My apologies for adding another thread but someone brought something up that I was curious about. In playing a XOTM game is it best to attempt to take as much territory as possible in order to achieve a better score? Is this true even in games where you are attempting a Space Race, Cultural, or Diplomatic victory?

Out of curiosity I downloaded past saved games of both 100k and 20k culture wins and typically the player was extremely close to a Domination win, yet did not. I assume then that the massive territory helps enrich your score.

Yes, the base scoring in Civ3 is based on territory, happy citizens, content citizens and specialists. All of these have a maximum potential based on any given map.

Your total score is the average score each and every turn played, thus getting the most points the fastest will result in the highest score. And getting to the domination limit the fastest offers the best chance to get the highest score. The other scoring elements basically boil down to two other things, hooking up luxuries and having a large population. While thinking about happiness early game can have a significant effect on later scoring, getting the maximum population for any given map takes a lot longer than domination. The latter part is generally referred to as milking, this takes a long time and is very, very boring.

This is where the Jason scoring comes in, if you play a game and reach and exceed the domination limit winning that game you have gotten all the points you can from territory. The Jason scoring system calculates the effect of milking your game and gives your Jason score as if you actually did milk the game. Another average player milking his game with a domination at around the same time as you reached yours should have a similar score. The end result of all of this is that no one has to spend 100 hours a month to milk the G/COTM, but you unfortunately *do* have to spend 20-40 reaching the domination limit, then you can go ahead and aim for whatever win condition you choose.

You could of course also just aim for a fastest finish but, with a few exceptions, you will not compete against those that played for the Jason scoring.

Yes, war is necessary for high scoring victory either Firaxis or Jason.

Both of you, thanks.

The formula is simple. Expand as quickly as possible. When you run out of room, go to war until you reach domination limit. Hold there maximizing happy citizens while you choose the victory condition of choice. This works for everything but a 20K win.

To the top scorers: do you go for happiness early on? When do you try to use happiness to increase score, and at what slider% ?

How does it not work for a 20k?

How does it not work for a 20k?In a 20K game (vanilla and PtW), you want some "strong" civs being at war with you in order to get a lot of Great Leaders. Thus it is not good to cripple the AIs.

On a Warlord I think you could get a 10k+ score without fighting. At least on a Pangaea, or Continents with an early crossing available.

Otherwise, you need to beat some AI's up to take their land.

------------

20k (fastest finish) works a bit different because you don't want to start expanding too early. Need to build up the 20k city ASAP instead of sending out Settlers.

On a Warlord I think you could get a 10k+ score without fighting. At least on a Pangaea, or Continents with an early crossing available.


Or someone could generate a map with human player on pangaea and all AI civilizations on small islands separated by oceans.

In a 20K game (vanilla and PtW), you want some "strong" civs being at war with you in order to get a lot of Great Leaders. Thus it is not good to cripple the AIs.
This brings to mind a concept of "farming" the AI for Great Leaders:

0a. set up 20 cities spaced closely together
0b. park 1 elite tank outside each city, with a couple elite reserves available

1. gift those 20 cities to an enemy AI
2. declare war
3. end-of-turn (enemy rushes some defenders)
4. take the 20 cities
5. offer peace (you just took 20 of his cities; I imagine he'll accept)
6. move workers into the cities to level off population, as necessary
7. move your attackers out of the city (back into position for next turn)
8. rinse & repeat at step 1 (gift the 20 cities to the enemy)

Seems like this would result in 20 Elite victories per turn, at no risk ... yes?

is anyone going to answer my question about happiness sliders? On moonsinger's 80k HoF game she has the luxury on ~50% the whole game. Is luxury manupulaiton a key on GotM games?

is anyone going to answer my question about happiness sliders? On moonsinger's 80k HoF game she has the luxury on ~50% the whole game. Is luxury manupulaiton a key on GotM games?

I had a post on this topic here (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=2515647&postcount=99)
Briefly, I think that there is a trade off between a score and a speed. This is later compensated by Jason score adjustments. Therefore someone who was slow because of spending too much on lux will match someone who was at the edge between revolt and normal being, but finished faster.
I somewhat believe now that it is better to be faster, but before I used to be a slow one as you can see in my post. Now I am working on getting rid of this habbit.

is anyone going to answer my question about happiness sliders? On moonsinger's 80k HoF game she has the luxury on ~50% the whole game. Is luxury manupulaiton a key on GotM games? In HOF games, you aim for a high Firaxis score. And citizen mood is an important factor in computing this score.
In GOTM games Jason scoring is used and it depends much more on the speed of your finish.

In GOTM games Jason scoring is used and it depends much more on the speed of your finish.


So then in XOTM does it matter as to how much land you have control of? As in is it still worth it in a XOTM game to get as close to the domination limit as possible, or just go for speed?

My assumption is that nearing the domination limit does help out on points thereby allowing you a higher Jason score. The fastest finish (which doesn't require a lot of tiles, unless obvious victory condition) allows the medals.

Tao meant by saying that XOTM depend much more on speed is not that the amount of land in XOTM matter less, but that an early finish date matters less in HoF games. In HoF games one can outmilk the bonus of an early finish.

In XOTM only excellent milkers can outmilk the bonus of an early finish. So it's better to have a fast finish. But for high-scoring a fast finish is not enough. You still need to have as much land as possible, as much people as possible and most happy people possible at the earliest possible time.

The the fast finish bonus consists of the numbers of turns left to 2050 multiplied by the averaged amount of land- and coasttiles, the average amount of the people and if those people were happy, content or specialist.

So in short: to get a high-score you need the finish as fast possible, with as much land and people as possible which were aquired as soon as possible and were as happy as possible.

easy isn't ;-)

A good example is gotm39. I milked excessively while going for 20k.

My Firaxis/Jason scores were 5735/7768.

nikof did 3001/5167.

nikof got the 20K award, because he finished 3 turns before me. Thus I had to try again in gotm41. ;)

PS: Reading again, this is not excactly a good example for what I said above. But an excellent example on how gotms work. :)

I can add to Redbad's post that because Firaxis and Jason score mainly depend from absolute amount of lands (Jason less) there is different strategies for getting max score from (not fastest) Conquest/Domination victory:

1) If we have a large territory (continents/pangee with 60% of water) the better way is to reach Domination limit ASAP and stay on it while our per turn score enough high in comparing with early win bonus. Of course, Jason system decreases this milk effect but it is. For example, if you can get 50 per turn score on monarch level between 250AD and 1250AD (early finish bonus = 40 per turn) you will increase your score with each turn. When this value will drop down to ~45 per turn you can stop the game by crossing Domination limit or win by Conquest (the prefered victory type is depended of game specific). Note, I don't talk about full milk games.

2) If we have a small lands (80% of water) or have problem with reaching Domination limit the better way is fast Conquest because it will be too hard to reach enough per turn value. If Conquest is not so fast as desired (some AI landed too far and Navigation is required) you must to grab all available tiles on home lands ASAP.

As said, war is required for a high score.

Certainly in early game, it is not worth it to use the lux slider for happiness. Happiness. Terrain is a much bigger factor than (happy) citizens. Better to turn your commerce into gold and use that gold for rush building and upgrading units to conquer more terrain.

Late in the game, there might be situations where you have tons of money and notthing to spend it on really. If you are milking the game, if your units are mopping up the last bits of the enemy and newly made units wont reach the war anymore. Maybe you might be going for space and your scientific abilities exceed the need for 4 turn research.
In such situations, you can spend the exces money on luxuries for happiness. It might help you a few points.

Here is the exact formula for getting a high score:

1. Cover territory with your culture as fast as you can.
2. Reach your victory condition as fast as you can, as long as it doesn't conflict with #1.
3. Keep your citizens as happy as you can, as long as it doesn't conflict with #2.

Here is the exact formula for getting a high score:

1. Cover territory with your culture as fast as you can.
2. Reach your victory condition as fast as you can, as long as it doesn't conflict with #1.
3. Keep your citizens as happy as you can, as long as it doesn't conflict with #2.

It's like 3 laws of robotics (known from fantastic literature). :scan:

Here is the exact formula for getting a high score:

1. Cover territory with your culture as fast as you can.
2. Reach your victory condition as fast as you can, as long as it doesn't conflict with #1.
3. Keep your citizens as happy as you can, as long as it doesn't conflict with #2.

So true, so simple. Thank you, Dave :thumbsup:. Now we just have to work out *how* you do it.

In HOF games, you aim for a high Firaxis score.

Actually, since the revision of the HoF, a large portion of it is filled by "Fast Finish" type of games. These games are ranked by the date on which a chosen victory condition was achieved.

Take this one for example:
http://hof.civfanatics.net/index.php?condition=Domination&mapSize=Tiny&submit=Go
This one is for domination wins on Tiny maps seperated by difficulty level...

So the HoF definately has something for those among you who don't like milking games. :)