Major updates to QSC scoring

Now that we have a solid base of data to evaluate the QSC scoring system we can look to ways that the system might be improved to encourage even more growth in the personal performance of players in the early game play.

We also have the advent of new technology that will allow us to score features of the game that could not previously be accounted for without an army of Bob Cratchet type scribes.

When you consider the impact of these changes, remember that the objective of the scoring system is to measure the absolute power of the civilization that has been built in the game in terms of its progress toward the ultimate goals of "building a great civilization" and not just who will win the game. A player who can build a strong QSC can do well in almost any game but the system is not designed to say the a player who does not have the top QSC score has necessarily done things that are evil or wrong.

Adjustments to the scoring system are designed to improve the relationship of the QSC scores to the overall QSC scoring system and not necessarily to provide a direct correlation to the finished game score that can depend on many variables that may not be reflected in the specific QSC objectives. In general, players who score well in the QSC will have the ability to score well in the remainder of the game but this is not a direct correlative measure of success for the QSC.

Effective Date for QSC scoring Changes:

All changes outlined below will take effect for Qsc19-Ottomans and will be used to score all submissions in May and subsequent months. (updates to the QSC website may not be online until mid-May at the earliest.

Significant Changes to the QSC Scoring

Timelines will now be Required
In the past, timelines have been optional and a 25% scoring bonus has been given to encourage players to submit a timeline. With the pending advent of the Power TimeLine program plus the inherent value of even the most basic timelines, it becomes increasingly apparent that QSC submissions without timelines may not be in the best interest of the players or the spirit of the event. Beginning with Qsc19-Ottomans a timeline is now required for any QSC game submission.

The 25% scoring bonus for timelines will be eliminated as unnecessary.

Some specific additional restrictions need to be applied to help us manage the volume and size of Qsc submissions:
Qsc submissions with really "cheesy" and obviously bogus timelines will be rejected
Timelines must be under 500kb in total size including any image content.
Do not submit or embed images of any aspect of you game at 1000bc. All of these features can be extracted from your final save.
Any player that submits xxx.bmp or xxx.tif images with a timeline will be sent to work on reconstruction of the Baghdad sewer system for life.

Territory Scoring
The point value for each tile of territory will be increased from 3 points to 4. This change increases the value of territory in the overall power equation and increases the value of getting settlers into position more quickly. We will continue to evaluate the impact of scoring for territory and terrain and may implement further scoring cahnges in this area in the future.

City Size Scoring
This is a minor change in most cases, but towns will continue to be worth 20 points but cities of population 7 or larger will now be worth 30 points.

Citizen Scoring

In the past, all citizens were scored equally at the base accumulated food cost of 20 points for 20 bundles of grain. A bonus/penalty system has been implemented to recognize the happiness and specialist assignment status:
Penalty per unhappy citizen = -5 points
Bonus per happy citizen = 5 points
Penalty per entertainer/clown = 3 points

Military Experience Scoring

In the past, military units have been scored by the shield production cost. The following bonus points have been added:
Veteran units +5 points
Elite units that HAVE NOT produced a great leader +15 points
Elite units that HAVE produced a great leader +10 points

In addition, Unique Units for your civ will only receive the 5 point UU bonus IF the Golden Age has not yet been initiated. Once your GA has started, this bonus will no longer be awarded.

Technology Scoring - Free First techs

Changes in the scoring and value of technology will continue to be evaluated in the coming months. The current changes are designed to continue emphasis on appropriate technology trading, strategic but not necessarily wholesale penetration of the tech tree, and selective technology research gambits to match your strategic objectives.

Testing over multiple games indicates that technologies beyond the first tier of no prerequiste techs can typically be obtained in trade or by extortion at the rate of at least one technology for every technology of direct research. Some technologies are virtually free if acquired through strategic planning.

In the past, the QSC scoring included points even for the free technologies that were introduced into the game as starting technologies for civilizations. Because these techs can often be obtained for free and to further emphasize the strategic drive to selectively get to the second or third tier of the tech tree, the point value for these first techs has been reduced to 0 points. In some cases, you will have to expend resources to research one of these zero point techs but in general the correlation of technology progress to overall power is improved by recognizing that you are expected to get these techs anyway. There is only one specific warmonger case where this correlation does not necessarily improve but even in that case it is possible to allocate strategic research gambits and still produce an effective QSC tech score.

The technologies effected by this change are: Bronze Working, Masonry, Alphabet, Pottery, The Wheel, Warrior Code, and Ceremonial Burial.

Technology Scoring - Tech Valuation

Again because of the data that has been developed through the efforts of the players who have actively supported play in the QSC games 15, 16, and 17, we can look at the correlation of 40 turn tech gambits plus strategic tech trading and determine that the point value of technologies should be reduced to between 45% and 55% of their actual research cost once the first tier techs have been set aside. Essentially, this scoring emphasizes that you should develop strategies that allow you to obtain at least 1/2 of your early technology components through trade, gambits, and other techniques other than full price, all-out direct research. Full steam ahead research will still be a valuable strategic tool in many cases, but you will maximize your QSC score and power by combining your research capacity with a thorough understanding of how to gain additional technologies by other means as well as how to maximize territory and internal game power through growth in city count and population by any reasonable means.

The technology score value of all technologies beyond the first tier free techs will be reduced to 55% of their accumulated point value.

In addition, we will continue to evaluate the potential to assign specific point values or bonuses to technologies based on review by a committee of experienced QSC players in the coming months.

Is the bonus/penalty system for citizen scoring done each turn, or only 1000 BC ? Is it possible to do it for each turn? If you only need happiness 1000 BC, just increase luxury spending.

Why not simply give tech points according to 100% of their actual costs?

What is the rationale behind using 'accumulated costs' anyway?
Even with this latest adjustment you are still counting root techs for many times their value!

Otoh, citizens and other stuff can also be obtained through other means than by building them. And what if you start on an isolated island?

The happiness points can easily be abused by moving the luxury slider for one instance.

How do you determine if a timeline is 'cheesy'?

I'm happy to see the unit scoring improvements. I forgot to mentioned that in the other thread but planned to. All my early warriors were vets in gotm18, and would have been greatly reduced in power had they only been 3/3.

Same issue with happiness here - what's to prevent people from just adjusting the slider at 1000 BC?

Renata

Fantastic. I think these changes are well thought out and will prove to be very effective.

However I am curious as to the 500kb limit on timelines. What if PTL creates a bigger one even with no pics?

Also, can you measure the happy citizens in 1000bc versus happy citizens in 1025bc? I too see ways to exploit this. If there are 3 luxuries in the area, people could choose to time settlements to 1000bc just for the bonus. Of course, the luxury slider is another method that cries out as others have said.

Originally posted by Renata
Same issue with happiness here - what's to prevent people from just adjusting the slider at 1000 BC?

Click to expand...

That won't do you any good. No matter how you adjust your luxury slider at 1000BC, the information in the F8 screen (the score display screen where it says how many happy citizens, specialists, and territory that you currently have) won't change much. May be by a few extra point (less than 10) by the next turn.

You can trust me on this, because when it comes to happy citizens, I'm not doing so bad.

I don't think its a big deal either. Moving the slider at 1000BC might change the disposition of half a dozen citizens at most, but could have quite a big affect on what happens after 1000BC.

What I can't work out (probably coz I just don't know enough) is how the number of happy/unhappy citizens affects the power of your civilization. The in game score takes this into account already and IIRC makes up part of the QSC score. I could easily be wrong. . Why doesn't it make sense just to count the number of worked tiles, and this would naturally penalise entertainers? I guess that would also penalise good players for intentionally creating scientists and taxmen. I don't see any mention of how they are scored.

Not that I care really.... I just want to know if I'm better or worse than last month. I think that the changes are all good.

Originally posted by Ribannah
How do you determine if a timeline is 'cheesy'?

Click to expand...

It will be a totally arbitrary and capricious decision by me!!

We are not having a lots of these, but with the advent of passive logger systems there really will be excuse for being in the "close to cheesy" zone.

Originally posted by Moonsinger


That won't do you any good. No matter how you adjust your luxury slider at 1000BC, the information in the F8 screen (the score display screen where it says how many happy citizens, specialists, and territory that you currently have) won't change much. May be by a few extra point (less than 10) by the next turn.

You can trust me on this, because when it comes to happy citizens, I'm not doing so bad.

Click to expand...

Yeah, if using the score for happy people in the histograph screen was being used. I doubt it is. Because in the histograph screen that is using points, not the number of people. The histograph averages the people for every turn played so far, and then multiplies by the difficulty level you are playing.
The demographics screen you could look at the approval rating and get a % (and this number changes instantly as you adjust the luxury slider), but that is just as immune to playing with the luxury slider as if you go and count every happy person in each city (which I think is what Cracker wants us to do-count the happy people in each city).

I imagine the happy people should be counted as if the luxury rate is set to 0%. So if effect, you get points for how many luxuries you have hooked up, which is the main point of awarding points for happy people.

Originally posted by Moonsinger


That won't do you any good. No matter how you adjust your luxury slider at 1000BC, the information in the F8 screen (the score display screen where it says how many happy citizens, specialists, and territory that you currently have) won't change much. May be by a few extra point (less than 10) by the next turn.

You can trust me on this, because when it comes to happy citizens, I'm not doing so bad.

Click to expand...

You're missing my (and others') point, I think. Cracker's original post said just that there would be bonus points for happy citizens and points taken away for unhappy. Without any qualification added, that sounds an awful lot like it'll just be accounting for happy/unhappy citizens *at 1000 BC*.

As an example: you're playing the normal way for greatest efficiency, using just enough lux tax to keep your cities from rioting, and no specialists. At 1000 BC you have a total of 30 citizens in your cities, of whom 17 are happy, 12 are unhappy, and 1 content. Your score for citizens according to the new scheme would be (30*20)+(17*5)-(12*5) = 625 pts. Instead of submitting that way, though, you adjust your lux slider to maximum possible happiness, and now you have 25 happy citizens and 5 content. Your score for citizens is now (30*20)+(25*5) = 725 pts. A fairly significant difference for absolutely *zero* impact on your game, because there is nothing to stop you from taking that same 1000 BC save submitted for your QSC, setting the lux sliders back to the way you like them, and playing on.

If I'm misunderstanding how this citizen bonus/penalty system is supposed to work, please let me know.

Renata

I have an urge to nit-pick, but to what point? If I had 30 citizens, and maxxed out the Luxuries so they were all happy, this would add 150 points to my score. Assuming a base score of around 4000 points, the increase is not quite 4%. Suffice it to say that everyone will probably set their Luxuries to 100%, save the game, then change it back to whatever they had and continue on. I see this benefit accruing most to the fastest growing civs, but the final impact is not the most significant one.

In some ways I'd like to see games submitted at a date of the player's choice. The 1000 BC is convenient for comparisons, but does set an arbitrary limit and effect on the play of the game if one focuses on maximizing their QSC score. If interested, I'd suggest a bonus applied to games submitted earlier than 1000 BC, and a penalty to those submitted later. Maybe a 2% bonus/penalty per turn, and allow submittals between turns 65 and 90. This way the player can submit the game when they feel they've achieved a certain goal or goals, and can play without concern for doing or not doing an action by the 1000 BC time limit.

Originally posted by Renata
You're missing my (and others') point, I think. Cracker's original post said just that there would be bonus points for happy citizens and points taken away for unhappy. Without any qualification added, that sounds an awful lot like it'll just be accounting for happy/unhappy citizens *at 1000 BC*.

Click to expand...

You are absolutely right. I did really miss your point. Wish I have good eyesight like you. Since Cracker mentioned about unhappy citizens, I don't see how he figure that out since the save game record only happy people and the specialist. Now, I'm totally with you on this one. Your question count for both of us.

Originally posted by civ_steve
Suffice it to say that everyone will probably set their Luxuries to 100%, save the game, then change it back to whatever they had and continue on.

Click to expand...

Which is the whole point for me, more than the absolute size of the benefit to be obtained. What's the point of having a rule that's so easily exploitable by anyone who realizes what the rule means? If *everyone* exploits the rule, it's hardly a rule at all, and if only some do, then it's an unfair 4% penalty to those who don't, for absolutely no game-related reason.

@Moonsinger: ok, cool. And for what it's worth, all the rest of the changes range from 'no informed opinon' to 'great idea!' for me.

Renata

As Bamspeedy says, whatever the slider setting in the saved game, the scorer can set the slider to 0% on everyones game and then count happy/unhappy citizens. Its' just a ball ache to do.

But.... If the intent is to reward getting luxuries hooked up, then this is really very map specific. Personally I want to know if I did better this month than last month. Gotm 16 we started one tile from wine, gotm 18 was errm... different. So its more difficult than it is already to compare month to month.

This is compounded by the civ you are playing. This month I am a religious CIV, build a couple of temples and the Oracle and I have happy people all over the place. I get points for the Oracle and each temple AND I also get points for the effect they have on the population..... Surely this is double counting?

IF I played the same game on the same map with a non-religious CIV I get a lower score, even though I made the same decisions and played equally ineptly. So again, I can't compare month to month.

You could also in theory move garrison units around your cities at 1000BC for one turn.

IMHO scoring happy/unhappy citizens is a bit cheesy

Originally posted by Bamspeedy
I imagine the happy people should be counted as if the luxury rate is set to 0%. So if effect, you get points for how many luxuries you have hooked up, which is the main point of awarding points for happy people.

Click to expand...

Sounds like a plan. Hopefully this can be programmed ...
If not, I'm all for simply assigning points to each hooked-up luxury - and while we're doing that, why not for strategic resources as well?

My only concern is weighting all the first tier techs the same. By setting them all to zero it is effectively saying that pottery or CB has the same value as Masonry or Alphabet, that is not the case. Yes all these techs can "for the most part" be aquired through many of the ways already mentioned but that doesn't discount the fact that you can't get something for nothing. Expected to get yes but no value not sure if I agree but such is life. As long as all are judged the same it doesn't really matter now does it.

Hotrod

Wow, this scoring system is becoming more complicated than the income tax code!

I guess that's one way to discourage people from playing to win the QSC...

Originally posted by mad-bax
As Bamspeedy says, whatever the slider setting in the saved game, the scorer can set the slider to 0% on everyones game and then count happy/unhappy citizens. Its' just a ball ache to do.

But.... If the intent is to reward getting luxuries hooked up, then this is really very map specific. Personally I want to know if I did better this month than last month. Gotm 16 we started one tile from wine, gotm 18 was errm... different. So its more difficult than it is already to compare month to month.

This is compounded by the civ you are playing. This month I am a religious CIV, build a couple of temples and the Oracle and I have happy people all over the place. I get points for the Oracle and each temple AND I also get points for the effect they have on the population..... Surely this is double counting?

IF I played the same game on the same map with a non-religious CIV I get a lower score, even though I made the same decisions and played equally ineptly. So again, I can't compare month to month.

You could also in theory move garrison units around your cities at 1000BC for one turn.

IMHO scoring happy/unhappy citizens is a bit cheesy

Click to expand...

Well, it is too hard to compare month to month. GOTM17 was lacking in bonus grassland, so it was hard to build anything.

City improvements, wonders, and military police won't add any happy people to your score (but they will prevent you from having unhappy people). All these things only adds content people, not happy. The only way to get happy people are from the luxury slider, luxuries, entertainers, and 'reverse' war weariness (when a 'bully' civ declares war on you).

The Oracle won't be all that much more powerful, but will allow it to score a tiny bit closer to the pyramids.

If the happy/unhappy bonus and penalty are a one-turn snapshot (not the F8 screen), a simple balance fix is to factor gold per turn income into scoring. This avoids people cranking up the luxury slider. Gold per turn income in the scoring also closes the big loopholes of players buying techs or luxuries for gpt deals just before the deadline. Some analysis is needed to get a proper weighting and Golden Age consideration is another factor.

Another consideration is that happiness favors ICS (packing small cities very close together). Fifteen pop two cities will do better than ten pop three cities in terms of happiness. ICS is already about the best way to max out score for a 1000 B.C. deadline. This additional change gives it an additional edge. I'm not saying this is bad, but is it intentional?
+ Bill