Score evaluation

[CppMaster]

IMHO winning by having the highest score feels the most natural, because that means that your empire is actually the greatest, instead of just being popular enough or launching a rocket. Other 4X, like Stellaris, Humankind or Dune works that way.

However, score is often ignored and because of that, it may not be very well balanced. I'll like to look into it.

Could devs provide the score formula, so we could work on that?

Which part do you think is not well balanced?

I think that maybe Wonders give too much score, because they are not that impactful, while technological progress, number of cities and population contribute too little.

 

[Recursive]

IMHO winning by having the highest score feels the most natural, because that means that your empire is actually the greatest, instead of just being popular enough or launching a rocket. Other 4X, like Stellaris, Humankind or Dune works that way.

However, score is often ignored and because of that, it may not be very well balanced. I'll like to look into it.

Could devs provide the score formula, so we could work on that?

Which part do you think is not well balanced?

I think that maybe Wonders give too much score, because they are not that impactful, while technological progress, number of cities and population contribute too little.

10 per city, scaling with map size
+ 2 per population, scaling with map size
+ 1 per tile, scaling with map size
+ 25 per World Wonder
+ 16 per Social Policy or Ideology Tenet
+ 4 per Great Work
+ Religion (owner of religion only: +5 per belief in religion & +3 per worldwide city following the religion)
+ 6 per Technology
+ 10 per Future Tech
+ 50% of all vassals' scores from land and population (calculated the same as above), rounded down
+ City-State Alliances: (25 * # of City-States ever alive) * (# of City-State Alliances * 100 / # of currently alive City-States) / 100, rounded down; 0 if no City-States currently alive
+ Military Power: Military Might Stat / (10 + # of cities), rounded down

To calculate Military Might:

Loop through all combat units

Calculate the unit's combat strength and ranged combat strength (including promotions, but assuming no specific target / environment), and take the higher of the two

Promotion Factor: If the unit's level is greater than 3, it's (level * 10) - 30. Otherwise, it's 0.

If the unit is garrisoning a city, halve its strength - assumes they won't participate in combat

Add (Strength * (100 + Promotion Factor) / 100), rounded down, to military might

Military Might only updates when the "turn slice" (a fraction of a turn, not sure what determines it) changes, otherwise the cached value is used.

 

[Hinin]

Tbh, I do find that developping victory around the score system instead of binary "do X to win" victory conditions would provide more interesting, gradual and easier to balance victory scenarios. It would require a lot of work in term of design and overall rework of how the score influence our way of thinking about the game, but that could prove to be very interesting.

 

[Recursive]

Tbh, I do find that developping victory around the score system instead of binary "do X to win" victory conditions would provide more interesting, gradual and easier to balance victory scenarios. It would require a lot of work in term of design and overall rework of how the score influence our way of thinking about the game, but that could prove to be very interesting.

Can just play with only Time victory. I personally despise it and couldn't care less, but I won't object to others rebalancing it.

It might be useful as a measuring stick for the diplomacy AI, at least.

 

[CppMaster]

Can just play with only Time victory.

Yep, this is the way.

 

[Hinin]

Can just play with only Time victory. I personally despise it and couldn't care less, but I won't object to others rebalancing it.

It might be useful as a measuring stick for the diplomacy AI, at least.

The key is, Time Victory wouldn't exactly happen in the same way as it does now : there could more elements granting score (specific policies, wonders, projects etc), specific rewards for being in the podium or behind at some points of the game (golden age / dark age mecanics perhaps ?) and players could tailor the ending date of the game by adjusting TVictory turn numbers.

As I said, if well done, I do think this would make the experience of endgame not only easier to apprehend and balance (one unifying quantitative value instead of multiple qualitative concepts that need to be kept in-check), but also to adjust to personal tastes.

 

[Recursive]

The key is, Time Victory wouldn't exactly happen in the same way as it does now : there could more elements granting score (specific policies, wonders, projects etc), specific rewards for being in the podium or behind at some points of the game (golden age / dark age mecanics perhaps ?) and players could tailor the ending date of the game by adjusting TVictory turn numbers.

As I said, if well done, I do think this would make the experience of endgame not only easier to apprehend and balance (one unifying quantitative value instead of multiple qualitative concepts that need to be kept in-check), but also to adjust to personal tastes.

I see. I have no objection if other people want to develop it, I just find it much less interesting than the other victory conditions.

 

[N.Core]

While I do want to make Time Victory a viable choice to win by making sure all other win types can be delayed, we still got a bigger elephant in the room, Science Victory which currently acts as "dynamic time victory" or whatever as someone said.

Of all victories, SV and TimeV are the most boring type of victories. TimeV must be boring and exciting at the same time, by keeping only chasing for the biggest score and bothering other civs to not win other VCs. SV is just boring by design, and it must be redesigned in some way.

TimeV at the same time also encourages you to research technology faster, so you can access more wonders and get Future Tech faster, which is parallel with SV.

 

[ilikepickles]

While I do want to make Time Victory a viable choice to win by making sure all other win types can be delayed, we still got a bigger elephant in the room, Science Victory which currently acts as "dynamic time victory" or whatever as someone said.

Of all victories, SV and TimeV are the most boring type of victories. TimeV must be boring and exciting at the same time, by keeping only chasing for the biggest score and bothering other civs to not win other VCs. SV is just boring by design, and it must be redesigned in some way.

TimeV at the same time also encourages you to research technology faster, so you can access more wonders and get Future Tech faster, which is parallel with SV.

Maybe late game techs cost too much? I used to think the problem was that CV was too quick (and it might have been), but even after the heavy tourism nerfs I'm able to get a CV much earlier than a SV, and in fact I think that diplo victory is the easiest one generally. Last game I played with Maya (heavily geared towards Science) on Deity going progress-fealty-rationalism-freedom, I got a diplo victory almost accidentally while trying to go for SV.

I think SV feels way slower and less interesting than other victory conditions because there's less you can do as a player to affect it. With CV you have trade routes, religion, open borders agreements, ideology bonuses and such. With diplo victory you obviously have to manage all the city states and know when to push certain key proposals like world religion or world ideology. With SV the only thing you do all game is build Science buildings, work scientists specialists and war anyone that's close to winning. It feels much more passive and less skill-dependent.

 

[CppMaster]

It feels much more passive

It is much more passive which I thought is by design, because it occurs later.

 

[pineappledan]

Other 4X, like Stellaris, Humankind or Dune works that way.

Yeah, and I'm not playing those games for a reason. I prefer the way the civ franchise has multiple competing victory styles and conditions.

I'm in recursive's camp here. If people want to adjust the scoring for time victory that seems fine to me. It is not a priority for me, and I don't think that TV needs to, or even ought to become competitive

You could make time victories competitive by creating various abilities that manipulate TV, such as:

• Ideology tenets that increase the point value of various things (eg. Freedom could increase the point value of each CS ally, Autocracy could increase the point value of each population, and Order could increase the point value of wonders.)
• Future tech could reduce the game clock, so every time it is researched by a player the game gets shorter
• a repeatable process that reduces the game clock by 1 turn every time a player completes it

 

[hokath]

• a repeatable process that reduces the game clock by 1 turn every time a player completes it

The end of history

Time machine world wonder

The way it works in Humankind if you haven't played it is that the point ("fame") leader wins when the game ends. However the game ending itself is triggered by the usual civ-like conditions, including a turn limit.

Spoiler copy-paste from their wiki :

Game ends when:

• Reaching the last turn (300turns on Normal Game Speed)
• Earning every Contemporary Era Star (a total of 21 stars) [closest thing to cultural victory but not really]
• Completing the Technology tree
• Eliminating all the other Empires
• Vassalizing all the surviving Empires
• Sending a Mission to Mars
  • Through completing the Mars Colony National Project
• Rending the world unfit for human life
  • Either through Pollution or Nuclear War (unconfirmed)

So it's kinda like Quidditch in that you can catch the golden snitch and still lose.
This obviously isn't really what we're talking about here but it's interesting to know how other games do it, I think.

 

[pineappledan]

The end of history

Work the Fukuyama process.

 

[CppMaster]

It is not a priority for me, and I don't think that TV needs to, or even ought to become competitive

Yeah, it's not competitive, because it's not feasible on higher difficulties. It would need to be shorter. Still, it'd be better if it was more balanced.

 

[CppMaster]

You could make time victories competitive by creating various abilities that manipulate TV, such as:

• Ideology tenets that increase the point value of various things (eg. Freedom could increase the point value of each CS ally, Autocracy could increase the point value of each population, and Order could increase the point value of wonders.)
• Future tech could reduce the game clock, so every time it is researched by a player the game gets shorter
• a repeatable process that reduces the game clock by 1 turn every time a player completes it

Those are cool ideas that I haven't thought about, but I'm worried that it would make TV more artificial, like other victory conditions.

 

[ma_kuh]

What does Time Victory give you that Science Victory doesn't already? Science Victory is positioned as the "win eventually, just don't lose" condition. You're racing other SVs a little bit, but the much bigger challenge as SV is not being swamped by Tourism or UN votes. Treating TV as competitive would just be pitting it against SVs, but SV already competes with other SV for speed.

It would need its own kind of soul to be a competitive victory condition. Like what people were asking about for DomV, maybe: percentage of the map covered, percentage of the total population under your control. But triggered at the end of the time limit, because it's there in the name. So basically like how it is already.

 

[CppMaster]

What does Time Victory give you that Science Victory doesn't already?

Instead of just launching a rocket, you have to build the greatest empire... Which I consider the main point of Civ games and most 4X games for that matter.

It's feels weird to have a great, vast empire and lose to a guy, who launched a rocket from 4 cities, because somehow having more cities slows tech progression even though you have more scientists. If that's not artificial then I don't know what is

 

[Stalker0]

Of all victories, SV and TimeV are the most boring type of victories.

My opinion of this is changing steadily with the rise of the late game warmongers.

For a variety of reasons, Warmongers are getting stronger and more competitive in the late game. Now seeing a massive civ ending late game invasion is a credible threat. Warmongers are also using nukes more than ever.

To me the "activity" of SV is trying to balance the victory while you have blood thirsty warmonger civs with 3x your army starting to sniff you out. You basically had to beat out the CV and DV players, and now the late game warmonger is the final hurdle.

The more I've thought about the more I think the "answer" to a spiced up SV is just to continue to improve the AI's late game warring. If your going for SS parts and suddenly a dozen Xcom squads drop in your base, or 2 carriers filled with nukes are heading to your capital, then things get really spicy real fast. The AI has the late game tools, and with City defenses recently weakened they can power take cities....they just need a bit more intelligence to utilize these tools to the fullest.

 

[ma_kuh]

Instead of just launching a rocket, you have to build the greatest empire... Which I consider the main point of Civ games and most 4X games for that matter.

Each of the existing victory conditions has a narrow definition of greatness: first to colonize a new world, first to control the hearts and minds of most people, first to be elected best in show world leader. I'd still argue Time Victory is already in the right spot to achieve your ideal of greatness, the score weight balancing notwithstanding.

It's the generalist approach, but you need to be able to prevent the specialists from winning first. And I still see it as a form of Domination Victory by another name: you have likely conquered so much of the world that the CV/DV/SV contenders have been proven thwarted, and your territory is bigger than the remaining DomV contenders.

 

[CppMaster]

It's the generalist approach, but you need to be able to prevent the specialists from winning first. And I still see it as a form of Domination Victory by another name: you have likely conquered so much of the world that the CV/DV/SV contenders have been proven thwarted, and your territory is bigger than the remaining DomV contenders.

Yeah, I feel the same way, score is very correlated to dominion victory.