What are the most common play mistakes?

[Winth]

-Thinking "everything is okay, I'm on the path of victory" too early and then dying. Now it's much rarer for me, especially since I am an ADOM veteran.
-Playing without urge to play. Sometimes when I was bored I was finally going to play, but without any "jazz" to play. That means I'd rather muck around the Civilopedia rather than think about strategy, and just quit the game.
-Stretching your border too far only to find out you are a tasty target to a warmonger who can strike your cities at will, and with underprepared borders it can lead to doom.
-Not having a good plan. The plan really makes everything. I'm currently playing my first ever Emperor game as Gandhi. I'm cruising, having some very good hopes for an easy win with a humongous tech advantage because of a good plan ahead (which consisted of:
-generating a Great Prophet from Stonehenge;
-bulbing Theology for a good trading/bribing tech;
-using the downfall from rapid war expansion [I killed America] to produce Scientists = Great Scientist;
-bulb Philosophy and run Pacifism for more great people).

-Playing a diplo pariah and ending up with everyone Cautious. Unless I have a handful of vassals and a huge empire, I can go without friends. But it's wrong to ignore diplomacy completely or rejecting time by time the demands. Divide and conquer is an important rule for Civ4, methinks.

 

[hoonak]

Being too nice to my neighbors.
Not looking at the clock when I play.
Not learning from my mistakes.
And not rubbing out Monty the first time I see him.

1. Don't think of them as "neighbors", think of them as your future citizens.
2. why?
3. it'll happen, just keep evolving.
4. agree totally. monty's a complete prick.
5. not naming all my cities "Lemon Merchant"

 

[Lemon Merchant]

1. Don't think of them as "neighbors", think of them as your future citizens.
2. why?
3. it'll happen, just keep evolving.
4. agree totally. monty's a complete prick.
5. not naming all my cities "Lemon Merchant"

Lol. Hoonie, you're a big maniac.

 

[Bushface]

Surely the most common mistake is starting to play this hideously addictive game in the first place.

 

[Scoottr]

Someone posted about having aircrafter 'auto recon' or something? Is there a way to set them to repetitivly scout an area without having to keep ordering it every turn??

 

[hoonak]

Lol. Hoonie, you're a big maniac.

I prefer to think of myself as "hefty". Big implies that i am fat and out of shape.

 

[Lemon Merchant]

I prefer to think of myself as "hefty". Big implies that i am fat and out of shape.

C'mon now, I was meaning "big" as in magnificent, outstanding, outrageous, etc, etc.

 

[Aleenik]

a Mistake I often make-Overexpanding..Conquering enemy cities and taking them when I shouldnt..and dont realize im loosing money cuz im lazy like that till its too late..

 

[hoonak]

C'mon now, I was meaning "big" as in magnificent, outstanding, outrageous, etc, etc.

Oooh! right you are there, oh Mighty Vendor of Specialized Citruses! I just have some "psychological issues" about my size, a few "extra tacos on the combo platter" of my neuroses. I carry some "extra baggage", if you will pardon the pun.

Hoonak the Devourer, Lord of the Buffet

 

[Astax]

There is no such thing as bronze working too early! However my biggest mistake sometime is moving to a forest tile while forgetting I have no bronze working yet! Or moving to a corn while not realizing I didn't start with agriculture :/ Luckily at most I lose 1 turn with 1 worker

 

[CCRunner]

1. Underexpanding
2. Overexpanding
3. Automating workers
4. Poor diplo
5. Not quitting when you should

 

[Alltidxx]

Clicking away the turns because I am too eager to get something coming up soon (a tech, a unit, a building, a wonder...) and then 50 turns later realising that I should've checked on other stuff in order to prevent the current problematic situation caused by my own ignorence during those 50 turns or so...

 

[Vladesch]

Being building happy and ignoring my army.

 

[pavel1269]

Holding ALT while you want to talk to some leader?

 

[Jerrymander]

Not dotmapping in my head. Sometimes I don't play ahead with my cities and I end up with 5 mediocre cities, where 3 good ones could have been.

 

[TigerBotHesh]

I'm bad about having the computer ratchet down my science slider to pay my bills and not noticing until much later in the game, when I see that "simple" techs will take 50-60 turns to research.