you don't have that luxury.

Early Mids is great for Representation. Very nice if you are a Philo leader. It's a very expensive early wonder, so I don't usually bother wasting all those hammers if I don't have stone or the IND trait.

Oracle gives a free tech which can set up some nice strategies with Code of Laws or Metal Casting, at least on higher levels. On low levels like Noble I might Oracle Education.

Regardless, the first thing you always want to do is make sure you get the necessary worker techs for your surrounding land and resources, plus a Strat tech like Bronze Working, which also opens a very important civic and the ability to chop forests. Major increase in production with both.

Another interesting tactic is to build wonders for fail gold. Very effective on higher levels when wonders go faster.

Absolutely, unless a city with floodplains is sorely lacking in good food resources.

On normal/epic, you want at least 6 cities by 1AD. That's the general rule of thumb. Ofc, you can have more if your economy allows it or if you just keep warmongering along. More land is always better....land is power, but first learn to handle the economic side. Currency is a very important tech, so don't delay it too long.

I recommend checking out the War Academy here (check CIV IV menu above) for some good intro articles.

 

Lymond's post covered things pretty well. I just thought that I'd clarify:
1. Fail Gold refers to the gold that you get when you try to build a wonder, but someone beats you to it. In this game, only one civilization can own a world wonder at a time and each civilization can only own one copy of any national wonder.
So, for example, if you're working on the pyramids and you've put 100 into it and then stop, you will get 100 when someone else finishes the wonder. Similarly, if you put 50 into the Moai Statues in one city, take it off the queue (by clicking on it in the city view window), and build the Statues in another city, you will get 50
If you have the right resource, this gold boost is more efficient than just about any other multiplier.
2. Cottaging floodplains is usually the best option whether or not you are financial. If you have to, you might farm one to start you off if you don't have other food resources. Part of the problem is that they take more worker turns to develop than most tiles.
3. Using the Oracle to get Education is a bit of an exaggeration; I would not actually try to do that.
4. Lymond said that it is important to get the worker techs very quickly. This is very important. Something that goes hand-in-hand with this is to build enough workers (or capture them; you can capture workers and settlers. When you capture settlers, you get two workers out of them, making them great targets for a sneak attack if you're ready for war)
5. If you're looking for more material, check out my sig.

 

A few tips about the wonders from casual player who plays on middle difficulties and probably will never go to the higher difficulties:
The Great Wonders: some of them are precious and some of them are marginal or depend on the victory conditions. So which one to build depend on the victory conditions AND on difficulty. It is impossible to give a straight answer for all games; also don't forget some of the leaders have traits which allow them to build 50% cheaper wonders so they have advantage over you (if you are not playing such leader of course).
So you should decide yourself for each wonder individually by asking themselves some questions:
1. Do I really need this wonder (if you are going for culture victory obviously culture enhancing wonders are very useful etc)?
2. If I need it do I need it so much it is worth a delay in my development, including ignoring possible useful techs and going straight for the wonder's tech?
3. How close the other civs are to building this wonder (the least you can see if the other civs have the tech for it)
4. I may not really need this wonder but is it important to deny the other civs building it?
5. This wonder may have marginal value but can I relatively easily build it so why not (a lot of trees available for chop etc - but don't forget more useful wonders may come later so it may be better to spare the needed forests for later use)?
6. If you have stone/marble and/or the leader's trait which boosts the wonder build a nice trick for more money is to start building a wonder without really intending to finish it. When other civ (or even you in some other city) finish this wonder you will get gold multiplied by the bonus rate of the wonder building.
For example: a city is producing 20 hammers per turn. If you put it to produce "wealth" you will get 20 gold per turn instead of the hammers. So lets say you have stone and you set it to produce wonder which has 100% bonus for stone. By building the wonder and switching it off before finishing you will get 40 golds per turn for your hammers when some other civ or even you in other city finish it (but be careful - after 50 turns the accumulated hammers starts to "decay" slowly if the building is not finished, that's why this trick need some practice).

 

???? are you thinking of a previous version of civ? I never get more than 1 worker in IV.

 

Only 1 here also.

 

You got two workers from capturing a settler in Civ III but only one in Civ IV.