Some Steam achievements statistics

The Steam Achievements for Civ V have interesting data about how people play the game. I read through the completion rates to pull out some observations after almost two years of Civ V. There's a lot of slop in these numbers, both what the achievements happen to be and how Steam records them.

Engagement

16% of players have never founded a second city.
60+% of players have never won a game (estimate).
8% of players have founded a pantheon (and thus certainly bought G&K).

Beating the game

Data on how people beat the game. These aren't exclusive; every player has some random mix of these achievements. I take this as a reflection on what players choose to play more than how hard it is to win in a certain setup.

Difficulty

28% Chieftan
19% Settler
17% Warlord
16% Prince
6% King
3% Emperor
2% Immortal
1% Deity

Civilizations

14% Washington
12% Caesar
11% Catherine
11% Napolean
10% Bismarck
10% Oda
10% Ramesses II
...

Victory Types

29% Domination
25% Space
17% Cultural
14% Diplomatic
7% Player has won with all types

Map types

31% Continents
17% Pangaea
15% Earth
9% Archipeligo

Map sizes

15% Duel
12% Tiny
25% Small
21% Standard
11% Large
13% Huge

7% Player has won with all types

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This I find shocking. I'm part of a fairly small minority!

And... most of the DLC (scenarios, etc) related stuff are below 8%, much of it less than 1%.

Some of these should stand at 100% unless people bought the game and actually NEVER played it!

Maybe steam count achievements from free weekends. Lots of people try the game but never finish.

I find it interesting that 60+% (est) have never won a game. I wish there was more data for the reason why on that percentage. Kind of raised an eyebrow when I saw that little number.

Drakarska said:

I find it interesting that 60+% (est) have never won a game. I wish there was more data for the reason why on that percentage. Kind of raised an eyebrow when I saw that little number.

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Yes, very strange. And most people play on Chieftain? There is something wrong here!

It saddens me to see that only 12% have actually downloaded a mod. And how come 85% have earned a promotion, but only 75% have upgraded a unit? And only 3% play on Emperor? I am complaining about how easy the game is, turns out I was wrong. They definitely count free weekends

I think quite allot of people play in offline mode and so don't achievements. Other wise why have 10% of people not found an ancient ruin.

I only play in online mode so i can get the achievements i feel like i'm working towards something in all the games I have played. I remember when a patch fixed The modern major general achievement and i got it within the very first hour after the patch buy training a sipiha. then i looked on the global statistics and it said 0% of people have got this achievement and i realized i must be one of the very first people to get it

I think it's quite likely a lot of people bought the game and either never played it or played it just a little. That 16% of players have never founded a second city is a pretty strong signal. I don't think they're all playing a single city challenge! Of course it's always possible that the Steam data is wrong somehow.

You get things like this when you look at the Steam achievements list for all games - it seems the majority of people don't play most of their games beyond the first five minutes - or even at all.

For context, here's a similar project I did analyzing Skyrim achievements. It looks like a good 7% of folks who bought Skyrim on Steam never played past the opening tutorial. And of the folks who did play, some 15% only played a couple of hours and never reached level 10.

I think the 60+% of folks who never won a game of Civ V is the most interesting data point, particularly because some of the other achievements show that once someone started playing it they stayed engaged for awhile. Unfortunately it's hard to pin this down because there's no single achievement that says "won a game", nor are there any direct numbers of hours played. But 76% of folks have the "uncovered 1000 hexes" achievement, which suggests some engagement.

nelson@monkey.o said:

For context, here's a similar project I did analyzing Skyrim achievements. It looks like a good 7% of folks who bought Skyrim on Steam never played past the opening tutorial. And of the folks who did play, some 15% only played a couple of hours and never reached level 10.

I think the 60+% of folks who never won a game of Civ V is the most interesting data point, particularly because some of the other achievements show that once someone started playing it they stayed engaged for awhile. Unfortunately it's hard to pin this down because there's no single achievement that says "won a game", nor are there any direct numbers of hours played. But 76% of folks have the "uncovered 1000 hexes" achievement, which suggests some engagement.

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Like someone mentioned I think it's pretty safe to say that people just use the offline mode instead.

If a person plays with a mod, then most achievements should be disabled (and it seems that with Steam Workshop ALL achievements are disabled, as mod related ones DON'T WORK...). So if someone strictly stuck with modding, then he should have absolutely no achievements.

Unlikely, but possible.

Though, I presume that most of the non-achievers are just sales period buyers, who just bought the game as a bundle or because on a shopping frenzy, and never really touched the game.

StormEye said:

If a person plays with a mod, then most achievements should be disabled (and it seems that with Steam Workshop ALL achievements are disabled, as mod related ones DON'T WORK...). So if someone strictly stuck with modding, then he should have absolutely no achievements.

Unlikely, but possible.

Though, I presume that most of the non-achievers are just sales period buyers, who just bought the game as a bundle or because on a shopping frenzy, and never really touched the game.

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I'm sure that's an extreme minority of people because as Andulias said only 12% of people have the downloaded a mod.

I think that 12% is completely false, as there is no reliable way of knowing the exact amount of people who downloaded mod since the introduction of Steam Workshop, as my previous post mentions.

I still don't have the mod achievements, despite having several mods.

These figures don't surprise me at all. I have several games on Steam which I bought at a discount, received as a gift, or tried out on a free play weekend which I played for a short period and then quit. Obviously I have not unlocked many achievements if I only played for a couple of hours and then stopped.

Assuming that a large subset of people have played the game for a very short duration, it is not surprising that they have not unlocked many achievements. Furthermore, there are many people who play CiV and enjoy it until they reach a point where they have won the game, but do not want to click end turn to get to the end point.

What would be interesting is if there was a selectable filter for Steam achievements which would allow you to only display statistics for players who have played a certain number of hour (say 100 hours). Then you might have a better idea how you compare to other people who actually play the game. Similarly, the achievement which are tied to certain DLC could be filtered for the number of players who have played the game with that DLC instead of comparing this subset to the dataset of all players of CiV.

Waywocket said:

You get things like this when you look at the Steam achievements list for all games - it seems the majority of people don't play most of their games beyond the first five minutes - or even at all.

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I noticed similar things on Fallout: New Vegas (my favorite game). But it wasn't as bad as these Civ5 statistics. But I was surprised how little people completed the final quests (there are 4 final quests actually). You'd expect it to be near 100%, but it wasn't even close.

I think some people just play the game to kill things (including Civ games), get bored, and never finish. People don't have attention span now days.

I myself have never downloaded a mod. I'm still messing around with the base game. And I can't get achievements with a mod.

For reference, I have over 200 hours played, and I only have 87 out of 227 achievements. 38%. And I actually do try to get these achievements. IMHO, there are too many achievements for this game, and some are very difficult to attain (I'll never beat the higher levels), or require really weird gameplay. For comparison I have 100% of all the achievements in Fallout: New Vegas. The most difficult one being the Gunrunner's Arsenal 3 star challenge. Those achievements may be too easy, but I do like it so all the achievements are achievable. Don't get me started on World of Warcraft or Diablo 3 achievements... I also got 100% of Skyrim achievements, but needed some aid from a website to find all the daedric shrines or whatever they were.

I will be one of the players to bring down the statistics for Diablo III. The achievement system wasn't working right at release, so the few I did attain weren't credited. I played for a few days and got bored. It felt like an updated version of Diablo II. I was really disappointed. Thankfully, G&K was released a few days later, so I had something better to play.