What do you think is the weakest part of your game.

[gskyes]

I have many of these listed above to some degree. Like micromanagement and war-time tunnel vision. I also fall prey to forgetting to change a build, wake a worker, or do the other things the game won't prompt you for. Several times the AI has sent a little 1 or 2 unit pillage party into my lands, and I think "I should send a few units to get them" but after the long turn of moving other units around their territory and managing new builds, I hit end-turn and look, there they still are, pillaging my iron and killing my worker.

But I have 2 more I haven't seen mentioned yet:

Archipelagos. I have no problems moving large armies around on land. I'm fine with an moving them across an ocean for a nice amphibious invasion. But separate all those cities with small strips of water and I can't do it. I just hate the logisitcal hassle of loading and managing transports for an entire map. I usually just quit those type of maps around the industrial age, even when I'm winning.

Conquest victories. I always hit domination first when going for a military victory. Its hard enough to capture every city instead of ~60% of them, but the game also has to throw in resistance fighters and uprisings when you raze a city as well. I don't have the patience to win a conquest victory when the domination victory is much easier and faster. But I love that conquest victory movie.

 

[CornPlanter]

I go into some kind of trance-like state. I do a lot of things that I can say my reasoning for later, but I never actually thought it out while playing. I have to actively look at games and correct after the fact, since I often don't realize what I'm actually doing while playing. This tendency is both a weakness and a strength though, IMO. It lends to performing poorly, yes, but the game spam leads to fast improvement...

But seriously, civ is a huge game. There so many aspects of it it gives me a headache. There are many cities to micromanage, many rivals to microdiplo, many units to deploy here and there (city garison, counterattack if needed, preparing SoD, etc.), then there is also wonder rushes, teching, and so on and so on. I tend to have no real plan and do what I feel is good at the moment. Like ordering a theatre in a city because I think theatre would be good (and I not always realize that said city is a Capital with GT and needs no happiness). When I'm finishing a turn I ussualy have some plans for the next one. But. When the next turn comes I have to deal with all those "what to build next?" popups and with all those attention whores AIs who offers deals or demands money/tech or wants me to go to war with something. After that I have to give free workers something to do. Then I must fortify active units again (e.g. those who just finished healing). By the time I finish this "compulsory movement" phase I find that I completely forgot all my plans for this turn. And five turns later I remember that I needed to deal with that unhappiness in London - and I remember this because angry mob tears London apart destroying improvements. And if I'm at war it gets even worse because I must watch all the AI's moves what takes forever and I forget everything even before my turn starts.
I wonder how do I win at all with such a poor "managing"...

Several times the AI has sent a little 1 or 2 unit pillage party into my lands, and I think "I should send a few units to get them" but after the long turn of moving other units around their territory and managing new builds, I hit end-turn and look, there they still are, pillaging my iron and killing my worker.

Yeah thats exactly an example from my games too. When AI turn comes it pillages something and I think "oh, I must send something to deal with them" but by my turn I just forget it. And when the next AI turn comes it pillages again... Shell we write everything down?

Do you have similar problems? How do you deal with them?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

But seriously, civ is a huge game. There so many aspects of it it gives me a headache. There are many cities to micromanage, many rivals to microdiplo, many units to deploy here and there (city garison, counterattack if needed, preparing SoD, etc.), then there is also wonder rushes, teching, and so on and so on. I ten to have no real plan and do what I feel is good. When I'm finishing a turn I ussualy have some plans for the next one. But. When the next turn comes I have to deal with all those "what to build next?" popups and with all those attention whores AIs who offers deals or demands money/tech or wants me to go to war with something. After that I have to give free workers something to do. Then I must fortify active units again (e.g. those who just finished healing). By the time I finish this "compulsory movement" phase I find that I completely forgot all my plans for this turn. And five turns later I remember that I needed to deal with that unhappiness in London - and I remember this because angry mob tears London apart destroying improvements.
I wonder how do I win all the time with such poor "managing".

Do you have similar problems? How do you deal with them?

I focus. My goal is "how can I win", or if playing under special rules, "how do I attain the victory condition of choice?". I never, ever deviate from that focus. Every decision for what is best is based on winning. In terms of micro, I have most hotkeys memorized, I use waypoints and queue's like crazy, and I've gotten pretty good at early game tile swapping quickly (though I suspect with good reason to suspect that my choices need work on occasion). Once I set all that up, decisions can be made across a few seconds. Same thing with checking the AIs that can declare, it takes like 4 seconds, and sometimes there are 0.

I do favor cottages over specs because of this, as they require less clicks and checking to run optimally. I still run specs though.

Also, deity seems to be a pretty hefty wall. This might be just because it's deity, the highest jump in civ IV, but I suspect my micro is the limiter.

 

[FlyinJohnnyL]

Tunnel vision during warfare is definitely one of my problems. I'm good about getting all of the national wonders up but that darn globe theater. I'm not much of a drafter, and this is probably the reason why.

 

[Twyst]

Another common knuckle headed mistake I often perform is to set my exploring units on guard to farm incoming barbs and forget to move them back to exploring. Turns after turns will sometimes go by before I pan over random units hanging out on woodland hills, doh!

 

[pi-r8]

I'd say that, the later the game goes on, the weaker I am. I blame my computer for this, because it lags up when there's a lot of units on the screen, which makes the later game not much fun to play.

 

[Makenunetane]

The weakest part of my game is to let my military lage while I am trying to push my city buildings and science along.

Second weakest is losing focus on victory strategy. I would win sooner if I would stick to one approach. Sometimes I find my self building a spaceship, playing the diplomat and pushing culture simultaneously.

Thirdly I let late game wars distract me. If someone declares war on me I feel obligated to knock him out.

 

[Loki Strikes]

Balancing expansion, its hard to resist putting up extra cities, I too often go to 0% slider and end up building research (wealth if I am at currency). My goal is to not go below 20-30% but I always break. However I recover quite well, have yet to find unfixable economy, still its a royal PITA

I lose direction on the way to lib a bit and fall behind militarily during that period so sometimes have trouble getting the ball rolling on a cuirasser rush.

I recently fixed my spy builidng problem, I build them in my COMMERCE cities instead of military cities as I tend to get my commerce buildings up fast with the whip/farms and chopping

I tend to build too many units early for my maintenance

I have recently gotten better on national wonders, I just build them if its suboptimal for later, I just rationalize I got it early so greater long term benefit.

 

[Alrin Kharr]

Oh boy, where to start? I could go on for hours.

I often have a hard time staying focused when it comes to teching, and will stray off onto unnecessary tangents.

I used to have a near-psychotic obsession with keeping that little GPT number in the upper-left corner from turning red. I'm better at this now, though.

I sometimes have difficulty deciding where to place my cites, obsessing over placing them EXACTLY right.

I have a hard time remembering that I need to keep expanding past my first 4-6 cities if there's still land left to grab. I get sidetracked with buildings and units, and keep putting off more Settlers/Workers until eventually the AI settles everything.

Despite my best efforts to stop myself from doing so, I probably still build way too many unnecessary buildings in most of my cities. Again, I think I'm getting better at this, but I have a ways to go.

My single biggest flaw, as I started to move up the difficulty ladder, was warmongering. I would never build enough units, consistently underestimating my needs; this, of course, caused my wars to quickly grind to a halt as I found my force insufficient to the task. Then I started going the other way and pumping out so many units that I was vastly overdoing it and hindering my economic development. This is the area I'm trying the hardest to improve right now, and probably the biggest thing holding me back from winning consistently on Emperor.

 

[Sammcs]

I just kind of do things and can't explain them. I guess I just try to copy the good players on here, and it's gotten me some results (Emperor-ish level player).

 

[Dirk1302]

Imagination, i can play a pretty good game in all stages but i sometimes lack the flair to turn a really bad start/situation around.

Sometimes i lack knowledge too especially in the unit promotions department. I don't think this aspect of the game is too important though.

 

[ppciv4]

beginning, deciding which technology to research.
always trying to skip bronze working.

 

[Gwynnja]

beginning, deciding which technology to research.
always trying to skip bronze working.

Why on earth would you skip Bronze Working?

 

[QuixotesGhost]

My weakness for playing goofy strats.

 

[ppciv4]

Why on earth would you skip Bronze Working?

Er... don't you feel it's expensive..?
sometimes my only worker have enough job to do, and have no time for chopping.
I can trade for it later.

 

[schlaufuchs]

My major problems in-game are threefold:

1. Lack of focus in regards to tech path (during the whole game, but especially during the early game)
2. Impatience when it comes to war (Declaring war before I have adequate troops)
3. I have a tendency to overproduce things when I fianlly do get around to producing them (And I do mean that)

 

[Gwynnja]

Er... don't you feel it's expensive..?
sometimes my only worker have enough job to do, and have no time for chopping.
I can trade for it later.

I want to know where the copper is in order to protect my empire, I want to whip, and I want to chop. Waiting until alphabet then trading for it seems less than optimum.

 

[Bandobras Took]

Though even if you start with Mining, it's always cheaper to research Hunting/Archery -- empire protection is not enough; you need to be able to also make good use of chopping/whipping to make Bronze Working worth it.

 

[Derp]

I can't seem to get myself into a full-on, destroy-all-humans type warfare. I always have this urge to consolidate my holdings after I take them, even when it would be more advantageous to just go in for the kill. My other biggest weakness is that I forget to keep expanding after the initial REX and the initial colonization spam, so I often find myself sitting and scratching my head wondering how the AI suddenly got so far ahead of me until I notice that all of that empty space suddenly isn't empty anymore. My biggest problem though, is that I just can't keep my attention long enough to beat most games, and I usually end up just quitting and doing something else around the rennaisance.

 

[Oggums]

I have never, ever, raced for Liberalism. I get the impression from reading these forums that it's just about everyone's main goal in every game, so there must be something to it.