delmar said:
As a side note, this also goes against your point that the scoring system should be representative of the results of a multiplayer game, doesn't it?
My point you are refering to was not that the scoring system should be representative of the results in a multiplayer game. I used MP as an example to illustrate the difference between the "in-game" comparisons and "opinion" comparisons. The point was that in-game competition between the two would be indicative of the absolute value (from an in-game perspective) of each. Not that the method of evaluating games should simply be to equate them to how they would compete in MP.
I think I understand what you are saying. My point though is that there are no "in-game absolutes" except the finish date. In my opinion, everything else is personal perference.
Still wrong.
Absolutes are things which exist inside the game. Number of units is an absolute. Territory is an absolute. Even date of victory is an absolute.
Comparing them based on mitigating circumstances (ie. self-imposed restrictions) is not absolute, it is relative.
That is what I am saying.
Your preference is larger territory and more population. Mine is not. That's about it.
My preference is not larger territory and more population either. I've said this over and over, to you and others. My preference is to use stable factors to tie the scoring system to so that players can have a stable measure of their in-game accomplishments.
The reason the scoring system is so closely tied to population and territory is because those are the most stable factors to tie it to. Best dates are not stable, either predictive or based on our limited participation. That I and several others have sunk hundreds of hours working on best dates should show where our preference is. Simply put, that effort was not able to realize the preference, and the more I've worked on it, the more I become convinced that it's a dead-end given the circumstances (player turn-out and map variation).
In my opinion you fail to recognize that what you believe to be absolute is just your opinion.
It's not just my opinion that someone has X tiles claimed. It's an "absolute". If you understand what I am saying by in-game "absolutes" you will understand it is not my opinion.
I don't agree with this. I think expanding is not valuable on its own, only if it leads to domination victory.
It is part of the game. 4x... expansion. Ignoring it is ignoring a facet of the game, and a scoring system that ignores it also ignores a facet of the game.
There are reasons to ignore a facet of the game. Obviously culture is ignored in the current system. Date of victory is largely ignored too. Number of units is ignore. Number of improvements. Number of wonders. The reason for this is there is no current formula for evaluating these "absolutes" that fits in with a comprehensive scoring system.
I don't agree that facets of gameplay should be ignored by a scoring system simply because someone doesn't want to use them.
I don't really want to convince you that I am right about this, after all this is a matter of taste. But if you want to explore the consistency of your point of view, you might want to ask yourself why you don't give extra points for spaceship parts if the player achieved domination victory. After all domination plus spaceship parts is a bigger achievement than domination alone, isn't it?
You sure respond a lot for not trying to convince anyone.
If you launch a Spaceship at most dates you score more than if you trigger Domination. So what you are saying is already represented in the scoring system. As such it's rather obvious what my opinion is on the subject.
The previous response applies here very well too. Some things can't be accounted for in a balanced approach because no one has taken the time to come up with a tried and true formula for how much a shield into a Spaceship part counts against a shield into a Unit/Wonder/Improvement/Settler/Worker at various stages of the game.
Correct. One excellent example for such a scoring system is the Jason score.
Which I have been saying all along. It isn't in dispute. What is in dispute (or would be if you wanted to argue with my points on the matter) is whether the reasons for it being that way are valid.
As I said X would be relatively higher than Y, so I belive this is simply not true. Especially if you choose Y=0.
Obviously you wouldn't have included the Y side of things if you intended for it to be left 0 or at insignificance. If the Y side of things makes a difference, what I said is true. If the Y side of things doesn't make a difference, it shouldn't be included.
If you are still confused, I was talking about the "avantgarde" one.
I assume you imply here that the player might choose to impose self-restrictions on his play. I think I made it clear earlier that I am not discussing that case. If the player does not do that, then the accomplishment in the game is indicative of his skill level, IMHO.
Wrong assumption.
Play Sid (or Deity) a few times on Small Pangaea maps. Just enough times so that one of your AI neighbors declares war on you at ~3500BC around the time your first Warrior has been produced. See if the results are indicative of skill level.
Skill level doesn't always transfer into game results. Luck plays it's part.
I can't comment on the stability of other scoring systems but the players would learn to adapt to any scoring system you throw at them. They are humans, after all.
You can't adapt to a scoring system that is always in a constant state of change or variation. If dice or what other players choose to do in their games affects the output of the scoring system how can you plan how to best approach the game?
We don't need a "guess what player(s) X will do, and go for something else" scoring system.
Punished? I play GOTM because it gives me a chance to play against the best. If I wanted to get high scores in comparison to incompetent adversaries, I would simply play against the AI at chieften level.
Again, you jump from one frame (scoring system) to another (your personal opinion) to refute a statement made in relation to the first frame. "Punished" by the scoring system means not scoring as high. "Punished" in relation to your own opinion is irrellevent to the point made.
I also believe that basing the score on the rank within a victory condition will result in an even distribution of skill across victory conditions, but of course I don't have any data to support this claim.
Obviously you don't have anything to support the claim.
Even if even distribution of skills across victory conditions occurred though, you still wouldn't have enough submissions in each category to make a meaningful statistical analysis.
What we do know though is that currently the domination and conquest victories dominate the top of the score board, so the current system clearly failed as far as balancing victory conditions is concerned.
"Balancing victory conditions"... You mean participation in each I suppose. That was never a goal of mine, because I feel players should be able to choose among the widest range of playstyles and victory conditions and still have a good representative scoring system. If everyone wants to play condition X, everyone should be able to, and if a scoring system can be derived to accurately assess their results, it should be made.
Many players currently choose to play domination/conquest victories. It's possible to score high with other victory conditions as well, just not as many people choose to play that way. Players which "eek" out victories don't "eek" out Conquest or Domination generally, because those are victories where the game is conquered and dominated. So you get a lot of the mid-low victories as Spaceship and Diplomatic.
20k and 100k are simply ignored playstyles by most players. Only the Tournament (and short-lived Medal Play series) had any significant numbers of those types of victories.
To sum up, the scoring system was designed to allow the widest range of playstyles to compete (based on score) as was possible to do within the limitations that variation and imperfect predictions would allow. So far it has achieved that better than I had hoped, but obviously isn't perfect.
Are you you implying here that the Jason score is an absolute measurement of achievements that is valid across games? If yes, I have serious doubts. If not, then getting a number immediately doesn't help much given that this number is meaningless on its own. In other words, I have to wait anyway to see how I scored compared to the elite.
It's not perfect, but if you get 11-12k you know you're going to be at or near the top of the rankings. 10k+ and you can reasonably expect to be in the top 20. Some maps will have higher limits than others. If you look at plots of the results, it fits a bell curve pretty well. The upper range is somewhat variable 10-12k based on factors that aren't accounted for. Namely the quality of the starting location.
It isn't perfect, but it is far better than having to wait for everyone else's results to have any idea whether you will be getting 50% of whatever the max score is, or 100%... based on who chose to submit the same or different victory condition than you did.
I think this example shows that in my scoring system, luck would help you to get a higher score. Now show me a scoring system that is immune to luck.
The extent of the luck on that particular factor in your system would be to take a 5k game (jason or firaxis score... indicative of an average played game) and give it -X, while a 2k game (jason or firaxis score... indicative of a below average played game) would get +Y. That amount of variation based on luck is unacceptable.
In-game luck plays it's part on any scoring system. The goal should be to minimize it, not just simply say "all scoring systems are influenced by luck so we don't have to worry about it".
Correct. That is my opinion about milked games.
Well then at least you can understand my point about it not being based on skill. Because some player's skill in milking is equal to their skill in fastest victory types.
Well, I am glad you had fun shoting down the strawman.
Strawmen are not something you should be constructing. It's not constructive.
I will address a couple of points you made so that you don't feel that your efforts was wasted but I am not going to get into a full-blown discussion about this. I know that subtracting the Firaxis score is not a viable option.
So you're starting to run now? What was your last response to akots?
No, fastest finish would get 0. I knew that the fact that all score would be negative in this system will confuse people, I am sorry that I was too lazy to adjust it so that it becomes more conventional.
Ok. I was thinking of / instead of - at that point.
The basic premise of the analysis holds up still though. Missing victory condition by 1 turn would result in a loss of X. Missing it by 5 turns would result in a loss of 5X. The side of the scoring system would say the game which finished first in it's category was at least 2X better than the next game. Basically trading ranking by turn for ranking by unrepresentative numerical system derived from turn.
You can't minimize territory and maximize unhappiness because then you will lose or at least win slower and your score will be low due to that.
Are you saying by responding in this manner that someone building the last few spaceship parts wouldn't simply disband all their non-critical cities under your system? Wouldn't players intentionally keep their happiness levels lower than they could have them even when there were no in-game tradeoffs to having them higher?
You minimize territory and maximize unhappiness to the point that you still can win though. My points on luxuries and disbanding cities once you got close to victory were included to show that I was talking in that frame of reference.
It is possible that you are right in this point. I admire your enthusiasm to think through the consequences of a scoring system that is dead in the water anyway. Sadly, I am too lazy to do the same.
I'm glad you can admit you hadn't thought it out.
It took me about 15 seconds to think it through that much (which is why the error of / and - as previously noted). A little longer to type that portion of the post out. If you propose something flawed expect it to be pointed out as such.
Well, at least it improved your self-esteem, so it wasn't totally useless after all.
I'm sure you'd realize with any thought into this (if you aren't putting any into your proposals I suppose your other remarks probably suffer from the same deficiency) you will realize that you have absolutely no understanding of my emotional response (if any) to this exchange between us.
Seriously, I am getting the impression here that you feel hurt because I disagree with you. I want you to know that I recognize the merits of the Jason-score and I am glad that you developed it, even if I think it's not perfect. So take it easy.
Don't let your ego confuse you into thinking you've impacted my emotional well-being. I can assure you that your influence in that area is approaching 0.
I don't like the way you express yourself though. You laughed at a (fictional) point you attributed to something I said, then make irrellevent and rather stupid "mischief" that only detracts from the debate, all before we even began any discussion between ourselves. Your posts to akots are also poor taste IMO, and this post I am responding to here was cluttered with misdirections, snide remarks, and ploys to try to avoid actual discussion while still getting your comments in.
I've been pointing out all the flaws in your proposals and your interpretations of my posts. It's something to do, and it's enjoyable for me given the esteem I hold for your posting style. If anyone is being hurt by this, it would be those people in the HOF waiting for their update... (not that I'd be working on it anyways)
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Down with the civ nobility!! 
