Dumbest Thing You Ever Did in Civ3

[kevincompton]

My stupid move was in my first game. Ihad conquered my continent and the other continent was factioned into like 5 nations. So I just went over and picked a fight with the Iriquois...well it wasn't long when all the nations Navy, including the British Man o Wars were taking out my fleets and bombarding my coasts. Needless to say i chose the British next game I played!

 

[bob rulz]

Haha, these are pure gold.

Anyway, I can think of a few now.

Strangely, I never had the clear jungle before city placement thing, but I would always build a road to the square the colony would be on and waste several turns of worker production, and in my very early days I would build a road out to the gold that was about ten squares away thinking it would give me more gold. Then of course thinking..."hmm, courthouse lowers corruption, that means that it won't go into civil disorder as much."

Let's see, when I very first started playing I couldn't even beat Cheiftain for a few reasons...

1-I didn't know the improtance of mines
2-I didn't know what to irrigate
3-I never read the manual or civilopedia
4-I hadn't discovered this site
5-I would never, ever engage in warfare
6-Then I tried a few Warlord games, got my butt handed to me, then, thinking I was ready for a Regent game, tried that, and of course, lost miserably

I take a look back at some of my older games and I go "what the hell was I thinking when I was playing this?"

 

[Captain Carnage]

Before I discovered Replaceable Parts or Refining, I automated all of my workers and they chopped down all forests, and cleared all the jungles. I couldnt find any coal, rubber or oil when I discovered the techs ( there wasn't any in the hills or desert)

 

[carlosMM]

Most dumb stuff happened when starting on civ3. Just after civ3 went into the shops, I visited a friend over the week-end. I also brought my comp along. Yeah, we should've read some more info stuff about civ3 features... I only read some really early articles when civ3 was under construction.
Anyways, we got 2 copies and on the 10 minutes car ride back from the shop, I quickly inspected the friggin manual. I only read sole statements here and there and made completly wrong assumptions, most was to blame on wanting to see similarities to civ1/2, SMAC or CTP.
Traits. 'Industrious workers complete tasks faster' or something. Cool, industrious citizens can produce improvements and stuff faster, gonna be industrious...
Ah yes, this cultural radius thing I've read about in that article. Ok, so cities can have more than 21 working tiles, just like in CTP2. Asks for a not so dense build...
Arrived, installed civ on both comps, start. WTH?! Where's multiplayer screen? So we checked it out in front of 1 comp. Why do the Zulus plop cities like mad inbetween our ultra-corrupt French cities. Pedia says despotism equals corruption hell, so we'll live with it until new gov tech arrives. Aha, Paris expanded for the second time, let's micromanage to work that 3-tile-away whale... Ok, that at least explains why Zululand grabs the lands inbetween our cities.
'Look, that'll be a nice city site, we'd only have to clear the unfertile jungle in order to not end up with one food on city center square'. Later, in a similar situation, we plopped w/o clearing. Interesting, we get 2fpt as well. 'Btw, noticed that city on wheat also gives 2fpt?' Must be despotism penalty...
'Let's finish off the Impi with our cat.'

It was try, error and learn.

I do not remember you sitting next to me back then!

 

[carlosMM]

I take a look back at some of my older games and I go "what the hell was I thinking when I was playing this?"

second!


and the painful thing is knowing that I will look at my recent games one day and still think exactly the same! btw, I am around demigod to deity level..... you can never learn enough....

 

[Black_Hole]

I was in Despotism and revolted (wanted Monarchy), after the 5 or so turns of Anarchy it asked which Gov I wanted and I, without thinking, clicked on Despotism.

i have also done this but my revolt was 7 turns

another: spending a huge amount on tech stealing, only to figure out i did it to the wrong person which was behind me in techs and I couldnt choose anything

 

[ForTheEmpire]

I vote for this thread to be stickied, since people can post new mistakes as they play and we laugh at each other's stupidity . Oh, and here is one more careless act of consciousness . I was doing some leader fishing, and won 8 elite battles hoping to get that MGL, but only finding out a bit afterwards I had an MGL in a town I completely forgot about (no team microbe, this did NOT happen to us... yet... this is in a game I just got back to playing after putting it off for nearly a month).

 

[Kalach]

I've also done the "We offer this as a gift" instead of "what will you trade for this" with important techs.

My worst was moving an army of marines and about 9 Infantry over a smoking volcano :devil2:

 

[Mewtarthio]

During my first Civ game, I was Rome. I had a total of four cities built and was way behind in tech. All other Civs had researched Nationalism while I was halfway through Medieval. A bordering Russian city had access to some Iron and I decided to get it by declaring war. Thinking I was so clever, I signed a Right of Passage agreement first. I took the city (it was undefended), then every other Civ in the game declared war on me. They'd all signed Mutual Protection Pacts, which I couldn't see because I didn't have Nationalism. I quickly tried to upgrade my Horsemen into Knights by sending them to a nearby city that had no Barracks. Then, Russia came to me and offered a Peace Treaty in exchange for the city. I flatly refused them, and the city was promptly recaptured by Russian Knights. Soon, I was driven off the continent and reduced to my two cites across the Sea (Rome and Veii). I finally managed to open the Diplomacy screen with everyone, then chose the "discuss Peace now before it's too late!" option. I never caught on that it was considered a threat until Elizabeth said "It is your breath that offends me, not your threats." Still, for some inexplicable reason, I kept trying that before choosing the "We seem to have overextended ourselves" option. It wasn't until I made peace with Carthage that I realized how much better a deal I could get with the "overextended" option. By that point, Rome had fallen and I only managed to hold out using Musketmen and a lone source of Saltpetre (which eventually got Pillaged). I never bothered taking that game up again.

 

[CowCapone]

Dumbest thing I did and still do in civ3 is playing it. It's so addicting.

I need to do laundry. I need to clean my kitchen. I need to find a job.

Maybe after this next turn ...

 

[jayqubed]

i often go to war early, sometimes too early. i attacked a neighboring capital as soon as i discovered how nearby it was. my capital was defended by one warrior. they counter attacked, and within 6 minutes! (true story) i was defeated.

the other dumb thing i did, a long time ago, was to throw and break my civ3 disk in a fit of childlike rage, only to buy it again the next day. i later did this again with the C3C disc, and to date have not replaced it.

 

[King Alexander]

Something to add:
I had just read about luxuries, but not learning of all of them, so when I saw wheat, I thought that it was a luxury! Anyway, it was outside my borders, and I sent a worker to make a colony... Needless to say, I wondered, what it's going wrong(???) and the option doesn't appear, for several minutes... I just went back and read ALL the manual, so I'd never do stupid things again!

Another one: when you're in war with a civ, raze a high-pop city and planning to settle the spot asap(so your troops can heal and keep destroying enemy cities). So, I just moved a few infantries to protect the settler, but I misclicked and sent the settler to a nearby tile! Unfortunately, I didn't had any more troops(to get there in time) to cover the settler...

I still remember my second game, when I hadn't patch it... and the Aztecs(my enemy) had 8-10 oils in their tiny continent!!! I hadn't any oil, and I owned a large continent... Neither the other civs had any oil, except the Aztecs. I wondered, what kind of voodoo had they done, to get all the oils.

 

[Randy]

Thanks, I was making a joke. I don't mind losing at a level that is one higher than I normally play. Also I play PtW a lot more than C3C.

 

[Desert-Storm]

Dumbest thing?

My first play of Civ III, unguarded cities.... The Aztecs captures Rome, with a warrior.

 

[ForTheEmpire]

@Desert-Storm
Welcome to CFC!
[dance] [dance]

I traded contacts with another civ, in hopes of signing a MA by getting their attitude up. Instead, I only made the MA deal more expensive with each contact I sold them!

 

[Jason Fliegel]

Before I discovered Replaceable Parts or Refining, I automated all of my workers and they chopped down all forests, and cleared all the jungles. I couldnt find any coal, rubber or oil when I discovered the techs ( there wasn't any in the hills or desert)

Well, resources are all placed on the map at the begining of the game, so by clearing forests and jungles, all you're doing is preventing them from respawning in your territory. But if there was going to be coal on a particular square, the computer knows that from 4000 BC.

I've made the usual mistakes (revolting during GA, picking a fight with a clearly unbeatable AI, etc.)

I sometimes forget that cities next to fresh water count as irrigated squares, and wind up unnecessarily irrigating a bunch of squares in order to get the fresh water to where I need it to be.

One time, I built a settler, then hit "B" to load him on a Boat. Of course, "L" loads the settler on a boat. B simply joins him back into the city, wasting the half-dozen turns it took me to build the settler.

 

[Bigfoot]

Some of the Hall of Shame moments from my game play:

- I was trying out tactical nukes for the first time. My sub was a offshore from an AI civ I was keeping close tabs on, and I wanted to see which of his cities were in range. So I selected the nuke, and saw which cities could be hit if we needed to... but when I returned the nuke to my sub, I left clicked by mistake, leaving a nice mushroom cloud over that spot of ocean (yep folks, we just nuked our own submarine!). :knucklehead-salute:

- Once when I got a Great Leader during an AA war, I hurried him back to a nearby city to build an Army, then hit the wrong icon and rushed a nearly completed spearman

- I managed to abandon a stack of cats once when I unthinkingly moved all of the supporting units into an adjoining moutain tile. The AI got a nice windfall there...

 

[ManOfMiracles]

I forgot a classic...the first time I played with Victory Points I didn't grasp how they worked. I didn't like my start position so moved my settler one tile before building my capital. As I met opponents I kept checking the score. Mine stayed on zero until near the end of the MA when I finally looked up the rule which states you must have a unit on the VP location to get a score from it...

 

[Prince David]

Probably my biggest bone head was to "fortify" a GL until I had researched the tech that allowed the wonder I wanted to rush. Then I forgot about him until I was nearly finished with the wonder. Who knows, maybe another civ was just 1 turn ahead of me in finishing the wonder and it worked out after all. Still felt like a dope though.

 

[Turner]

I've done that before. That's a real D'oh! moment, isn't it?