Ever had one of those "I'm a better player than that" moments?

[eris]

No, I have never had a "I am a better player than that." moment, because in actuality, I am not a better player than that. I have made stupid mistakes now and then, but as long as it is no more than one per game I feel good about myself.

I am trying to be "a better player than that" but no one knows how long that might take.

[Switch]

Same as Eris...I play Cheiftan, and occasionally warlord. I feel good if I do good in Warlord, though I hope to eventually work my way up to Regent. Anything beyond that is merely a bonus, but my goal is regent.

Though I have had "why aren't I a better than that" moments, such as not building enough units for an assault, or being slack in rexing and being behind by 5 cities from most AI (though the latter is rare in my difficulty levels).

[DrSpike]

The dumbest thing I can remember doing in C3C is a game where I didn't build a harbour, though I was sure I did. "Why can't I trade - the sea routes are so flaky in this game!"

[Mr Justice]

the number of times ive been stupid in this game is .. welll . lots.
recalling them is the hard part. but this happened a week or so i go. im playing demigod - arch - std size.
late middle ages. me being the biggest civ (dutch). spent most of the game at war so far.

having done well at warmongering my confidence was sky high. i was busy smirking at the screen. i had just eliminated one civ and decided that my armed forces should not be left idling. of course at this point the world was dominated a massive world war involving everyone. the stakes were high.

after such a crushing victory over the russians my navy converged on a small former russian City. from here it was decided that our invasion (of the pruning variety) would be launched. a couple of turns of buildup commenced and my forces launced in a flotillia of ships (17). expected ETA was 3 turns. i clicked the end turn button to allow the computer to feel the FEAR.

as the various Civ turns commenced i noticed a LOT of ships coming straight for my invasion force. first Germans attached my flotillia. 4 ships lost. then ottomons attacked after and i lost another 6.

the stupid part is the fact that i had no escorts. i lost 30 units including 1 empty army. fuming that id been so dismissive of the AI i reloaded and decided to reduce the number units i sent in the ships. ha ha.

they will PAY.

so i played on with my revised invasion. took 5 turns to reach enemy turf. my landing posistion (a nice hill beside a city) was occupied by some enemy troops. but what the hell. i'll just land other side of city. my troops landed, all 30 units incl 10 cannon.
i clicked the end turn.
next round i had 3 badly damaged swiss merc left guarding 10 cannon.

with my tail between my legs i had to reload to before i launced and scratched the whole idea of invading em.

[joncnunn]

I'd say the dumbest thing I did was picking Map Making as the free discovery from Philospacy and trading it for another tech before founding a city adjoning an Iron resource that's also would easy to access via a Galley, this was with my Horsemen along the land border actively yo-yoing the German AI's 6 sets of settlers and defensive units to keep them from advancing into my territory.

5 turns later, up oh!

I took the time machine back to before picking it and chose Polytheism instead to recover. Folowing the recovery I did get a very good idea on where the AI wanted to found the cities, because as I did so and some cities Temples completed I did see them pull one settler-military unit pair off my boarder at a time until they finally all left.

[The Hack]

Hey I just did one last nite! Old Radnor declares war on me. He must be itching to use his Berzerkers. My only saltpeter rescourse is on a common border. Were mass troops are attacking. No problem I'll just have to protect it. I run a calvery over and go to hit fortify oops it was pillage! OK knights aren't bad. I can re-hook the road up. I think what was bothering him was a city I was culture bombing him with trying to get an incensce from that also had a horse around. He had about 10 Berzerkers ready to attack do to a ROP with the French. I figure I can't save it so I burn it down run and figure on counter attacking his berzerkers. Well I lost the extra horse. Oh no! I am selling horses to the French and it doesn't expire for 9 more turns. I only have about 10 calvery and he's attacking in 3 spots and my coastal cities are vulnerable this looks bleak. No fast movers and I can only build Longbowman and Spearman too. Because I traded my only Iron with horses to gain teck parity. I was trying to help the French defend against the Mongals who everybody was at war with and the Vikings blew an Alliance and sneaked attacked me. Nothing to trade for alliances against the Vikings, the Mongals not talking to me, the alliance starts unravilling, the other civ's are breaking it, getting peace with the Mongels! Yikes. I figured I didn't need Iron for 20 turns I was going to build nothing but Calvery. Good thing the the AI doesn't know how to use the Berzerkers. I had to raze about 6 recently acquired Mongel cities to consilidate until the attacking forces were annialated, regroup and counter attack. Once the initial attack force was destroyed and I started seeing pikemen coming in to pillage I called up Ragnor to see if he wanted peace and he says "What have you lost your mind? Are you trying to make me go Berzerk?. I had to start laughing. I';ll show you Berzerk! By this time My saltpeter was hooked up and I had horses again and was building Calvery. I left him fuming on a one tile island while I over-ran the Mongals and the Koreans who also sneak attacked me. Another interesting thing about this game was the Japenese were not discoverd untill I was building RR's and it was by me. They had a little island with a monopoly on gems and all but one of the silks, 2 irons and 2 horses. No rivers and 7 cities. They hadn't even discovered construction. I was able to invade them and destroy them before contact with anyone else. I got a pop-up a long time ago saying they had destroyed the Indians. And there capital was number 2 in the top 5 cities. I thought there was a little too much land on the main continant. Another civ. should have been on the main continant instead of packed on that little one. It was why I rolled this game over. My rivals on the main continant were trying to expand too long.

[ZEE]

i have screwed up many times so i will tell you the list of rookie mistakes i have made in the past, so hopefully nobody will make them in the future:

going into anarchy while working on or almost completing a wonder

moving my workers into the wrong squares

moving my units into the wrong squares

in a hotseat game where me and my friend were trying to take the same city (the chinese capital with 3 wonders), after moving a few cavalry in a city adjacent to the chinese, and already having like 30 or so cavalry in the square, not checking to see which units have already moved and moving the whole stack at once and seeing that my units that already moved slowed down my whole stack! he got the city because of this rookie mistake.

underestimating the germans

forgetting to use the luxery slider in a crisis situation

actually believing the fact that the french have an aggression level of 1 lost a couple cities thanks to this one

lastly not saving the game frequently and having the game crash on me right as im doing something important

[Solomwi]

I think we've all done the first four, AAHZ, and it does take a little bit of getting used to once you find out how useful the lux slider can be (esp. in the early game).

Switch, your REX scenario reminded me of a recent game as Germany, the first after I reinstalled Civ3 and C3C. I got into my REX phase hard and heavy, pumping out settlers, micromanaging and feeling pretty good about myself. When I finally stepped back and looked up to take in the big picture, I had had an unbelievable REX, and had so many cities I was at a loss to explain it. I mean, I didn't even have this type of REX on Regent, much less Monarch (my current typical level). Then it hit me. I checked and, sure enough, with the reinstall, the settings had defaulted back to Chieftain and I had forgotten to change it in the setup.

Btw, the biggest help toward getting to Regent and beyond is finding these forums, so you've done the hard part.

Of course, the best worst mistakes are those which eventually turn out all right. I just entered the modern age, the French and Dutch are long gone, Amsterdam was finally taken by my Marines, and the Egyptians are halfway through their ordeal at the tip of the Viking sword. I think theirs promises to be more brutal than the first two.

[Drachen]

And now I know that you don't want to sell anybody Ivory before you've got the Statue of Zeus in pocket.

[Shogun Gunner]

or trade Iron to the Perisans.....who are next door

it wasn't me...it was a friend of mine

[Drachen]

Originally posted by Shogun Gunner
or trade Iron to the Perisans.....who are next door

it wasn't me...it was a friend of mine

:

[Vince278]

Now that I think about it I do remember my stupidest moment: Declaring war on a strong neighbor then attacking with a huge stack of workers. Lesson learned: Don't play 16 hours straight after working a night shift.

[Aqualung71]

I've had so many of those moments that I've realised that I'm not really a better player than that at all!

[Odin]

My "DOH" moment was when I forgot to protect my workers from barbs. I went from 12 to 4 workers before I could retaliate with my horsemen.

[Odin]

Another stupid thing I did was declaring war on the Germans before protecting my one sorce of oil.