Biggests Blunders!

[Kiowa]

In general, I'm happy to kill them on landing or ping them to make them go away if I don't want a landing. See the AWD SGOTM for an effective use of pinging. I agree that, if you can manage to redline the boat and happen to have a galley nearby, closing in for the kill is OK. But simply making it go away is 99% of what you need.

By chance, the galley was nearby supporting an island. China declared war, sent in three of their galleys, landed their "attack" force, and was heading back to China through a chokepoint which I controlled. Their attack force was DOA, and I was fortunate enough to redline their galleys with catapults and then sink them with a galley. Peace resulted.

With the galleons sinking the frigates, France was attacking and had a stack of galleys supported by four frigates. I only owned galleons, so when the frigates came near my shores, I would red- or yellow line them with the cannons & artillary, and the French would return without unloading. This happened several times. Finally, I had spare galleons available, so I redline the frigates & galleys and sunk them all with the galleons. The French sung "make peace not war" as they sank to the depths of the sea.

 

[iguana1]

My favorite blunders that I recall go back to the days of civ 1 when I used to play with a couple friends. Of course no one ever read the manual and almost all of our games were an effort to build the biggest army and demolish the other civs. Everytime we learned cerimonial burial our advisor immediately would pop up and tell us about cities rioting and that we needed to build temples. Same thing happened after learning how to build cathedrals. We deduced that if we didn't learn these techs, our people wouldn't know about temples or cathedrals so we wouldn't have to waste time building them!!!

The other big one I recall wasn't so much a blunder as it was plain ingorance on our part... There were 3 of of that would hang out and play and we would take turns being the one to rule while the other 2 tossed around advise, insults, etc (kind of an early demo game concept in person). Well, while changing seats around one night someone tripped and hit their hand on the keyboard and brought up a wacky new window that let us change the science/tax rate!!! We were really excited to find this new feature so we made a change and hit OK only to realize that no one had any idea what key was accidentally pressed to bring up this new marvel! We did eventually find that it was the + on the keypad and that - let us change the tax/luxary amounts! Boy did things get easier then, especially when we realized the worth of temples, etc as tools rather than simply something to annoy us!

 

[Kiowa]

Biggest blunder of my short career . . . . current game . . . . Monarch, large pangea, 12 Civs . . . I'm the Ottomans. Expansion phase, I send out the warriors to pop the huts and see where to set my boundaries. All the huts gave me warriors. Decent start. But, the last hut defeated all of the warriors and then some, so I ended up with nothing from the huts. OK, no advantages from popping the huts. I'm not worried, I can still trade for techs as I meet the AIs.

Determine I'm on a fairly large penisula, with America to my north. The southern end of the penisula is swamp land, so I'll expand towards America and get the southern part of my penisula later. America is to the north of a mountain range, so I set up my cities on my side of the mountain range. Still about three techs behind, but not too worried. America plants a city, Philadelphia, inside my new borders. Still not concerned, except I figure America will be a problem later.

Decide to see what cities are to my north and where the chokepoint will be. Behold, two tiles away is Washingto D.C.! I've expanded all of the way up to Americas capitol, but the maoutain range will be a great defensive position, so I strengthen up the culture of these border cities so they won't flip to America. While I'm expanding and setting up my northern borders, Germany and America send settlers to the swampy lands inside my penisula, wars are starting to erupt, and my advisors tell me I'm weak militarily and in last place.

I decide to join the crusades against Greece, although I would never send anyone beyond my border and never fought, and focus on settlers to plant as many cities in the swampy lands as possible to keep Germany and America. By now, America is a military power, so I need friends and pay tribute so my expansion will continue. Finally, get all of the penisula settled except two German cities. Of course, Germany and then Persia (top dog) decide to declare war against me. Still not worried, my borders being established and they have have to go through America to reach me. I fend them both off without any losses, get peace and some techs, but I'm still several techs behind. Hey, I'm not in the middle ages, yet, so I feel confident that it won't be long before I catch up in tech.

Remember the war with Greece, the one I'm not fighting but joined in so the AIs wouldn't dogpile against me. Well, Greece gets peace with everyone else except me. I'm counting turns, on the 20th turn I ask for peace and it is granted! Great, now I'm looking for trades and Rome tells me that I was a bad boy and won't trade with me. I've miscounted. It's only been 19 turns!!!!! Nobody will trade with me. I'm stuck with a boring, defensive game.

Furthermore, when the revolution to Republic occurs, it's a seven turn deal, and production stops for another dozen turns. Now, I'm in the dark ages compared to everyone else, America is sending out row upon row of knights, while I only have horses, and I'm stuck on a penisula with no way to get out. I decide to go by sea, fill up 10 galleys with horses, settlers, workers, etc, and every nation kicks me back home. I have no iron, no way to get off of my penisula, no trades, and getting further behind in techs. Of course, it's the perfect situation for the AIs to declare war; first Persia, then China, Greece, America, Germany and I forget who else. They each send in the stacks of knights, archers, spearman, and whatever, and each stack is greated at the borders with my 14 Knights (built before my iron ran out), numerous horsemen, musketmen and my stacks of tribuchets. Each of their stacks are killed off, my wounded are sent home to recover via America not wanting them in their land, and one by one peace is restored.

My only hope for winning is to get to calvary before the AIs get too many calvary, and storm back quickly and make my offensive. I'm so far behind in techs calvary will be my last tech. Patiently I have every city prebuild for calvary, and when I get calvary, presto . . . instant army!

Washington DC . . . . 12 spearmen protect it. Their knights are at war someplace.

Philadelphia . . . . Only four spearman

Atlanta . . . Just two

Miami . . . . Four spearman.

I have 14 knight, 12 calvary, and stacks and stacks of trebuchets. And a load of defensive units to keep whateve cities I conquer. In five more turns, calvary will triple and revenge will be mine.

 

[rysingsun]

I'm counting turns, on the 20th turn I ask for peace...

rather than counting turns ...

you know, you can go to the diplomacy screen and check for active deals. it will tell you how many turns you have left on each deal with a number ... like this (7). if there is no number then 20 turns have gone by

 

[Decebalus]

Kiowa, that doesn't sound much like a blunder. Just bad luck and maybe not acting when you should have. If early in the game you come close by to a civ's Capital I say go to war! Use arcers and warriors if you have to, enmass they can be usefull early. It would have removed one threat, probably doubled your size adding nice cities that would probably be at the same level of developement as yours, and you could have gotten some nicer territory so you could forget about the swamp which most likely would not be very productive till late in the game and therefore not a problem if cities there aren't yours.

I belive war early is just as useful as regular expansion. Makes no difference if you cities are founded by you or you just take them from someone else early. Same costs I belive, especially when capitals are so close and you have the oportunity to also destroy a rival in the process.

 

[Swiss_Mercenari]

@Tiptronic: Ummm......Do you even know how to spell the word when? Horribly bad grammer.
Ahem (clears throat). I shall now announce my List of Blunders!
1. Parking a fleet of Destroyers and Carriers off of the coast of Germany (in a Mod). There had never been a war yet. It was 1754 and then...Germany launches cruise missles at my fleet and destroys it! I nuke them and then the whole world goes to war with me.
2. As the Babs, I launched a nuke on myself.
3.As Rome, I went to war with the Greeks. The Greeks got the Egyptians to declare war, the Egyptians the English...etc. By the end I was at war with everyone. Oh and I have no Iron, either.
4.On my first game I left my city undefended and declared war on someone else. They took my city and I lost.
That is my official List of Blunders.

 

[Aceman101]

Mine? When I played my first game I only built 1 city. For a few thousand years I only had 1 city. And then when I saw the AI's had more cities, I then tried to build more city's not knowing how to do it. It wasn't until the 1500's A.D that I finally had my first city built. I lost that game by like 1000 points!

And I also kept building the palace. Anyway towards the end of the game I was just getting into the late middle ages. I didn't know about the science slider and specialists.

 

[Swiss_Mercenari]

Mine? When I played my first game I only built 1 city. For a few thousand years I only had 1 city. And then when I saw the AI's had more cities, I then tried to build more city's not knowing how to do it. It wasn't until the 1500's A.D that I finally had my first city built. I lost that game by like 1000 points!

And I also kept building the palace. Anyway towards the end of the game I was just getting into the late middle ages. I didn't know about the science slider and specialists.

Heh I did that within my second game. I was playing as Germany on a map that I have never been able to recreate or even associate, for it was Civ3 vanilla on a Win98 computer. My opponents were the Russians, Greeks, Persians, Romans and others of which I had not come in contact in. Russia had approimately 40 cities by 1100 AD, and I possessed a singular city, my capital, but its cultural borders were gargantuan.

 

[Aceman101]

It especially sucks when there is agressive neighbours like Germany around.

 

[freefall]

The dumbest thing I did was use Archers and Longbowmen as city defenders...Lost two cities

Then I had a look at the defensive value of those units boy did I feel silly.

 

[Desertsnow]

In my inaugural game I built the Pyramids before I even got a settler out. I just thought: I can build Pyramids? Cool! That, plus some highly inept worker managment caused me to end up delaying my own expansion until I found myself surrounded by Russians and Germans about when I had only about seven cities built. Aargh!

 

[Aceman101]

I also thought you only need about 10 warriors to conquer a country. I thought I built heaps then I saw about 50 German cavalry after I declared war.

 

[Desertsnow]

Um, oops?

 

[Aceman101]

Yeah it wasn't very nice. I thought "what are thouse little guys on horses with guns, OH NO they're coming for me ". So about 5 turns later i was conquered (Afterall warriors are no match for cav's). I had no Iron or anything because my borders were so small. I only had about 5 cities.

 

[sercer88]

Before I knew about A/D/M, (or anything else, for that matter ) I would use spearmen and pikemen, and musketmen to attack!!!(once I actually got lucky enough to be around when I could build them.) I would always be like: HEY!! Their units can always beat mine, and my units (spears, pikes, etc) could never beat theirs on the attack!!!

 

[Desertsnow]

That is very much how I used to play in my novice days.

 

[Goldenbow]

I built the coal plant after that the hydro plant and coal plant again and so on and i did until i loose

 

[romanista]

me: Palace! it's expensive so it must be a cool wonder! must build...
Advisor: we have completed the palace.
me: (in another core city) Another palace! I thought wonders can only be built once?... oh well must build...
Advisor: we have completed the palace.

(repeats 5 or so times)

me: I wonder why my capital keeps moving...
Advisor: compared to others, you have an IQ of a carrot.

 

[civverguy]

I wanted to build a palace in multiple cities.

 

[mythmonster2]

My favorite Vanilla game ever!

I was the Chinese. The English, Indians, and French(with 1 city due to an early war with them) are on my continent. English to the south, India to the North and France was on the west coast but I took over that part.. Other civs were on other islands, but they don't matter. Anyways I was in the Modern ages and India was supplying me rubber.(I didn't have any.) The Indians also had split the French half of my Empire and the Chinese part in two. I pump out Mech Infantry, thinking they can pwn India's. I was wrong! The Indians of course stopped supplying me with rubber and cut off my oil sources so I had only cavalry. However, I had a system restore.