How to record a game in civilization 4 and see others recorded games?

I'm still new in Civilization 4 and had a lot of questions about playing the game. I'm finding the game to be insanely complicated so please keep that in mind while giving your answer. If you use too much game jargon I won't understand. Thanks for your help in advance.

Question: Is there anyway I can record my game? I would like to record my game and ask for people's comments or help. Or I would like to replay step by step someone else's game so I can learn the basics.

The civilization in-game tutorial left me filled with too many questions unanswered.

Solution 1:

Whenever you finish a game (either winning or losing/retired, does not matter), you will be able to see a quick replay of the whole game on a symbolic, strategic map, showing land, cities and borders. The finished game report shows some various, concise bits of information about each Civilization achievements, such as founded cities, completed wonders, captured/razed cities or attracted great people. Each finished game is then placed in Hall of Fame, and you can see such replay of every game placed there.

As far as I know, there is no way to record game as a whole, including technologies invented, civics chosen, units produced etc., as in Starcraft or Warcraft 3 - this could be problematic, since games in Civilization usually consume quite a few hours (I completed a few that took a dozen or more hours - in single player of course). This might have changed in one of Civ4 expansions - just note that I played only the original version.

Solution 2:

If your goal is to share to get advice, normally it works like this. You save your game several times at the key points (something along these lines: starting turn, 500 BC, 1 AD, 1000 AD), make some screenshots for those too lazy/unable to download saves and ask people to identify your problems. Ideally screenshots should include general view of your Empire, your F1 button screen, Tech screen, relations screen.

Thats the only way.

Replay is fine but not really necessary, if you are just a beginner, your issues are very trivial and easy to tell from saves and screenshots.

And when I say normally I mean civfanatics.com forums, definitely the #1 resource for improving your play, if you are serious about it.

Solution 3:

On civfanatics.com they run things like game of the month and nobles club where there is a fixed map that you can play on any difficulty and post screenshots of progression and ask help. You can also make your own game, make it a little entertaining and post regularly and plenty people come to help.

There is also youtube, i make video's using free software hypercam2, camstudio and virtualdub. You can also watch other people play, a pretty good player on youtube is Chris67132 he has a lot of video's on immortal and deity. Although not the difficulty you should be aiming for but if you use some of his early tactics then noble should become a cakewalk eventually.