Score vs Victory

[Bad Brett]

Ok, it's no secret that I think that this game has many issues. But one thing that comes to my mind is that everybody's just talking about winning, but actually, you can still get a higher score in a game that you lose.

I remember when I was a little kid and played Civ I. I still remember my best score from when I was seven years old, it was 153% on the hardest difficulty level. I made it to the highscore list which I was very proud of since my brothers were a lot older than me.

The real challenge in the old Sid Meier games was to make it to the high score list, not necessarily winning. I tried out the 40 turns victory on revulotionary level yesterday to check the score and it was of course really bad, since most of my colonists had gotten deleted and I'm quite sure that population is one of the biggest factors.

What I'm saying is, that just because it's easy to win early, it doesn't mean that this part of the game is broken. Think about it, why would the king care about 100 rebels on the other side of the world? They'd eventually get killed by indians or other european powers.

When your empires grows bigger, the kings sees more value in it. It's very logical, though REF shouldn't increase with just liberty bells.

Anyway, what I'm trying to say is, if you wanna brag about how good you are, write down your score, not just that you won the game.

 

[tour86rocker]

you can still get a higher score in a game that you lose.

Yes! They really need to fix that.

 

[archeide]

Did someone really understand how the score works ?
I have studied my game on all aspects, and I still don't understand why i am third in score, with half the score of the first, while i am the first in all other statistics (I have more population thant the three others colonies reunitated, i have the most important independance feeling rate, most food, most trade, most money, most powerful, most bell production, most founding fathers )... and I have won the WOI!!!!
Yes I am the only independant colony and i am still third in score, that really nonsense. For some reason, my score didn't improve for the last 100 years while the other keep increasing.
I got no increase after beating the King.
Do other people have the same problems ? Maybe i forgot to do something?

 

[tour86rocker]

I have the same problems! I think it's Firaxis' problem. I only play on Explorer level, but I agree that the scoring system is basically botched.

 

[GodBen]

I reviewed the charts at the end of one of my games, and I think the score is heavily determined by liberty bell production. In all the charts other than bells I was ahead of everyone else most of the time, but I was beneath them in bell production until the last third of the game (which is when I produced bells in order to avoid a huge REF). In the score chart I was consistently in second or third place until I started building bells, while the Spanish (who were making tonnes of bells) were first in score. Once I built bells I went to the top of the score chart.

So if you want a high score make lots of bells and beat off a massive REF.

 

[archeide]

I reviewed the charts at the end of one of my games, and I think the score is heavily determined by liberty bell production. In all the charts other than bells I was ahead of everyone else most of the time, but I was beneath them in bell production until the last third of the game (which is when I produced bells in order to avoid a huge REF). In the score chart I was consistently in second or third place until I started building bells, while the Spanish (who were making tonnes of bells) were first in score. Once I built bells I went to the top of the score chart.

So if you want a high score make lots of bells and beat off a massive REF.

That's right i was late producing liberty bells. But I started produce a lot of bells after having 3 expert statemen in all my cities (i had a kind of farm of statesmen in one of my city).
I should have seen my score progress, but it has hardly progressed one small level and then stagnated.
At the end of the game i was the one producing the most liberty bells, two time the amount of other colonies.
Maybe it was too late...
I also don't understand why the score always progress abruptly, the graphic look like stairs.

 

[dalgo]

I don't know why they switched form the scoring system in the original game where you were given a 'results' page at the end listing everything that made up your final score (cash, citizens, congress, year, difficulty level etc etc). It was clear, everything was included and it gave you an incentive to keep working in your colonies even when you were fighting the War of Independence. Surely that wouldn't have been so difficult to include.

 

[JungleIII]

Scoring is based on:

Number of Founding Fathers - NOT liberty bells

Area of land within your control - NOT population

 

[Mundungu]

Are you sure the score is based on land controlled ? I seem to remember having actually my score become lower after founding new colonies (which is one of the things which really throw me off ...).
My best bet is that the score is not based on liberty bells but on percentage of population which has a rebel sentiment.

 

[JungleIII]

Are you sure the score is based on land controlled ? I seem to remember having actually my score become lower after founding new colonies (which is one of the things which really throw me off ...).
My best bet is that the score is not based on liberty bells but on percentage of population which has a rebel sentiment.

Hover over your name while playing, and it will tell you how many points for founding fathers, and how many points for area. Same as Civ4 only different paramaters - Civ4 score is based on 3 different items.

 

[Bad Brett]

Would this work?

You build tons of inland pop 1 colonies and let them produce political points to gain all founding fathers without producing bells. Then you make all colonies produce bells for a few turns and declare indenpendence.

In other words, getting a good score seems both exploitable and boring.