In the first GOTM, we saw that the 30 first players had a conquest victory with great scores. Congratulations to all.

but the fact is what about the other players: the ones who loves to see as much as possible population points in each city with lots of irrgation, mines, road, railroad...

Maybe we have to wait and see if the way of playing allows to have great score as well. If not, maybe the GOTM scoring will have to change...

Any ideas ?

LeSphinx

The problem with "grow & mine," I think, is that any joe-blow can do that. An ideal scoring system would rank players according to who played the game the best, period. Right now I don't think the scoring system does that; instead, it only reflects who has the most time & patience to do all that growing & mining & culturing, etc., after the game is basically already over.

I think I still like my idea from yesterday--have a single victory condition, and the player who achieves that victory condition the earliest wins. That's very simple and everybody understands it, and the game doesn't drag ON and ON...after it's already over...unlike Firaxis' scoring system. And of course if you say, "any victory condition the earliest wins," well you already know which victory that's gonna be.

I like tets idea, but still I think you could come up with a composite that works. Meaning take into account both completion time and score.

Actually thats kinda what is in the game already, so all we really need is to have 1 victory condition so the field is leveled.

I agree, one victory condition is a great idea. This game became very boring just trying to build a huge score. I played similar to Aeson and left one civ with one city and built a large civ but got tired of micromanagement and global warming and stuck all my workers on Shift - A for the last 200 turns - boring. TIP- don't leave the Germans as the last civ, they screwed up my score by 2-3000 points by forcing me out of Democracy all the time and costing population drops, grrr. Having Domination disabled was not a good idea for this game.

The problem with using the scoring system in game, is that the date bonus isn't dependant on map size at all. This means that on smaller maps (GOTM1), the bonus by date is usually the best option. On larger maps (GOTM2) there is enough room to create huge empires which will score much higher by waiting than anyone could score by date bonus.

Maybe there really isn't any problem with the scoring system. As it is now, it rewards those who can determine what the "best" victory option is each month. Different map settings mean different strategies need to be used to score high. This at least adds variety to the games, and tests a players knowlege of the game. Someone who only knows how to play one way will do well on some maps, while people who can adapt have a chance to do well every month. I do think that having domination disabled is a big problem though, as it really draws out the game with no added strategic value. Some people just won't have the time to complete one of those massive "bloat" games in a month. Giving us with no life, er... us with plenty of time to play, a huge advantage, through something that has nothing to actually do with a players ability.

Haha Clint, for me it was the English :( 4 times they caused my Democracy to revolt... I guess anytime you break every treaty you sign with the AI they are going to want to ruin everything ;) A scary thing that happened later in the game was one of my uranium deposits disappeared, and respawned in English territory. I quickly checked, and they still had a couple advances till they could make any nukes though, and they never declared war after that anyways.

Aeson, I think that I have greatly underestimated the scoring of happy faces. With your Borg strategy (aint Velociryx a genius) I would not be surprised if you outscored me. I was only scoring 40 points a turn at the end and it sounds like you were scoring more. On top of that there is no way that I had 150 cities at 25+ pop. I never bothered irrigating the mines that those shift - A workers put down when global warming destroyed irrigation - just got tired of it, and that cost me too. Its gonna be fun playing this way with domination enabled as the winner will be the person who can get closest to the domination land size without actually winning that way. Tricky stuff!! We would have scored better leaving the Indians in the game, I think they are one of the two most pacifist civs - bad news when a warring civ stops talking for 30 turns.

Oops sorry, I hit new thread instead of Post Reply

There is this nice moderator option called "Merge threads". ;)

Well from the points per turn standpoint, I should have been getting a bit more per turn because of my higher earlier score, and we were at a relatively even position near the end (average of the two). You probably jumped up to the higher per turn scores earlier, so it still should be pretty close on the final score. The reason I thought that my score could be improved by a lot, is that at the end, my per turn score was up to +103 every 2 turns, and had been steadily climbing by +1 every 10 or so. This seems to point to an earlier conquest (then build) being able to score much higher. Definitely once I populated the main continent, my per turn score jumped from +20 to +40, so making that jump earlier would just mean more points overall. The offset would be a lower average to have to pull up. Haven't played enough of these types of games to really know just how much difference it makes. Will be very interesting to see.. also to see if EEK decides to play out the rest of his game in similar fashion, as it sounds like his conquest should be somewhere inbetween yours and mine.

As far as the Indians are concerned, they had to go in my game, as they had wine and gems, and wouldn't trade them to me. I think invading the mainland and leaving the Aztecs would have been the best from a scoring standpoint in my game, as the Indians had a better empire from a food standpoint. In former Indian territory I was able to build about 15 size 30 cities. None of my Aztec Isle cities was over 25 i think (too many mountains, hills and desert), and there were only 10 of them once I gave one to the English. Of course that isle was my settler factory, and did contribute mightily in that way. But leaving even the Aztects intact would have perhaps given them a shot at building a spacecraft before 2050, cutting into the final score.

A lot of people have been yelling that there needs to be a new scoring system after they've seen the results of the first GOTM. But I think it's far too early to say this. Actually, I even think that an early conquest is the hardest way to finish. But that doesn't matter. I suggest we wait some months before determining whether a new scoring system is nescessary.

Note that when it was decided that the GOTM for Civ2 needed a special scoring system, there have been endless debates about what the best way of scoring is, because once we make our own scoring system it becomes contraversial. And never will everyone be happy with the scoring system that is made. Therefore I also say that we should only change if the current built-in scoring system really sucks. And that is not the case.

This GOTM#2 I just decided to screw the score. It's not worth it. Any joe-blow can make happy faces and grow their culture with one Chinese city left to conquer. The most satisfying part of this game was beating the Romans, and it just went downhill from there. Tech broker, tech broker, tech broker...*yawn*. I think I'm gonna switch to Empire Earth now anyway. :)

How is that game tetley? I checked it out last night, but it looks like a 3d type of game, and I wasn't impressed with Dark Reign 2 when they went that route.


Map size may not affect a conquest score but difficulty sure does, see the leaderboard for a diety game I played yesterday.

Dang, 27k? That's sure higher than anything I've seen. Way to go. I hope to see more of those soon, so I don't have to dig up my old 13k and 11k saved games.

Map size does effect conquest scores, just indirectly. The bonus is completely dependant on date and difficulty, but smaller maps make for earlier possible conquest. I'm guessing that screenshot was from a tiny or small pangea game. From the score, conquest in c. 2450BC. On larger maps, such an early conquest wouldn't be attainable.

On a side note, the highest possible Deity conquest bonus is 36060 for a 3950BC date (need an edited map to be possible).

Actually I've found Tiny/Archipelago/mostly-water the best farm for high scores. You start & restart until every civ starts on your island. :egypt: Then you have about 1/4 the land mass to deal with.

Using the editor to create imbalanced games in the players favor is probably easier than restarting over and over. I just meant that in any given game, having all Civs on the same landmass as you (virtually guaranteed on pangaea), and having as small a landmass as possible, will mean the largest conquest score.

Oh, BTW I just ran through the tutorial on Empire Earth. It looks like EE is one cool game, although I do see the potential where it might be a drag at times. EE is to Age of Kings as Civ3 is to Civ2--basically the same game, but more & better.

Maybe firaxis will adjust the scoring so that map size isn't as important. There are plenty of other things that do adjust based on map size like tech rates, corruption, perhaps scoring was just overlooked.

Maybe it has been actually, are you 100% sure size doesn't affect it? I've gotten 11-12k easily on small maps. I mainly play small maps, tiny is just too small. Although my best score has been on a tiny deity map, 18k.

In about 100 tests on large maps, and 50 or so on small maps, the conquest bonus was the exact same regardless of map size. Tested by using an edited map that allows for conquest victory just by building your first city. Smaller maps are going to have higher conquest scores, because there just isn't as much you have to conquer. Building up to 2050 on smaller maps doesn't yeild even close to the points that are possible on GOTM2, so I would assume that population and territory are scored without map size modifications as well, though I can't really be certain about that.

I like tets Idea - have one type of victory allowed, and score by earliest to complete. That's as good as it can be, and may actually get people to play something other than the tech broker or despotic military slave driver

I'd also have to agree. Rewarding micromanagement to such a degree is silly, and I'm much more interested in who can win the fastest vs who is the most masochistic and has the time to optimize their empire for score after the game is already over. ;)

First to win per each victory type in a casual competition such as this seems to be ideal to me. Heck, even first to win regardless of victory type sounds good, unless you let someone who wins via one method send multiple saves in for each applicable victory type, even from the same game if desired.

It all goes back to the purpose of the game. Is the goal to kill everyone else off or build a CIVILIZATION?

IMHO having only one victory condition in the GOTM would be ok once in a while but not every game.

Rather than tinker with (and endlessly debate) the scoring system I think awards should be given for each type of victory. We could still bundle the submissions all together as we do now but in addition we could have awards for the top 3 cultural victories, top 3 space ship victories, etc. This could be done retroactively for the first two GOTMs. It makes the GOTM more flexible to entice more entries. Those who want to kill everyone fast AND those who want to micromanage their way to a big empire will both have something to shoot for. Under this system the 'best' player would be one who demonstrates he or she can win in a variety of ways.

A problem with that is someone who places 4th in a conquest victory might win if they leave one opponent alive and win via spaceship or cultural. Unless you let someone submit a game for the conquest win, then continue that game and submit a cultural win or whatever, you have people deliberately not winning so they'll have a higher score, which is a little silly, imo.

The "win regardless of victory type" condition is almost always tantamount to a Conquest victory condition, since that almost always wins first. And the first two GOTM's were already Conquest maps (although that's a little debatable for GOTM#2, since some 1400 A.D. UN victories would have been up there).

I guess, really, these are the only victory types that really make sense:

Any
Cultural only
Space Race only
UN or Space Race


Of those my favorite is easily Cultural-only (as the Babylonians), because the strategy there is so intricate. The other three are all simple brute-force or tech-brokering. :o