So, score doesn't matter does it?

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Prince
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I noticed after a few games and talking with my friend about the score in game... it doesn't seem to matter if you have time victory off does it? When is throwing off the metric? Is it including some things in there that make no difference? What's causing the score metric to be so ... wrong?
 
That's correct, the score has almost no correlation with odds of victory.

Even in previous versions the correlation was just short of being a strong co-releation, but it's mainly the massive penalties to a self founded wide empire in Civ V that caused it to be so weak.

Civ II: No penalties to a wide empire at all

Civ III: At worst, a newly founded city could be almost useless towards production & gold but unless you infilled it would do no harm to the rest of your empire.

Civ IV: Here if you founded too quickly you could ruin your economy, but as you built infrastructure up in existing cities you could support more and eventually would be able to found as many as you pleased even without Corporations.

Civ V: Each and every self founded city needs yet another copy of the standard building to build all remaining national wonders you are interested in. (This is actually more significant than the happiness penalties those affect both puppets and self founded cities)
 
Is there a better indicator to know how good a civ is doing then at a glance? or do you have to check each victory condition 1 by 1 to see how they're actually doing?
 
Basically it doesn't include anything that isn't useful, it's just horrible at estimating how successful a game is being. It seriously over-estimates the effect wonders have on the game - early on a wonder can nearly double your points when in the time it takes to build it it can be better for you long term to build a worker and a shrine, or whatever is available at the time.

It also overestimates the usefulness of multiple cities. Someone with 3 cities will rarely have as many points as someone with 6 cities, due to the fact the amount of citizens and land also plays a role in the score calculation, but that 3 city player could have a way to beat the 6 city player easily (armies for example don't count for score, so if you have a massive army but not started taking over the world yet you'll be seriously down on points).

It also seriously underestimates technology. Often someone who wins a science victory is not even half the points of the run away, and this is because to win a science victory you really only have to be 2-3 techs ahead, often 5 or 6 techs ahead. This is a relatively small amount - in Deity the AI will easily be 10 techs ahead after a relatively small amount of time before you catch up - but it's worth a lot more late game than early game.

Basically it's still evaluating a lot of stuff Civ 4 style - get as many cities as possible covering as much land and then build wonders will get you the most score. I'd just turn Time off.
 
Is there a better indicator to know how good a civ is doing then at a glance? or do you have to check each victory condition 1 by 1 to see how they're actually doing?

Check the Demographics screen to see who is going best in what, which is normally quite useful. But other than that you can normally see - if the AI is Korea and has 4 high pop cities, you can tell he'll be going quite well in the science, etc. Domination is easiest to see, but diplomatic you can see who is allied with the CS and has gold, cultural you can see who's influential on you, etc.
 
the technology one I find interesting though Arcaian, I would like to know for certain who has a better tech game going on. Right now I'm on price as Byzantium (with a +1 faith boost mod) and England is a run away in the score department. But I have no idea how good they're doing in science, and its too early to see how the culture game is going. I like infoaddict but it told me the Dutch had a higher science than me but I surpassed them. That was odd.
 
the technology one I find interesting though Arcaian, I would like to know for certain who has a better tech game going on. Right now I'm on price as Byzantium (with a +1 faith boost mod) and England is a run away in the score department. But I have no idea how good they're doing in science, and its too early to see how the culture game is going. I like infoaddict but it told me the Dutch had a higher science than me but I surpassed them. That was odd.
When you hover over a civ's total score it's broken down to components, so you can see how different aspects contribute to the total score. IIRC each tech adds 4 points, so if your score says "100 from technology" and England's is 108, then they have 2 more techs than you. But that's just a measurement of quantity: in early-mid game you may actually be an era ahead but still have a lower tech score due to your tech path. You can try and check out the tech score each time you finish a research: if you see your tech score is rising slower than that of AI then you may need to take some measures.
 
Is there a better indicator to know how good a civ is doing then at a glance? or do you have to check each victory condition 1 by 1 to see how they're actually doing?

With BNW, just head on over to the Trade screen and see how much science both you and them would get if there was a trade route running.
Except for cultural modification, those who would get the most science are the most behind.

If you don't have BNW, then you'd need to rely on the random popup that sometimes gives tech progress.

But if you want to know your own chance, just go to demographics and insure you are #1 in science.
 
Science is the hardest one to tell. Caravan's in BNW will tell you yours relative to that civ, so you can work out everyone's. Demographics tells you who's #1 in science (literacy) and your score.

But all of it is focused purely on the amount of technologies, so not the most accurate method - I still think it should be either total number of beakers made in the game, or total number of beakers next to amount of technologies (as if I say beeline education I might be behind in the tech things because I've ignored a lot of easy classical and even ancient era techs).
 
But if you want to know your own chance, just go to demographics and insure you are #1 in science.

^This.

Science is the most important aspect vs AI. Score is a lazy way to measure how each civ is doing, but is more infrastructural and tells you nothing about who is going to win.

Diplomacy and Conquest aren't a real option for the AI. With minimal work on your side they will not win to those. They can win cultural (If you are ignoring your culture due to your goals), but specially science.

Said that, science is your biggest concern, not only because is integral to your winning path, also is the most common way the AI will win over you.
 
Score doesnt really matter. This is similar to the future technology, "we all agree the past is over." quote by George Bush where science doesn't really matter either. I think it is because of the time victory that the extra score from the higher levels was removed or I'm back into the series too late to see what really happened to the score increase for difficulty level that used to happen in civilization 1. Future technology does give that extra score that you don't need in the future since victory is already decided or the past is over.
 
The demographics screen (or checking individual components of each AI's score) is better than total score for determining where you are in a game. The most important demographic is science. If you can be ahead in literacy rate and the science component of score, you are good and should win the game. Production and military strength are things worth considering at times in specific situations (like in the worlds fair, or in determining if you are safe/should invade), but you don't need to be #1 on these categories to be able to beat the AI at these tasks. The other demographics are basically irrelevant, although being ahead in them does make your game a lot smoother and will indirectly effect the important parts of your game in pretty big ways. Like, you don't need to be #1 in population to win, but being so should give you nice position to get to #1 in science.

Also, the science demographic is based on the number of techs, not amount of science, and can be skewed for that reason. If you're #1 in literacy but have been taking a lot of cheap technologies and carefully progressing through each era before starting the next one, then you are being overrated by that demographic. The opposite is also true, if you beeline certain techs like Radio, Navigation, or Satellites (expensive and without many prereqs, and also very good to go to quickly in lots of games), you may find yourself with a lower literacy rate, but you shouldn't be too concerned because will catch up very quickly once you work on the other parts of the tech path.
 
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