Moments you really just give up

So I am playing a nice game last night as Qin (monarch). Get 5 cities online. Build stonehenge/pyramids. Have some cottages going on and a lot of resources. When I finally get alphabet I meet Cyrus. He is literally 10 techs ahead of me (metal casting, iron working, mathematics and literature!! amongst them) and my highest tech is alphabet

I was just starting to build up an army to invade Ramsess but this was just madness. Then I also met Hannibal and he was just 8 techs ahead of me and found out they were best buddies. Happy tech traders and way way way ahead of me. I just quit right there and then.

What other moments did you guys experience that made you quit?

Getting dogpiled.

There doesn't seem much fun in defensive wars that leave you behind in development. I think, OK I blew it, and quit out.

Having the bulk of my military on some foreign campaign when some jerkwad like Louis decides to stab me in the back and sends a huge stack right into my backyard.

Getting stuck on my own continent playing a warmonger and finding there wasn't a single happiness resource around. Played for a bit, but even the Barbs were out-teching me.

Bh

When I gathered lots of units and attack Alexander. As soon as I capture his first cities HUGE stacks of phalanx, swords and axes came out and began assaulting my empire left right and centre. I never knew it was even possible to build that many units while keeping the empire running (he was leading in tech too, and all his cities appear to have most improvements in them).

... when a Barbarian Warrior somehow overtakes your Archer and razes your 2nd city.

OTAKUjbski said:

... when a Barbarian Warrior somehow overtakes your Archer and razes your 2nd city.

Click to expand...

I agree. New game.

My favorite (when vanilla first came out), on an island just me and monty. Did not know how crazy he was. Just shooting the breeze, exploring. My warriors sent out to fogbust and see the island, then, Monnty declares war, marches in, takes my city.

The thing that cracks me up (and still does) that my game was over, but so was the AI's.

OTAKUjbski said:

... when a Barbarian Warrior somehow overtakes your Archer and razes your 2nd city.

Click to expand...

This happens to me so many times I wonder who is supposed to have strength bonus against whom?

when i want to try something particulary on a game (first warlord game: building the great wall) and failing to it (the great wall has been built in a distant land)

happens me three times with the GW as i wanted to see it around my nice little empire....

When I start losing core cities I usually quit.

Falling behind in techs is not enough reason to quit for me It is very possible to catch up even if it looks bad. It's important to establish as many contacts early on as possible so you get bonuses to research and can be more selective about whom you trade with.

Getting caught in a war over one city for more than thousand years. AI keeps sending stack after stack to retake the city while I just keep building units to defend that city. And no, AI doesn't accept peace. Not that I've necessarily lost the game but it all seems so pointless.

Nials said:

When I start losing core cities I usually quit.

Falling behind in techs is not enough reason to quit for me It is very possible to catch up even if it looks bad. It's important to establish as many contacts early on as possible so you get bonuses to research and can be more selective about whom you trade with.

Click to expand...

same for me

I can even go on after losing one core city, but when you see a swarm (!) of cavalry moving your way and all you have is one defender per city and no way to build more than one per turn before you get swallowed by the wave, it's somehow pointless.

I'll try to find the screenshot I took in a WotM7 test game. Immortal level playing Cyrus (a WotM7 test game, using Robertthebruce's test save A, for those who want to try).
I somehow managed to give myself 3 vassals (Romans, Ottomans, Greeks), while Brennus had 2 (Catherine and Elizabeth).
It was in the rifle/cavalry era (=cossacks and redcoats era for my neighbours!).
I built up a nice stack of grenadiers and cannons, with some rare cavalries and riflemen. My units were nicely promoted (starting at 21 Xp ), so I make 2 big stacks against 2 "frontier cities" of Brennus.
Attack!
On the first turn, I take one city. The other stack moves to the second city.
On turn 2, I get next to the second, well defended, city.
On turn 3, I take this city without too many losses, but using most of my units.
On turn 4, the first city is back to brennus. I didn't even see the battles, but when I checked none of my troops of the first stack were left. All died ?
I moved my reinforcement troops towards the city and saw an infinite cavalry stack. hoho.
On turn 5, city 2 is back to brennus. None of my second stack's troops were alive. My reinforcement stack died too
On turn 6, Rome (which I captured) was starving. why?
all the tiles around it had cavalries on them. It was like 12 tiles, with 4 or 5 cavalries on each...
rome fell of course, then my HE city got surrounded. I could draft one unit and finish another, but 2 rifles and a warrior vs 100 cavalries didn't seem fair...
That's when I quit...

I quit when I see that there are no resources on my continent, which happens all the time. Why does the game generate maps like this??

OTAKUjbski said:

... when a Barbarian Warrior somehow overtakes your Archer and razes your 2nd city.

Click to expand...

My favorite was a barb archer who killed my (fortified) axeman protecting copper, pillaged the mine, and then for good measure, killed the only other axeman I had produced.

The last time I quit though, I started on an island that was all ice, except for the fat cross of my starting city. Great stuff.

Just as a side note to OP - expanding to 5 cities prior to Alphabet is a bad idea. Your science slider was probably at 30-40% to support all those new cities.

I know 5 cities is pushing it but I was still doing 60-70% with gold mines and cottages and I popped quite a lot of gold from huts and missed two wonders so it was affordable. I don't mind being behind a little in techs but 10 (including 4 big ones) is just too much.

I also hate it when I send my settlers out to my second city site with a warrior to accompany them. Then when you get to the site a barb warrior comes out of the FOW and beats your warrior and settler. Just plain annoying and sets you back too much.

When my economy/science is down to zero (overexpanding/too many units),
I quit the game. I'm playing too many catch up games lately.

the only time i really give up is when my initial scout or warrior gets eaten by a bear or something cause it's really early so i just start a new game. often times i don't even finish the game if i'm way ahead of the AI or i know for sure that i'm going to win...

My fav: (Don't restart but it drives me insane)

Early on - youve improved a lot of tiles but are far from "in control" of the surrounding area - the barbs are leaking in every once in a while but you have a free defender the outside cities, mopping them up.

A barb appears and you finally decide to drag your last uninjured archer that has been protecting your copper mine down and move him 2 turns out to take care of this latest threat - afterall he hasnt moved in 20 turns... very next turn another barb appears out of thin air on a beeline to the mine. It's like the computer was just waiting for you to move that unit.

I had a game little while ago where I had a marginal presence on a little peninsula, hemmed in by three other powers, and only ONE river tile in the whole area (not at my capital). I was going to stick it out, but then I somehow accidentally told an archer to go to some location way to the southwest instead of to the city I wanted him to defend. Twenty turns later, after I had casually wondered once or twice where that darn archer had gotten to, he stopped moving and asked for new instructions, and I noticed what he had discovered: the continent I was on turned out to be about twice as big as I had thought, and there was NO ONE there. My archer had discovered vast tracts of unsettled land--land MUCH better than the land I had started on--and there was no way for me to get to it without going through three enemy empires and cutting my territory drastically in half. Endless expansion opportunities for everyone but me. Woohoo!

Up 'til that point, I'd felt I could pull it out, but when I saw that, it was time to start over.

The best time to give up is when it stops being fun and starts being frustrating/aggravating.