Idiot mistakes 101

[GeoModder]

After a bunch of victories (mostly Space Race) I decided to give a try for a military victory, and took Ghengis for that. So there I am, on a continent with Peter on it. Beelining to horse archers, linking the resources (copper and horse) and building up a stack of horse archers with the occasional axeman to keep barbs away from my resource plots.

The moment comes, an outright invasion of Peters' civ. City after city falls, more then doubling the size of my empire in perhaps 30 turns and having a whole continent for myself, only to *almost* become broke, and to juggle and struggle (with) my finances for the rest of the game to keep up technologically so the 4 civs on the other continent wouldn't think I'm easy prey. If it wasn't for the internet, I never would have won a *grumble* SPACE *grumble* victory again!

 

[GeoModder]

Double post.

 

[Spekingur]

If I remember correctly the first Civ used 'I' key (stands for 'Irrigation').

Not exactly a mistake, this one. Being in a multiplayer game and setting a password for your civ. Get a CTD, restarting the game quickly but then forgetting the password I put on the civ

 

[opticaljim]

Losing track of the research your on, trade a very valuable research to get the one you were going to discover the next turn.

Changing civics with only one turn to complete an important wonder, two turns later another civ gets it.

 

[troytheface]

playing one Noble level game and coming in third then playing Prince level for
about 5 hundred and fifty billion times and coming in last or second to the last or getting killed. I refer to such tactics as "stick with one Civ and refine ur losing methods."

 

[Velvet-Glove]

Ha! I got caught out on something else last night... I was busy building lots of missionaries and made the foolish mistake of changing civics. I lost 4 potential missionaries because they 'could no longer be built' in certain cities. Bah!

 

[rcoutme]

I started to build a national wonder in one city and then noticed that another city would be an ideal spot! I changed the first city and started the wonder in the second. Guess what! You can't do that...once you have some hammers stored up, that's where that wonder is gonna go!

 

[Bayazid I]

how bout spaming city-raider praetorians like its going out of stlye capturing 4 greek cities in the GOTM and losing all of them to combat-upgraded lvl 3 swordsman... combined arms... arghh... why didn't i bring some cheap archers or at least one or two axemen....

ohh... and as a reaction i tried to even out the promotions on my praetorians to try to balance them... i just kind of pressed buttons... i upgraded them with woodlands I and II...
that was probably worse...

 

[Napo981]

I was barely keeping my cities happy at the door of the modern era...

I've researched techs that obsolete Ivory and then fur.

Half my cities are revolting now.... :suicide:

 

[The Condor]

Wow, that must of sucked and I might add this is a pretty great thread. Unfortunately, ever possible error I have stupidly done has been mentioned here somewhere so all I can say is goodjob making me not feel like a moron (j/k)!

 

[calyth]

i upgraded them with woodlands I and II...
that was probably worse...

Well if they're ever in a forest/jungle they'd really shine.... the only problem is whether your enemy cities is surrounded by forests.

 

[ZippyRiver]

Merrily going on building cottages and taking the time to get them up to town size, enjoying the extra gold being a financial civ........

Only to realise that when the tech came to farm those grassland tiles, you realise you completly cut off your fresh water supply.

I had to either destroy one town AND a cow pasture, or route the irrigation from EIGHT tiles away around a string of hills and bring it in from the back side.

Problem was, 3 of the string came alongside another civ. ONE pilliage, and my empire lost the +1 food from about 16 grassland farms. Every city starving now.

 

[SpriteSODA]

sending 12 jet fighters to scout an area insted of 1 because they where attached togheter by SHIFT.

 

[Ray Patterson]

Problem was, 3 of the string came alongside another civ. ONE pilliage, and my empire lost the +1 food from about 16 grassland farms. Every city starving now.

really? with civil service the farms have to stay connected to fresh water? So what happens if they're cut off, are they all destroyed?

 

[Willowmound]

I started to build a national wonder in one city and then noticed that another city would be an ideal spot! I changed the first city and started the wonder in the second. Guess what! You can't do that...once you have some hammers stored up, that's where that wonder is gonna go!

What?! Are you sure about that? It wasn't just that the other city already had its two national wonders?

 

[Mmmm Butter]

When I did this the first thing that came to mind was this thread. So I took a screenshot. I love this thread because

a) I don't feel as stupid for having made the same mistakes, since I'm not the only one, and

b) So I don't make the ones I was about to, since I read about em here.

So, here's what I did... was on a small continent map, and saw that by conquering all Gandhi's territory, I could win a domination victory. So, since I'd somehow managed to circumnavigate the globe with galleys (!) I figured I could just use them to shuttle troops back and forth between my peninsula and Gandhi's island. Turns out that the only way your galleys can sail in an opponent's cultural borders is through open borders, can't do it even if you're at war. Result looked something like this:

A bunch of galleys loaded with troops, with nowhere to go and nothing to do!

I had to get 3 techs, starting with compass, to get up to galleons. Plus the turns w/o research to get cash to upgrade the galleys. All told, I was "at war" with Gandhi for a good 20 turns, at least, before I managed to fire a shot.

 

[Thalassicus]

I started to build a national wonder in one city and then noticed that another city would be an ideal spot! I changed the first city and started the wonder in the second. Guess what! You can't do that...once you have some hammers stored up, that's where that wonder is gonna go!

The second city likely just had both national wonders built; you can actually cancel production in one place and start it in another (and you get a refund in the first city after it's built)

really? with civil service the farms have to stay connected to fresh water? So what happens if they're cut off, are they all destroyed?

Yep, a farm is only irrigated if it's next to another irrigated farm or source of fresh water. So if you have a chain of farms like this, and the one at X is removed:

OOOOOXOOO||

The farm to X's left no longer fulfulls those requirements. So it's no longer irrigated, resulting in the same for the one to it's left, and so on.

 

[DrXenos]

My most idiotic move was declaring war on a very tiny nation, thinking it would be a pushover to beat. The problem was it had made a mutual defense pact with a very large nation. I didn't think of that possibility and had a very small military. Ouch!

 

[Ray Patterson]

The farm to X's left no longer fulfulls those requirements. So it's no longer irrigated, resulting in the same for the one to it's left, and so on.

Well I guess I'll just have to try it out, but it sort of puzzles me what would happen to them. Seems there are two kinds of farms, irrigated farms that actually work, and non-irrigated ones that don't. Or are there three, because iirc rice, wheat & corn farms don't spread irrigation as long as they're not connected to fresh water, but work anyway. Anyway, back to 101 mistakes

 

[opticaljim]

Taking about 15 turns to build a huge stack of machine gunners to attack a city.

Well, gawsh durn, it turns out that machine gunners cannot initiate attacks.