Idiot mistakes 101

[Stanque LeFeete]

I am embarassed to submit this one; Noble, going for culture, 11 cities, 67 great person points per turn at home city, about 200 points ahead of second place civ. looking nice from my perspective, and no cheating on my part. Its AD 400 plus and time for bed. I cant save the game!!! Lose it all....Found out later on that game wont save with a question mark at the end of my name. I named Roosevelt "HuH?" which was intended to make dialog more amusing.

 

[Karl Townsend]

yea remeber once i was playing civ 4 had a really good civ
and for no reason pressed the quit button
and lost the game

 

[warroom]

If you're going to give it away, why give it away with all of the improvements still there? Whether you give it away or raze it, those improvements do you no good so you might as well get rid of them and get some money for it.

I hadn't thought about that. However, it is strange they don't let you get rid of a city. I guess the logic is: The U.S. can't just "get rid" of Los Angeles or New York.

 

[potatokiosk]

But the Mayans got rid of their cities...

 

[J_RocKeT76]

Building a Colossus in 1764AD and discovering Astronomy in 1780AD, the poor workers blood sweat and tears, obsolete four turns later.
Studying a Tech to make a building your building obsolete, makes perfect sense.

 

[CountZero117]

i'll admit that i've made pretty much all of these mistakes, especially the forgetting to change civics for about 100 turns after building the pyramid =(

 

[Krupo]

I loved the post about jungle-chopping for production points. Hilarious.

silver-blue's jungle-chop, only to have Egypt come and take away the well-earned city space is much harsher though. Ouch, and LOL at the same time.

yea remeber once i was playing civ 4 had a really good civ
and for no reason pressed the quit button
and lost the game

I am confused - did you have autosave disabled?

My stupid moments so far have involved playing the game without saving it or lowering the graphics detail from max when entering the late game on huge maps.

I had to play for an hour to catch up to the point I had been at.


Waiting 3000 or 4000 years to hook up a source of copper or iron was pretty idiotic too, though. Note to self: never do that again.

I totally forgot the "I" = "irrigate a farm" and hit "F" with a few workers. Silly me.

At least I wasn't nailed by the temptation to wish for Civ 1/2 style zone of control rules...


Gotta tell you my favourite "blunder" by the AI, on Noble: I seized one city from the French, and signed a peace deal. In the meantime, I built up a force of dozens of invaders, and I stationed my spies in three of his cities.

Paris happened to be working on the Pentagon.

Something along the following lines transpired: Oh look, Pentagon is 10 turns from completion. Peace treaty is set for 10 turns.

[more units pull up to the border]

"France completed the Pentagon."

And that, you see, is why Soren et co. gave us the handy "alt+click on name", for when you KNOW you're ready to invade.

 

[Blazer6]

Maybe the Pentagon was in the works long before you invaded?

 

[BCLG100]

Signing any form of an agreement with Cyrus or Catherine always seems to be a huge mistake in any of my games as it always comes back to bite me in the ass.

 

[Nestorius]

I decided not to convert to Hinduism right away, after I discovered it, because I was building a wonder and researching another religion. After more than two thousand years, with a long time in the Organized Religion civic, and then Pacificism, I was wondering why I was so backwards and things took forever to build, and other civs were so friendly...

 

[Frostyboy]

I'm sure it is mentioned some place in this thread, but building a city for getting access to foodless rescources, and then after building realizing you can't support the access to those tiles

(Or you need a lot of great merchants)

 

[Betafor]

The number one Stupidest thing i have ever done is I won't stop forgetting in multiplayer that the map is custom continents (single conintent for every team) and I rush archery, then horseback riding, then mining, then broze working, then halfway through iron working i realize i'm all alone...

 

[3 EMS]

I have made most of these mistakes. Some of these I attribute to learning the game. Such as, weakening a barbarians defenses so a rival CIV can easily take it. Or, for that matter, sending out an unprotected settler or not protecting a new city.

Other mistakes I didn't know about until reading this thread. Building Pyramids and not changing civs. Switching civs during GA. On chiefton level these weren't really problems. Now that I'm trying to learn on Noble level, this may be usefull info as every decision is way more important.

Probably my biggest mistake, though, was trying to play, on Noble, on a small map using all available civs. I had major production problems. I could build city improvements and wonders but was easily crushed when the AI decided to attack. Tried it again. I suffered a major stroke, so sometimes, I just have to bounce off of some walls. This time I paid a lot more attention to my military. I was able to defend myself but the harrasment(AI declaring war) caused me to fall behind in techs.

Thanks to all of you that post your mistakes. Some of them, I didn't realise were mistakes, until I read about them here.

 

[Krupo]

Maybe the Pentagon was in the works long before you invaded?

Well, yes, they started it earlier, but with 4 cities and an invasion force on the doorstep that's already taken one of your cities, wouldn't you find it intelligent to cancel the project and build something, anything, that will actually help defend your cities?

Instead, I managed to capture the Pentagon before the paint was dry on the walls!

 

[beestar]

I just spent 20 turns building Statue of Liberty, then looked through my cities to find no bonus specialist. What the ... ?

Oh. Only a bonus specialist on every city on the same continent.

And I'm playing Archipelago.

So that "continent" has a grand total of ... two cities.

 

[Bushface]

Enemy is building his last spaceship part, in his next-to-last city.
My tanks arrive at the city boundary.
He launches spaceship.
I lose.

Must learn to count.

 

[Rayjr]

First let me say all of these are fantastic. So many familiar mistakes so many I know now not to do. I had a pretty good one in my current game. I founded hinduism and I usually feel find a religion and stick with it. So in nicely spreads to my cities and I even start producing missionaries to send into my neighbors now its all over the place.... but wait I should be getting some money I know I over expanded and I am suffering with a 50% research rate.... well a few hundred years later another great prophet appears oh.... I didn't build the religious shrine in my holy city....DOH. yeah once I did that it made a difference.

 

[Odin2006]

I forgot huge SoDs are siting ducks for collateral damage, and my beautiful stack of Cats, Swordsmen, Axemen, and Archers was witled down to nothing by Monty's catapults.

 

[BSmith1068]

Get the ability to build Oxford. All ready to build it in the perfect city but can't. Realize you need 6 universities first. OK... start building universities. After building universities in all of your cities you still can't build Oxford... what the??? Realize you only have 5 cities.

 

[Wretchosoft]

I'm at war with Isabella, we're side by side (she's west) and Montezuma is to the northwest. He brought me into the war, but a couple of turns later pusses out, which I don't notice. So I have a vital city sitting on Isabella's border with only two musketmen in it. I figure, Montezuma's reinforcements should be coming anytime now, I'm fine. So 4 catapults and 4 swordsmen pop out from Izzy's border. Foolishly, I'm still not concerned. Those super strong musketmen will hold them off! She doesn't attack for a couple turns, and then 4 musketmen of hers pop out of the shadows. By this time I'm like "OH $#%@!" and realize my massive army of cavalry is standing to the south defending the coast from a galley that she sent over. City razed.

Moral: Two musketmen defending the prime attack front=not a good idea.