General QSC Scoring updates - Wonders, GLs and Techs

The scoring system for QSC games will continue to evolve as time goes on and we get more participants with a broader perspective. All changes will be evaluated in terms of the greater objectives of QSC scoring and that will be to reflect the power of the opening play sequence without causing players to do things that might just gratutiouly alter their play away from stratgies that help to score well and win in the bigger game as a whole.

With these objectives in mind and based on what we are learning from QSC games in about three different fora, several scoring changes were implemented for the Qsc13 results and will be applied to all future QSC games.

Wonders
Early wonders can radically alter the balance of power in the game if they fit with the key strategy elements and map conditions that the current game includes. Towards this end, the equivalent shield cost of the wonder may have nothing to do with its actual impact on the game.

Wonders may also produce effects in the game that raise the QSC score in other ways. An good example of this would be the Pyramids that instantly confer a granary into every town on the continent. The granaries individually allow each town to retain 10 food units to apply towards growing the next pop point In an empire of 6 towns, the Pyramid power effect is instantly somewhere between 360 and 420 power points even if the direct score for the pyramids is zero.

Other early wonders have similar effects that impact other elements of empirical power.

Towards this end, the score for just having an early wonder of any kind has been set to 100 points plus any tangible benefits that the empire may accrue in the form of other structures, food, or commercial benefits. Some wonders will be worth less than others in the QSC.

We will probably add a special judge's recognition award to recognize the worst possible wonder decision in a QSC game just to make sure we can provide some good natured ribbing to any "QSC point mongers" who we feel are just gratuitously building wonders (like the AI often does).

Great Leaders
These units show up in the scoring list of all units currently in your empire. If you have a GL that has been freshly produced in the last 4 turns of the QSC this will add 100 points to your score to reproduce the same power effect as if the Leader were used to rush a wonder or build an Army.

Armies
These units show up in the scoring list of all units currently in your empire. Armies will be worth 100 points in the ancient age if they meet some tests that will depend on each game event. Filling an ancient age army full of three unit with 1 value movement rates will probably not result in the army still being scored at 100 points. Having a victorious army of any kind, that has enabled the ability to build the Heroic Epic, is valuable in many strategies but this has not been addressed in the scoring system.

Technology Progression
The scoring system for QSCs takes any tech and determines its point value by adding the cost for the human to research that tech in the current game to a percentage of the cost of all the immediate prerequisites of that tech. This scoring accumulation is designed to reward deeper penetrations of the right hand side of the tech tree versus broad tech progress across all the branches when all other things are equal. Some of the logic here is to recognize that the potential trading value of the right hand techs is greater than the trading value of similarly priced but lower echelon techs.

The initial QSC scoring system used a 100% prerequisite accumulation but this has been shown by testing to place too much emphasis on techs relative to units/people and infrastructure issues.

The tech accumulation bonus for Qsc13 was dropped to 30% to provide better balance in the game. This change has little or no impact on most player postions but does make the scoring a more balanced representation of the some of the strategic choices that develop in each game.

An example of the impact of this tech change would be to look at a sequence of three fictitious techs that would all individually cost 100 beakers to research. As first implemented, these techs would have beens scored as 100, 200, and 300 power points. In the revised 30% accumulation the point values for these same three techs that still cost 100 beakers to research would be 100, 130, and 139 power points respectively.

We will continue to evaluate and responsively update the scoring systems for all games offered under the aegis of the Civfanatics Games of the Month and will update you when changes are implemented.

We have identified an individual staff role who will function as the "Scoring Steward" to review scoring systems for all game events and this person will be identified to you shortly.

wasn't there an excel sheet around somewhere that you could use to calculate your score?! I can't find it ...

Last month I downloaded it from the results page for QSC 13.

I have a scoring question for the QSC, since I am new to it this month. I read in one of the threads last night that the Pyramids counts for it's own shields, plus the extra shields for a granary in each city. Is this correct? The scoring table lists wonders as being worth just their shield cost. This would seem to be pretty unbalancing, as it could make it worth triple it's actual production cost (i.e. 10 cities = 600 extra shields?). Certainly it has the benefit of a granary in each city, but you didn't build them all, I don't see why it should be counted in the QSC total. If so, how do you account for the other wonders? Would the oracle give bonus shields of 60 for each city with a temple (since they are doubled)? I'm sorry if this was already discussed somewhere, I haven't seen it. Also, I already submitted my QSC for this month, so it doesn't affect my strategy (but might in the future!). Thanks.

We will get the scoring webpages updated just as soon as we move them to the new file server.

This issue of the value and scoring effect of wonders does continue to be an ongoing discussion so you are not alone in thinking about this issue.

This seems closest to on topic for discussing general QSC scoring.

On the other thread, Cracker writes:
>>
REMEMEBER: The QSC is designed to measure who built the most powerful civilization in the shortest period of time. Adapting the QSC score to recognize play styles that may exploit weaknesses in the AI behavior to gain an upperhand without real externally valid power is not really in the QSC mission statement.
>>

Unfortunately, I believe the current QSC scoring system does reward a certain style of play that exploits AI behavior. It involves tech. Techs are valued at full gold for one civ, even when contact is made with other civs. Techs have pyramid valuations, adding all prerequisites to their point value. Techs have additional pyramid value, in that they can be traded for other techs. I vote for taking out the pyramid value of adding in the prerequisites. Techs already have pyramid value in that they can be traded for other techs. I believe this additional pyramid value from the prerequisistes skews the scoring system too much.

On higher levels of play, the QSC scoring system rewards players (in my opinion extraordinarily) for researching techs with trade in mind and then finding and trading with as many civs as possible. Now in most circumstances these are good things, but I believe this is clearly exploiting AI behavior, and does reward a certain style of play (builder-techer-trader). If this is the goal, that is fine, but I am putting my objections in. The only open discussion I could find on this forum for QSC scoring was for embassies.

A second point, Cracker adds:
>>
The score does not measure relative power compared to your neighbors in the current game and many conquest and domination game strategies only focus on these issues. In a certain game, you might cripple three nearby neighbors and end up with only 3 three cities and 6 Swordsmen, but if all your neighbors have only 1 city and one warrior left then you are the big dog on the block in that game. In a big picture view you would still be less powerful compared to the same civilization with 10 cities and wonders and technology even if your nearby neighbors may be still in the game with you.
>>

I agree with this for the most part. However, there is an objection in my mind. Take the example of a multiplayer game, with two human players, no computer players to keep things simple. One player has ten cities, ten warriors, a bunch of techs, but little gold. Player two has five cities, ten swordsmen, ten warriors and few techs, and no wonders. I'm putting my money on Player Two if they are of equal ability. Again, this is an artificial example because there are only two players, but it does illustrate my point in a simplistic manner.
+ Bill

I have one concern with the wonders. If I read correctly, all wonders are worth 100 points (plus 60 pts for each city having a granary if you built the pyramids).

But what about wonders that aren't fully completed? If someone is in the process of building the Oracle (for example). If they finish it the turn before 1000 BC., they would only get 100 points. If someone else doesn't finish it until the turn after 1000 B.C., they would have 290 or so points for all the shields that they had built up. So, sometimes (with pyramids being the exception), it would seem to make sense to NOT finish the wonders until after 1000 B.C., because the built up shields counts more than the 100 pts you get for getting it completed.

Bamspeedy has a good point about the wonders that delaying completion actually increasing QSC score. If this is accurate, this is a gaping hole in the current scoring system. Another point is that the Pyramids are currently worth more than all the other Ancient wonders put together for a ten city empire (600 for granaries in each city plus 100 for the wonder)!

A player must make a judgement whether the Pyramids can be completed by 1000 B. C. with reasonable sacrifices. The Pyramids and trading techs can give a player a scoring boost higher than most average players can achieve playing a normal game. In my opinion, this does not encourage good sound game play, and strategic thinking, it teaches players how to build the Pyramids.

I know that with any scoring system there are compromises, but with such large bonuses for high level techs and one particular wonder, I believe it can be improved upon.

My suggestions:
1) go back to shield cost for all wonders to bring back the Pyramids to reasonable value in comparison. Maybe have a value of 300 for each army and each leader. These are often the result of a lucky die roll, but an early great leader does have a huge impact on a game. As I get into it, I can see how none of these is going to be 100% fair and consistent, but what is out there now seems out of line.
2) Double the value for units and towns so that wonders are not so valuable in comparison if step one is implemented. I believe units and towns are the heart of any empire at the start of a game (if playing a normal type game not One City Culture). I want to add, increase the value for completed buildings as well, but the Pyramids thing hangs over me.
3) I vote to get rid of prerequisite bonus for techs all together. Advanced techs already get pyramid value from their tradeability. If a tech is not tradeable, that means other civs already have it, and it did not cost full gold to research in the first place. One decent tech often yields the equivalent of two other techs of equal value in trades so there is an almost 200% bonus built in if a player can trade. And if it is not tradeable, it often means it was paid for at full gold value. Another idea is to leave the pyramid value as is, or put it back to the old 100% pyramid value, but cut all tech values in half or more, perhaps a sliding scale depending on map size and number of opponents.
+ Bill

BillChin, your suggestions make sense to me, I second them. I think that tech is the most over-valued single thing in QSC (wonders after that.) I think it would make sense to devalue tech at least as much as you suggest, perhaps even further. My thinking is that:
1) Ancient Times techs are often easy (even free) to pick up later in the game than the 1000BC cutoff. I don't think there's necessarily any value in having many of them at that time.
2) Sometimes I would rather NOT have a tech, I'm stronger without it. E.g. Horseback Riding, or if I want to slow the overall tech pace.
3) The tech part of the score has a luck element. Learning Map Making just before 1000BC and trading it for two or three other techs is not necessarily a game which is the least bit stronger than one where it is learned a few turns later.

One exception: if going for a science race (early space or diplo) then tech known at 1000BC could be a significant measure of performance. But even then the other measurements will probably also cover the situation by themselves.

Bill, our records show that you only have played one QSC game and that may be insufficient experience to let you make informed recommendations about the QSC scoring system yet.

There are clearly some tradeoffs in the wonder building process and these are addressed in the scoring exception rules. In general if yoy build a wonder, then the benefits of the wonder plus the 100 shields bonus will more than outweigh the shield costto build the wonder. If you carefully examine the benefit that can be obtained from each and every wonder you will see that, perhaps with the exception of the great wall, the game impact value of the wonder will exceed the raw sheild cost if the wonder is properly used.

A good example would be the Oracle: if you have temples in your cities and can get the benefit of extra happiness and population carrying capacity then the oracle has value. If not then the 100pt value is a gift and in reality your just wasted lots of shields.

The wonder point value was revised downward based on careful review of the first 100 to 150 qsc games. This will probably not be increased and your assessment that the pyramids may be currently underscored is 180 degrees out of line with the actual current observations.

It is false and misleading to say that delaying wonder completion will increase your Qsc score because this ignores any functional assessment of what the wonder may do if properly incorporated into your strategy. Give me any exampel of building a wonder (except the GW) at a reaonable number of turns before the end of the QSC an I can provide you with a strategic situation where the power of the wonder plus 100 points will be greater than the shield cost of the ancient age wonder.


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The value of towns is carefully matched to the value of territory, citizens, workers, and settlers. Examine this relationship carefully before you let your perception of the system deprive you or the benefit of understanding how all these elements add up to be a reflection of power.

It is highly unlikely that the value of military units will be increased in the scoring formula because having units for the gratuitous sake of having units might encourage novice players to ignore play fundamentals like worker tasking and productive city management.

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The tech scoring is specifically designed to encourage players to penetrate deeply up the tech tree to get to the capstone techs instead of just randomly filling in across the bottom of the tech tree. At this point I am extremely pleased that the scoring system rewards the playerst hat do this agreessively instead of those players who invest littler no resources in technology managment. The wild cards these tech processes are the random freebie techs from goodie huts that cannot be programmed in a tournament control fashion, but that is a set of random game events we just have to live with.

We continue to review tech scoring but at present it seems to be working as designed.

I encourage you a gain to look at what the QSC score is designed to reflect and that is the total power of the advancing civilization that you are building. An aggressive warmonger will usually appear to be less adanced than a layer that follows a balanced approach but that is by design. Military power is only of value when it is converted into some form of assets in terms of increased happiness, added territory/population, pointy stick research etc.

The scoring system clearly includes a provision to give scoring bonuses to any players who may request them for military upgrades within 4 to 5 turns of the QSC cut off point at 1000BC.

Some detailed testing of the QSC scoring formaula has shown that aggressive war monger strategies may destroy their world quickly but that in terms of building a civilization they almost always lag behind other more balanced game approaches that include warfare as a tool but not an objective in itself.

We may have to discuss this topic more after you have Qsc17-Cartahge under your belt because it will be interesting to see how the scoring factors add up to let that game compare back across Qsc15 and Qsc16 which all reflect radically different game circumstances.

If anything I am more confused.

Point One: are the shields valued at one QSC point per shield or not? This is what is on the webpage but so is 100% pyramiding for tech values. If it is one point per unused shield in the hopper, a player close to finishing a wonder by the deadline will in many cases get a higher QSC score by sabotaging their production to finish after 1000 BC. I am asking for clarification, not debating the merits here. In any case, it is BamSpeedy (a much more experienced and polished player than I) who brought up that point, not me. Answer the question, and adjust the rules if it seems to be broken. I have no personal investment in the issue. One simple fix is to limit any shield in hopper bonus to 100 points for any single city, so that it is always better to finish ahead of the deadline.

Point Two: Are Pyramids worth 100 QSC points plus 60 points for every town (free granary)? If this is true, then the Pyramids are potentially more valuable in terms of QSC points than all the other Ancient Age wonders put together with the possible exception of the Great Library in a high difficulty game. If the Pyramid wonder valuation is this far ahead of everything else, a player who gets a great leader, risks many QSC points by using a leader for a Forbidden Palace or an army, both reasonable strategies in normal games (free of QSC scoring). Because the Pyramids are a food wonder, the actual leverage may be greater than the points.

Point Three: several players (most better than I) echo my comments that tech remains overvalued in QSC despite some cuts since the first formula came out. The committee seems to be taking a hard line on this and I can live with that. They do the work, they make the decisions. However, I am voicing my opinion and it has encouraged several others to do the same. Public input (outside of the committee) on this part of QSC scoring has not been asked for and I have not seen it discussed openly on this forum.

Again, I realize that there is no perfect solution that is 100% fair. I do appreciate all the hard work and thought that has gone into the project. My comments are in the camp of constructive criticism.

Thanks.
+ Bill

Originally posted by BillChin
Point Two: Are Pyramids worth 100 QSC points plus 60 points for every town (free granary)? If this is true, then the Pyramids are potentially more valuable in terms of QSC points than all the other Ancient Age wonders put together with the possible exception of the Great Library in a high difficulty game. If the Pyramid wonder valuation is this far ahead of everything else, a player who gets a great leader, risks many QSC points by using a leader for a Forbidden Palace or an army, both reasonable strategies in normal games (free of QSC scoring). Because the Pyramids are a food wonder, the actual leverage may be greater than the points.

Click to expand...

Even after the first few QSC-equivalents and actual organized games in the GOTM, top players still disagree about the Pyramids and how they should be scored. I like them, but others would have an early FP with that leader. Some go so far as to build them from scratch very, very early to make sure they have them, as Ribannah did in the Rome game, IIRC. In an archipelago map, where the Great Lighthouse is usually desireable, building them and the GL might trigger an early golden age (not always desireable). The current valuation of Pyramids, adding granaries to the score, is probably the best way to figure it out, and players that deliberately skip or postpone them usualy have some other advantage (units, other wonders, lots of cities) to compensate if they've planned well.

I know that I haven't played a lot of QSC, but here's a little thought I had for the scoring of the Wonders. Wouldn't it also be nice to give certain wonders extra points if they fit the characteristics of your civilization?

For example when you're religious and you built the Oracle, instead of 100 points, you'd get more.

It's just a thought, but I always try to play my civ games to use the strenghts of the civilization I'm playing.

Greets Jurimax

If you get a GA there, that adds shield production and I think that adds to your score. I am not sure though because I haven't read into the scoring throughly enough. But if it only fits one, you wouldn't get a GA...

I agree with the others about tech value.

But the QSC is missing a major factor: income! It discourages your workers from keeping up with terrain improvements because many don't pay off by 1000 BC. And wonders/luxuries are scored incorrecty because their effect on income is not taken into account.

I propose that income be counted as part of the QSC score, weighted by a factor of, say, 10. The exact factor can be determined if anyone wants to calculate average rate of return.

Counting income leads to a number of scoring changes:
-The Pyramids would count for 400 and double your food income score
-Happiness from temples/luxuries/police would count as enterainment income
-Territory score could be reduced or eliminated because worked tiles are being counted already

It is false and misleading to say that delaying wonder completion will increase your Qsc score because this ignores any functional assessment of what the wonder may do if properly incorporated into your strategy. Give me any exampel of building a wonder (except the GW) at a reaonable number of turns before the end of the QSC an I can provide you with a strategic situation where the power of the wonder plus 100 points will be greater than the shield cost of the ancient age wonder.

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If the wonder is rushed with a leader very early (1500-2000 B.C.), I can see you point, as the benefits of getting the wonder will help out in other areas (more happy people to get more shields/commerce, bonus commerce from tiles, etc.). But for manually built wonders, they wouldn't be completed until much closer to 1000 B.C.. If the Colossus is built in a river city, and the player is still in despotism, he would get hardly any bonus at all, but once he switches governments, of course it will help out a great deal, but that usually won't happen before 1000 B.C. With the Oracle, you would need not only the temples, but also have cities large enough to actually need the extra contentness. If luxuries are in abundance, and the player has military police in all cities, the extra content person helps very little. Great Lighthouse and Great Library would depend very much on map conditions (on some maps they may help, others they would be useless).

Why not give every wonder the value of their cost in shields and NOT give the player the Pyramids bonus of a free granary in every city. This will still favor the Pyramids, since it is one of the most expensive wonders and it will give you other benefits (faster growth), but it won't be as unbalancing as it is now.

Pyramiding value of techs: This favors the gifting away of techs to speed up the tech rate (this is great for a fast spaceship victory, though). This would be map-dependent and favors one play style over another. Continents and maybe island maps I can see what you are trying to do here, as you want your side of the world more advanced than the currently 'unknown' world. This helps ensure that wonders are built either in your civ, or your neighbors (for you to take it from them), and that you are not hopelessly behind when you meet the other side of the world.

But for pangea maps, and for players who can easily trade their way back to tech parity if they find themselves behind, then the player can forego fast science and let the AI set the tech speed (and the player just buys or beats the techs out of the AI).

I think I often get bogged down looking at the numbers only. It takes X number of sheilds to build Y. If something happens near the end of the QSC to make me think I would have rather had the sheilds instead of what I built, or I would have rather had the gold than what I upgraded I start thinking, hey the QSC scoring is robbing me.

BUT

In trying to contruct a post to constructively criticize this "problem" I started realizing what Cracker is trying to say. In Civ, power is not what you have but what you do with it.

In the case of upgrades, you have wasted your gold paying for swords just because you like the graphics. But if you use the swords to take territory/cities or tech, you can actually make a "profit" on your investment.

Same for the wonders. If you build the pyramids because you're told it's the best thing to build for QSC but you don't realize that it doesn't help your one city island then you've also not improved your power at all with those 400 sheilds.

So now comes the arguement that the pyramids will be productive, just not in the remaining 2 turns of the QSC so why not delay building. Or you won't have the time to take any cities, so why bother upgrading?

The answer lies in the purpose of the QSC. It was designed to allow two players to compare their performance in the initial setup. If you finish the Colosus 2 turns before the QSC, you lose the sheild count without the gain of the gold, thats true. But compared to another player who completed it 20 turns before you and has capitalized on the economic gains for 20 turns, his/her score will be better than yours regardless of whether or not you build or delay your completion.

In an ideal world, players would ignore what effects the score and play the game the way they would normally. At the ARBITRARY date of 1000BC, we take an assesment of how you did. This assessment can be compared to everyone else and indicate which strategies work and which don't.

Since this is of course not an ideal world, and everyone want to have a better score, these "loopholes" that allow a 200 point swing on the last turn seem to need correcting. But, after thinking about it a bit, I think I can live with it. I will build the colosus on the turn before the QSC is over and take the point loss. That way, I can see how far behind the player that built it ages earlier I really am.

Sorry for the long winded post. It was the result of an even longer winding contemplation of the topic.

Originally posted by ControlFreak
Since this is of course not an ideal world, and everyone want to have a better score, these "loopholes" that allow a 200 point swing on the last turn seem to need correcting. But, after thinking about it a bit, I think I can live with it. I will build the colosus on the turn before the QSC is over and take the point loss. That way, I can see how far behind the player that built it ages earlier I really am.

Click to expand...

I already suggested a simple fix, limit any shield-in-hopper bonus to 100 shield points for any single city. I have yet to see any rational argument against this proposal. It is simple (!!!) and always yields a higher or equal score for players completing a wonder before the deadline.
+ Bill

Wouldn't that just convince someone to rushbuild everything on the next to last turn so they would have the full benefit of the sheilds? Especially in despotism, 1pop=20pts=20sheilds. And happiness isn't going to effect your QSC score in 1 turn. But it would affect your game over the next 20 or so turns.

Originally posted by ControlFreak
Wouldn't that just convince someone to rushbuild everything on the next to last turn so they would have the full benefit of the sheilds? Especially in despotism, 1pop=20pts=20sheilds. And happiness isn't going to effect your QSC score in 1 turn. But it would affect your game over the next 20 or so turns.

Click to expand...

Um, no. The only 100+ shield projects projects in the ancient age are wonders, and wonders can not be pop rushed. In any case each pop point is valued at 20 QSC points, so there is no advantage in score to rushing any projects, only possible disadvantages. This one area seems okay. Some of the other things such as discounting the value of units vs. gold (and the kludge put in to try and moderate it), and overvaluing techs over gold and units, remain out of line (in my opinion).

I did think about discounting the value of shields and food in the hoppers, and believe that this is a good idea because things that are complete ARE worth more than potential. However, this is separate argument from the simple, easy and non-controversial fix of limiting any wonder pre-build bonus to 100 shields. Again, it is not perfect, but it is 90% better than the current system of 1 QSC point per shield.
+ Bill