Idiot mistakes 101

[Velvet-Glove]

Some of my newbie/cretinous mistakes:

1. Moving a settler plus his protective escort separately... settler took one route to the destination tile, the archer took another, leaving the poor settler unprotected... he got killed.

Moral of the tale: ensure both units are selected when you give the order to move.

2. Taking a galleon load of reinforcements to an outpost on an island just in case the neighbours attack it... six turns over an expanse of ocean for the galleon to get there, and six turns to get back home. The only problem is that it gets home and you find the units are still on board... whatever I did to unload them didn't work for some reason (human error most likely) and my suspicions were well founded - the island outpost got wasted.

Moral of the tale: check that your troops unload properly before the ship sets sail again.

3. Building a caravel so you can go and destroy your neighbour's fishing boats (he declared war on you and and you're feeling mean). This is a waste of time as caravels can't do this. I would have been better off building an extra maceman instead of that useless ship.

 

[panzooka]

leaving a multiplayer game when some one took your one of your smallest city.

 

[Meffy]

Accidentally (via finger fumble) fortifying a unit, usually a worker, out in the middle of nowhere... then forgetting why that guy just keeps standing around year after year. *9_9* Some day I'll learn.

 

[Bhruic]

Noticing that your city is 1 turn away from growing, so deciding to put off building a settler, and starting a barracks - only to forget the next turn, and have the city waste a bunch of turns building a barracks.

Bh

 

[opticaljim]

1. Making a beeline for the Alphabet tech thinking that now I can trade to get all the other techs I skipped over. In the meantime I've completely stunted the growth of my Civ by denying food, resources, and luxuries. By the time I get the Alphabet everyone is far more powerful than me and most of them won't trade with me anyway. I'm screwed.

2. Going for the "land grab" method typically employed in Civ III. The quick expansion slows my research to a snail's pace. I'm bigger in the sense that I have more land but the other Civs have far larger cities and advanced military. Again, I'm screwed.

 

[angelickitty]

clearing a small island of barbarians and thinking its safe to send a settler down to settle on the land instead of waiting the three turns it took the archer to catch up because i wanted the acess to the stone and iron the city would give me that much quicker.... guess the stones that i got when i got a second settler down their was the rubble of the first city!

 

[Allanon]

I was playing as the aztecs and was pumping out settlers and workers grabbing as much territory as possilbe and built libraries in every city to expand culture and science rate dropped all the way to 0%

 

[IglooDame]

The AI landed some macemen on a one-city island of mine, that had only a single longbowman defender in the city. However, I had two brand new machinegunners and a cannon standing by, and loaded them into one of my galleons that was within five squares of the island city. Except - I loaded them into the galleon that didn't have any mp left, instead of the one that had five mp left.

The city fell and it was several turns before I could take it back.

 

[Ray Patterson]

Accidentally (via finger fumble) fortifying a unit, usually a worker, out in the middle of nowhere... then forgetting why that guy just keeps standing around year after year. *9_9* Some day I'll learn.

or letting all your workers sleep because there really is nothing left to do, and intending to wake them up as soon as you invent railroads. Then, when you got railroads, you're immersed in all these other things, and suddenly, boom! one of your neighbours starts an invasion and you really could use those railroads now to bring infantry from the other borders to that one.

 

[Tiresias]

failing to found any religions or indeed any wonders until mid game

boy I sucked that game, I wasn't even being militaristic

 

[Control Group]

Let's see...

1. Assuming that, since I'd cleared out the barbarians anywhere near me and only friendly civs were around, I could let my military slide. This is when I found out about barbarian cities, and barbarian tech advances. Notably, two warriors per city, even entrenched, don't do so hot against a dozen barbarian archers. So much for the French.

2. Assuming that taking a barbarian city was always a good idea: it saves me a settler, after all. Turns out an empire with 7 (of 12) cities taken from the barbs, scattered across a huge continent, is expensive to run. Research down to 0%, units suiciding left and right, it was a disaster. And my research had been so bad for so long there was nothing I could set my cities to producing aside from more units I couldn't afford (there really needs to be a "produce nothing" option).

Now that I've had Civ III burned out of me, I'm doing much better.

 

[Meffy]

(there really needs to be a "produce nothing" option)

Far better, produce commerce. Half of the city's production gets converted into cold hard currency each turn this is in effect. (Or is that possibility made available later in the game, after some tech advance? I forget.)

 

[warpstorm]

Going on a an early conquering binge and expanding my empire to the point where I can't afford more than a 20% tech rate.

 

[warpstorm]

Far better, produce commerce. Half of the city's production gets converted into cold hard currency each turn this is in effect. (Or is that possibility made available later in the game, after some tech advance? I forget.)

There is, you need currency for it.

 

[El_Machinae]

After painstakingly leading a horde of low-tech conquest (destroying all in your nigh-paleolithic technology), do NOT decide to stop and see if you can build a thriving modern empire. You can't. Live by horde, succeed by the horde!

 

[Sitting_Duck]

Building worker boats...Lots of worker boats...then clicking on automate when ready and then the highlight!!! About 23 boats still in citys with nowhere to go or do..... Douhhhh...What a waste.

 

[Control Group]

Far better, produce commerce. Half of the city's production gets converted into cold hard currency each turn this is in effect. (Or is that possibility made available later in the game, after some tech advance? I forget.)

Warpstorm nailed it: you need currency to produce wealth, and I didn't have it. I couldn't produce wealth, research, or culture, and I had already built all the possible city improvements in a couple cities. For a while, I was producing workers and disbanding them as soon as they were finished.

I actually recovered from the debacle fairly well...right up until the civ next door declared war on me.

 

[Dikaioma]

Building a city in the wrong spot.

 

[Trainwreck20]

Noticing that your city is 1 turn away from growing, so deciding to put off building a settler, and starting a barracks - only to forget the next turn, and have the city waste a bunch of turns building a barracks.

I have done this one more times than I care to remember

 

[Grogs]

I founded my first city on the coast beside 2 clams. The first thing I built was a work boat. 25 turns later, I had a 3-food tile for my efforts. I could have built a (half-priced) lighthouse and achieved the same result on *both* clams, popped a worker and farmed a grassland, or just set the city to work one of the floodplains in the radius. I had to play a lot of catch-up to recover from all the lost turns.