What should I learn from this scoreboard?

Hi everyone, I'm working on yet another game. I'm playing Arabia on Warlord for a Domination Victory. So I watched the other civs as I took my turns and played the game and I've hovered around 6th or 7th place and here is what the scoreboard looked like at around turn 140:

1. Unmet - 706
2. Poland - 592
3. Unmet - 474
4. Unmet - 454
5. Unmet - 451
6. Unmet - 384
7. Arabia - 293
8. Assur - 215

Ok, I see people just shooting up the board so fast, and I'm thinking what the frick are these civs doing? Any common sense stuff I'm missing as the top civs are just going crazy?

Thanks

You can hover their score in the diplomacy panel to see where their points come from.

Biggest sources of points are:
-Wonders
-Number of cities, population, land controlled
-Religion (created or not)

Learn the most important thing you can about the scoreboard: that it means nothing.

Most likely, someone like Egypt is in that top spot, someone hording all the shiny wonders. Wonders are worth a lot of points to the score, but it is a poor indicator of how a civ is actually doing. Someone with a low score might have a ton of CS allies and have paid most of the world off to vote for him in the next world leader vote, and someone at the top of the score board may have poor tech and a small army but have lots of wonders ready to be taken by a lower scoring military power.

The score is only really logical as a victory condition (where you might actually judge a civilization by some of the things that aren't so important in the game but are valuable for scoring), not as a way of judging how well or poorly civs are doing. In that way, it is, at best, as illuminating as a candle in a mansion.

That being said, on warlord, particularly on turn 140, you should probably be a bit higher on the charts.

Best indicator of how you're really doing, though, is literacy (under demographics). That speaks for your tech situation. If you can edge out everyone else in that, you should be ok, though if you aren't, especially early and on high difficulties, it's STILL ok (heck, I just won a game where my literacy was 10% lower than the average!) depending on what you're doing, and Arabia does have those camel archers that can last for a good long while.

Anyway, moral of the story is that score means very little, and, while interesting and sometimes telling (AI scores generally do go with who is doing well, much more so than the human, even if the correlation is still iffy), don't mean all that much.

Very good replies, both of you. I'm going to check the stuff mentioned then keep on trucking.

Prozac1964 said:

Hi everyone, I'm working on yet another game. I'm playing Arabia on Warlord for a Domination Victory. So I watched the other civs as I took my turns and played the game and I've hovered around 6th or 7th place and here is what the scoreboard looked like at around turn 140:

1. Unmet - 706
2. Poland - 592
3. Unmet - 474
4. Unmet - 454
5. Unmet - 451
6. Unmet - 384
7. Arabia - 293
8. Assur - 215

Ok, I see people just shooting up the board so fast, and I'm thinking what the frick are these civs doing? Any common sense stuff I'm missing as the top civs are just going crazy?

Thanks

Click to expand...

I'm afraid score tells you absolutely nothing about who is most likely to win the game.
You can hover over each of those numbers and get the "tech score" subcomponent over that, which would though. (Tech score / 4 = number of techs they have) But really just head on over to the demographics screen and look at the bottom row and make sure your #1 in literacy rate and your fine.
If you are interested in how different your techs are than the other AIs, then head on over to trade routes available and hover over the rows to a major AI.

Sweet tip on the literacy.

Hit F9 :
- Population : If AI leads, it has more cities than you or they are taller.
- GNP : wealth. On warlord, you should be first as soon as you connect your first city to your capital with a road.
- Manufactured goods : hammers per turn. Never go into a world congress wonder if you're not in the top 3. Also, it's a quite good indicator or high level to see if an AI can send carpets of units to you or if you can sustain a war by building and losing units.
- Soldiers : If on a standard maps (You and 7 AIs) you're under 5th there's some chances that other AI will DoW you, specially if first is your neighbor and is Shaka.
- Literacy : Check it during two or three turns. If an AI or you burned a GS, it influence its literacy.

In my opinion, Domination Victory seekers should never really get into the Wonder Whoring game. The exception might be Statue of Zeus or Temple of Artemis if the opportunity opens up for you to help with your early rush. But to be blunt about it, let your competitors build the wonders early on and lower their defenses so that you can invade them and steal them!

I know that you're working your work through the difficulty levels, but when you get to a certain point, games will end quickly enough that they'll never actually get to the 500 turn time limit where score will matter.

Memoryjar said:

Hit F9 :
- Literacy : Check it during two or three turns. If an AI or you burned a GS, it influence its literacy.

Click to expand...

Literacy is the percentage of techs discovered in relation to the whole tree. So, 80 techs in total, thus 10% Literacy means that civ has 8 techs discovered.

you can actually end the game in 3-5th place in terms of score.

the more important aspect of the scoreboard is you know if there's a runaway or two that you need to take care of.

Sessy said:

you can actually end the game in 3-5th place in terms of score.

the more important aspect of the scoreboard is you know if there's a runaway or two that you need to take care of.

Click to expand...

You can win science, culturally, or diplomatically even if an AI or two is a land runaway if you have a tech lead.
In fact, with the 5% per city science increase costs (standard map size), the ultra high expansion flavors will actually slow down their own science rate by the combo of founding too many cities and not even bothering to build libraries in them.

Domination victory doesnt require a high score, all domination victory is everyone's original capital. Simple.

joncnunn said:

You can win science, culturally, or diplomatically even if an AI or two is a land runaway if you have a tech lead.
In fact, with the 5% per city science increase costs (standard map size), the ultra high expansion flavors will actually slow down their own science rate by the combo of founding too many cities and not even bothering to build libraries in them.

Click to expand...

In a recent Zulu game, I conquered my continent, and the Iroquois did a number to theirs (they owned every capital but hadn't wiped out everyone when I found them, though, later, they would), and this on a huge map.

I checked the civilopedia and trusted what it said, built up some battleships, and struck their capital expecting a win...and nothing. Looked it up, yeah, needed all the capitals...never again, civilopedia, never again.

Long story short, EVERY capital was coastal. Floated in with my armada, bombarded the city for 1 or 2 turns, destroyer in for the take. I brought the Huns back to life from a secondary city and gifted him cities I was afraid the Iroquois would take back (their military was significantly more advanced, as in modern armor by the end of the game). When I got all the capitals, I got a clean peace deal, declared on the Huns who were still building swordsmen, and won.

Moral of the story: Given the right set of circumstances, a runaway in land and tech can still be won against given the right circumstances, with military power.

Any win is possible against any situation if you're crafty enough.

On easier difficulties I'd say Prince and below it's usually uncommon for the player to actually fall behind in score and not be the first one. I don't think I have ever seen Madjinn on the top o the score list when it comes to the Diety games he plays.. ever..

However, you can often assume who's becomign a powerhouse if the difference in score jumps up.

Its turn 140 and you have 5 unmet civs.

Next game I challenge you to build two scouts and find all those missing civs!

TheKingOfBigOz said:

On easier difficulties I'd say Prince and below it's usually uncommon for the player to actually fall behind in score and not be the first one.

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This is actually much more a tall vs wide thing. Official score rewards large number of cities even more than possessing world wonders and so both a self founded wide empire and conquering one will get you a lot more points than peaceful tall.

joncnunn said:

You can win science, culturally, or diplomatically even if an AI or two is a land runaway if you have a tech lead.
In fact, with the 5% per city science increase costs (standard map size), the ultra high expansion flavors will actually slow down their own science rate by the combo of founding too many cities and not even bothering to build libraries in them.

Click to expand...

that's largely true, but a runaway usually has culture lead, and on continents I'm worried if I want a CV and someone conquered their continent. of course, having a tech lead can grant you conditions to win a number of ways...even domination sometimes. I've never really seen the AI build order in new cities, so I'm not sure what to make of your point about expansion

The main metric you should use for power is population.

However, if you really want to learn the game, post a screenshot of your empire and we'll overanalyse it.

Sessy said:

I've never really seen the AI build order in new cities, so I'm not sure what to make of your point about expansion

Click to expand...

This is going down to the flavors. High expansion flavor AIs tend to have low science flavors. Some of the high expansion flavors even have low happiness flavors in which they can outrun even the AI Default Handicap bonuses unless the human is a high difficulty level for AIHappiness to multiply into it (purely a mid game issue, by late game the AI has plenty of happiness tenets to fix this unless they are also facing strong ideological pressure.)