Would you recommend one of those FPGAs over another? I know iCE40 from this amazing project (https://github.com/nickmqb/fpga_craft) so maybe I'll just get that!
This is historical, but a 'must read' if you're new to this stuff.
It shows the logical view, the allocated blocks and the routing in Lattice Radiant IDE.
I haven't done much with the Cyclon IV yet, but I found the iCE40 very easy to get rolling with and the freely available tools have been great so far.
It's not a huge FPGA though so if you want to do large projects maybe consider something else. But as a starter I think it's been great.
Like the subc compiler I mentioned, the tradeoffs working with an older FPGA like that are ok to me.
GL! p.s. I mostly used the TinyFPGA BX to learn about the iCE40, but it doesn't have enough pins to make even a semi-decent full machine (with wide memory bus) so I use the Lattice HX 8K dev board. It's also easy to use.
Typically you're doing so either because you're curious, you're debugging a timing problem, or you're trying to make sure the toolchains inferred a particular primitive you are trying to use on purpose. It's not terrifically informative otherwise.