Idiot mistakes 101

[opticaljim]

Carefully cultivating a level 5 unit in an effort to build West Point on top of Heroic Epic only to forget about the whole thing right up to a split second after your Level 5 unit is knocked off.......................by a vastly inferior unit, of course.

 

[calyth]

Carefully cultivating a level 5 unit in an effort to build West Point on top of Heroic Epic only to forget about the whole thing right up to a split second after your Level 5 unit is knocked off.......................by a vastly inferior unit, of course.

That's really an ouch....

 

[baboon]

Going to all the time, effort and costs to construct the Pyramids, actually acheive it, only to forget to change the civic government (the major benefit) for the next 150 turns.

Hehe, sounds familiar. I usually wait a few turns because I want to try for the Oracle, sometimes I also forget to switch it for a few turns, although not that long.

 

[Sir Toma]

Neglecting your miliatary on noble while going for a cultural victory. I thought i would be fine as all my neighbors had my state religion and were at least pleased with me. Unfourtunately i didn't realize one of my neighbors was montezuma. OUCH! I refused open boarders and next turn i was flooded with Jaguars, Axmen, and Horse Archers.
Now i play Monte in most games because it means i don'thave to fight him

 

[Frollo]

Hitting "f" to tell several dozen of my workers to build farms. For about a hundred turns.

I was wondering where those guys went.

Ooh, that happens to me A LOT.
I guess I'll never get used to it so I rather click the hay fork icon.

 

[Chalid]

Building a City on the wrong place so that 2 ressources are just outside the fat cross.
No Problem, I gifted it to my Neighbor with whom I was on the brick of starting a war.
Started the war an attaked the city to raze it. The typical popup appeared: "Do you want to install an new Governor?" - Of coure I clicked on "Yes" - Aaarg...

 

[deKoven]

After reading through this whole thread I must say; "There's hope for me yet!" I've prolly done most, if not all, those things myself. Thought it was because I sucked at this kind of game. Now I know I'm in good company.

 

[BirraImperial]

Sending hordes of calvary, riflemen, and cannons to destroy my neighbours the russians, but leaving my coastal cities full of crappy musketmen and archers. Isabella then declared war on me and invaded my continent, razing a city in the process. I had to stop my invasion to counter that.

 

[flytyer]

This thread has been a lot of fun to read through as we all learn how to play this great game. A mistake I am constantly repeating is trying to use short-cut keys on the keyboard and not getting my desired result. I am having to train myself to always click on the desired icon instead till I finally memorize the short-cut keys. HA!

 

[Finite Monkey]

I saved up 5 great engineers for building the spaceship super fast.

I didn't realize you could only use them for buildings. The worst part was that I was behind so I thought this would catch me up. I didn't have a chance to rush the space elevator

 

[Psyringe]

Trying some keyboard shortcuts without saving the game first. Note: Civ4 does not intercept Alt-F4. It just quietly closes.

 

[Gato Loco]

Assuming that "pleased" means "I won't attack you"

Installing the Omega driver for a Geforce 2 card. My graphics are still messed up, even after I reinstalled the original driver.

 

[Bloody Diamonds]

Trying some keyboard shortcuts without saving the game first. Note: Civ4 does not intercept Alt-F4. It just quietly closes.

I kind of like this feature.

 

[irie-mon]

Changing to Pacifism when you had no state religion. :/

 

[Ray Patterson]

Switching to nationhood because someone declares war on you, and never switching back to free speech after the tide has long been turned

Ah well, it was my first try for Space ship, and I finished it somewhere in the 19sixties, after centuries of unnecessary nationhood. And I was spiritual mind you, no reason not to switch back. d'oh, d'oh, d'oh, d'oh.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

I gifted it to my Neighbor with whom I was on the brick of starting a war.

Actually, the idea of building a bunch of @#$@#$ cities and then giving them away (inflicting absurd maintenance costs, etc, on the AI) sounds intriguing.

Anyway: idiot mistake = popping hut before first city (especially when 1st settler is idle in place).


Edit: oops, didn't realize the nanny would object to that particular spelling of @#$@#$

 

[Thalassicus]

Moving 20 bombers into an allied, friendly city only to have an enemy sub wipe them out next turn.

Hitting "f" to tell several dozen of my workers to build farms. For about a hundred turns.

I was wondering where those guys went.

Ooh, that happens to me A LOT.
I guess I'll never get used to it so I rather click the hay fork icon.

I used to do that all the time; it took me a while to realize that "F" isn't the "Farm" key

I never use shortcuts now though...since you can't (yet) add orders to a queue with shortcuts (it's reading it as a "Shift + F" command)

 

[niffweed17]

many of these are things i have done, but one that i haven't seen mentioned:

tell a fishing boat to go to one space five squares away... only forgetting that there is unexplored territory between here and there, so the fishing boat has to go around the island and arrives at the desired fish/clam/crab/whale resource 50 turns later.

 

[Artanis]

One of my first games had a doozy. I was being attacked by Barbarians, and knowing that Barbarians would pillage my improvements, I moved an Archer out of his city to sucker them into attacking it.

...on Grasslands...one tile outside the city...with nothing left behind to guard the city...



My last game had several though. I had been winning consistantly on Noble and decided to move up to Prince. I'd done so once before already, so I knew it'd take a LOT more to win.

As per my usual tactics, I started the game by sealing off a big chunk of my continent, planning to backfill at my own pace. That pace was significantly slowed by Health and Happiness issues that kept smoke and green clouds over my capital almost the entire time. Eventually, when I was just about finished filling up my corner of the continent - and mired in 4th place (out of 7) - I started looking for where I would put my eighth and final city. I found the perfect spot: a Plains Hill with Gold right on it, and with a Sheep, 2 Fish, and 3 Forests in the city radius.

...4 tiles from my capital


Later in the game, just as Tanks were coming in, I decided that the only way to catch up to Kublai Khan (the leader) was to attack him and take over a big chunk of his empire. He even had a size 12 city that was BADLY losing a culture war to mine, so I could just stack Cannons next to it and take it in a single turn. However, despite the claims of the AI being terrible at warfare, being 3 times my size gave him more than enough units to simply zerg me into a stalemate. I eventually had to give the border town back in exchange for peace because I was about to be overrun by sheer numbers.

It gets better though. As the border town was falling, I sent the majority of my mobile forces - 2 Tanks and 8 Cossacks - to take a city a few tiles in. When I got there, I smashed the defenders down to one badly-wounded Siege Engine while I still had 2 Cossacks that hadn't attacked yet. Knowing I couldn't hold the city if I took it that turn, I did not raze it...I simply held off until the next turn. This without noticing the little grey lines connecting the city to the rest of his empire...and the reinforcements that would put a dozen fresh defenders in his city that turn and utterly annihilate my assault stack the turn after that.

 

[Yusaku Jon III]

Neglecting your miliatary on noble while going for a cultural victory. I thought i would be fine as all my neighbors had my state religion and were at least pleased with me. Unfourtunately i didn't realize one of my neighbors was montezuma.

Point. Never trust Montezuma. Ever!

I'm finding that if you play games the way I'm doing it (vs 2-3 AI on a huge contintnets map at Warlord difficulty), a large military is a must, especially if you're on a very large continent and there are barbs popping up all over the place with your valuable iron and copper resources being just beyond the reach of your capital. I will never assume that the neighboring civs are going to just happily let you be again, especially an aggressive civ like the Aztecs. You'll at least need to have swordsmen or promoted axemen and archers to counter all those jags.