What are some of the worst Real Time Strategy game mistakes you've seen?

I've seen some pretty bad ones, some almost comical.

1. Randomly rally attacking the strongest player in the game for no apparent reason, causing him to get thrown out of his alliance and attacked by said alliance until he was destroyed.
2. Failing to put up a shield when warned repeatedly to do so and leaving their sanctuary to be destroyed. If your shield is not up, you need to be paying attention to your sanctuary and if you need to do irl stuff, put up the shield.
3. Engaging in petty disagreements with players who are stronger than you in the in game chat. That's just asking to be wiped out.
4. Gunning for resources versus stronger players. Know your own might and do not attack players that are stronger than you.
5. Slamming your entire army into something and wounding the whole kit and caboodle - usually when this happens, it's a mistake and it's bad.
6. Not using multiple march queues to gather resources from dead enemies.
7. Lying to people and making them angry - you are in a warzone. People can retaliate for that.

Any favorites of yours? Any ones to avoid?

The number four point is underrated. Don’t face someone you know is stronger than you, you will lose unnecessarily. That rule even applies to real life combat. Choose your battles wisely.

Going in blind or not well prepared with more information about the strength and weakness of my opponent would be one of my biggest mistake when I was new to playing RTS games. This is why scouting is very important to me now before making a move on my opponent.

Research. I don't mean in-game reaserch but learning how the game workds before trying to play.

Vortex said:

Research. I don't mean in-game reaserch but learning how the game workds before trying to play.

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You're talking about having to watch reviews of the RTS game that you want to play and probably watch other gamers playthrough to see exactly how things are in the game before you decide to play it right?

I think the major mistakes are ignoring resource management, depending on a single strategy, and neglecting defense. I see a lot of players usually neglecting resource collection and allocation. When they do this, they will not be able to build units or structures when needed.

linux.poet said:

4. Gunning for resources versus stronger players. Know your own might and do not attack players that are stronger than you.

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This will get you killed off easily before you know what's happening. I've made this mistake several times with some of the RTS games I started playing as a newbie. I learnt from it and never going to do it again.