You might want to instal Warlords for Warlords' mods, for thier mods are not included in BTS.

The Warlords Scenarios are definitely NOT in BTS, so if you want to play one of those (e.g., Alexander, or the China one, or whatever) you'll have to install Warlords, and run Warlords. You can likely open the maps in BTS, but they might not work correctly if you try to open them in BTS because the units, buildings, Techs etc. to make them work right will be in the Warlord's directory.

For example the Warlord's Alexander the Great scenario has peltasts, Hyspaspists, etc.

The stock Warlords game is just BTS without many features (e.g., espionage, corporations, etc.) but what Warlords does have is fun scenarios.

It wasn't worth the $40 that I spent on it when it first came out given that, I then turned around and spent another $50 (or whatever) on BTS. But if you can find it for $25 or $30 on the cheap rack, not a bad thing to have. The scenarios are fun. If you have Warlords but not BTS, getting BTS is definitely a must if you really love Civ. If you have BTS but not Warlords and are looking for a "better" game engine, don't bother.

Merrial, if I were you, I'd patch up to the latest patch (3.17 I think it is) as quickly as possible. That way, you don't start MP games with an obsolete patch which will not be compatible with latest patch (like so man of us have done over the past couple years . . . serially . . . repeatedly . . .).

I understand from Rishbav that it is not necessary to patch Civ IV up first, but if I were you I'd play safel.

Other thing is: the auto-update thing in BTS does not seem to work for 3.17. It worked for previous patches (all 3 or 5 of them) but for 3.17 several folks are having problems with hitting the auto-update in-game and it not working. Thus, I'd recommend just go to Firaxis site or a fansite that has mirrors to the patch (e.g., CivFanatics surey must have), and manually DL the patch .zip. Just unzip it and execute and you should be good to go.

One other thing: There are a LOT of cool mods out there which worked with the previous patch (3.13), but may not yet be updated to 3.17. My fav was the "History in the Making" which has its own threads at CivFanatics. But you will want to keep in mind: loading mods in Civ4 seems to cause bugs. Even when the mod runs fine and the app loads fine in stock, and other mods, you sometimes get quirky annoying things. For example, for the longest time I could not load the 1BC GOTM. I think I had some setting changed in some obscure file the stock engine refers to or something.

You will get ZERO help with solving such puzzles from 2K or Firaxis. Despite this game having been advertised as "the most moddable Civ game YET!!" I have got direct statements from the support guys at 2K and Firaxis that "we do not support mods." No matter what your problem is, one of the first things they will ask you is: have you installed any mods? If you say yes, at that point anything you ask about they will likely tell you: "well we can't really help cause any problem you have could be a result of the mod you have installed. We'd suggest you uninstall all aspects of Civ, reinstall, repatch and see if that solves the problem you're having.

And another thing: do not trust Civ4 to uninstall itself fully. You'll need to buy a third party uninstaller app like UrUninstaller 2008 to have any real hope of fully uninstalling all vestiges of it. This might seem minor since it is not like it really is malware. But the problem comes when you want to get a fresh re-install but cannot because the app keeps seeing previous vestiges and does not do a clean reinstall over the old stuff.

All in all, Civ 4 is a frickin' nightmare of an app. VERY fun game, but nightmare software.

I don't even know if there is any hope of running it in Windows Vista . . .