Another concern - scoring

[A'AbarachAmadan]

I've only had time to play one game, but one thing that ALWAYS bugged me in previous games was how the game was scored. By the time I found CivFanatics that had already been fixed so generally speaking the earlier one finished the higher the score for C3C via Jason scoring. I thought they might address this in the new game.

However, playing C4 I started check my 'score if you win this turn' and it kept going up! I've always thought it took far more skill to finish fast.

I was happy that one now gets points for population, land, technology and wonders. Kinda , makes everything worthwhile. I did a domination victory (boy can you get poor when you expand to fast) and got lots of points for population and technology (I finished with a few tanks on the board), but not nearly as much for land (even though I made the domination limit) or wonders (really didn't build too many).

1) Does anyone know the technical details of how score is calculated?
2) Is there going to be some way to address early on the 'high score gotten by playing to last turn' problem.


No worries. I just love this game. Thanks to all those such as Sullla who's write-ups made my first game more fun and even easy. Sidenote: I can finally really play multiplayer with my wife and kids since each player can be set to a different level! Haven't done it yet, but did a pre-game setup, so hope that function works well.

 

[ainwood]

Have a look at this thread in the Hall Of Fame forum - some of the details are posted there.

Basically I think we need a lot more playing experience to see how the current system performs, but initially we will be using the in-built system. When the SDK is released, we may modify it.

 

[Shillen]

Personally I only care about fastest finishes per victory type. The scoring system is perfectly simple for those. Get the earliest victory date and you win.

 

[LeSphinx]

I'm a little dispapointed by the CIV4 scoring system.
I'm not a warmonger, I prefer milking my games or the cultural aspect.


Here as the fact.
I've played 2 games at Noble.
1- the firs game, I played Germans and achieved a cultural victory around 1970AD. My score was around 11.000. I've played on a standard map with 7 civs.
2- I've played romas and achieve a conquest victory around 950AD. My score was around 29.000. I've played on a tiny map with only 1 another civilization!!!!!!

It's not fair for me. In my first game, I research a lot of the technologies. I founded all the religious except one!!! I construct almost all the wonders!!!!
In my second game, I even not discovered pottery!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What do you think?

LeSphinx

 

[Ribannah]

The fastest win per victory type is the only objective measure. But not everyone wants to play for that, at least not all the time.
Personally, I'm only interested in reading good game stories nowadays, and comparing strategies. Paying too much attention to scoring typically leads to monotonous repeats of exploits of design weaknesses, and I've seen too much of that in Civ2 and Civ3 competitions.

So, can there be an award for the best write-up?

 

[Xerol]

How's this for an idea: Have seperate score tables for each victory type. Give Gold/Silver/Bronze in each for highest score, and a fastest finish award. Then you could also have a "Master" score table with Gold/Silver/Bronze for top 3 highest scores overall, and another award for fastest finish overall. Then one could have two goals in mind: Collect medals in each category and/or collect speed awards in each category. Global awards would just be "bonuses".

You could also have "major" awards for people collecting one of each gold medal or one of each fastest finish award, and a big one for collecting all of them. Note that it's possible to collect multiple awards at once - if someone has a fastest finish and the highest score globally, they'd end up with 4 awards - Victory Gold, Victory Speed, Global Gold, Global Speed. Anyone going for a "grand" award would have to find the balancing point between milking and fastest finish, although for the military victories this seems to be entirely on the fast finish side.

So, can there be an award for the best write-up?

Another idea here: Have "Great Person" awards in various categories. This probably wouldn't be implementable immediately, but maybe they could be related to a QSC in some way - a Great Scientist award would go to whomever has the most techs/invested beakers at the end of the period, and a Great Artist award to the person with the most Culture. Something subjective like "best write-up" would probably be more difficult as you'd either need to find someone to "Judge" the write-ups or have open voting on them, both of which can be problematic.

 

[Renata]

Voting would work (best write-up), and I think that'd be great fun. Just ask for nominations a couple of days after the close of the game, and stick all of the nominated posts in a poll a day after that. Winner is chosen by whoever gets the most votes by the time the game results are released.

 

[jeffelammar]

Voting. Eek. That seems even worse than scoring. I never really care about score, just playing a fun game.

What I don't really want to do is politicize the whole thing. As soon as you go to voting you'll have people whining about why they should have been chosen.

At least with the numbers we can say. That's the scoring system, live with it.

 

[Uty]

I like the "Great People" award ideas. Great Engineer could be the one with the most world wonders?

 

[DaveMcW]

"Great People" awards would be "milking" awards. The dominant strategy to win them is a fast almost-conquest followed by hundreds of turns improving the economy. The most dedicated milker would probably win them all.

I hate civ3-style milking.

 

[Mike Lemmer]

I doubt there will be much milking in the MOTM. Too many of us are still experimenting with the setup.

 

[DrJambo]

Xerol's idea is the best so far - having separate tables for each victory type. it's clear those going for the military victories would be better competing against like minded people, while those going for culture, diplomatic or space ship should equally be categorised amongst themselves. Then, as he says, for inter-group comparisons you can have a Master table. The one with the most medals (gold if there's silver and bronze too) wins! Simple and fair.

As far as I can see, that's the only true fair way to do it.

 

[Conroe]

Voting would work (best write-up), and I think that'd be great fun. Just ask for nominations a couple of days after the close of the game, and stick all of the nominated posts in a poll a day after that. Winner is chosen by whoever gets the most votes by the time the game results are released.

Voting. Eek. That seems even worse than scoring. I never really care about score, just playing a fun game.

What I don't really want to do is politicize the whole thing. As soon as you go to voting you'll have people whining about why they should have been chosen.

At least with the numbers we can say. That's the scoring system, live with it.

With a voting system, you run the risk that it will eventually erode into nothing more than a beauty contest of the nominees, rather than a true vote on the merits of the story. However, a write-up is something that is very subjective and not easy to score objectively. Personally, I think that if you are going to have a voting system, then the folks should be voting on a panel of judges. These judges would then vote amongst themselves for the best story.

The judges should also post the reasons they voted the way they did. A public voting record becomes a background for deciding if a person wants to vote for this judge in future panels.

The big problem with this idea, though, is that you lose consistency from panel to panel. What might be a first place story to panel A is only honorable mention to panel B.

Anyway, just my thoughts ...

 

[Shillen]

The praise you receive in the thread (and in PMs) for writing a good story is reward enough for that, IMO. Voting is a popularity contest.

 

[LoneWolf5050]

Score is kind of meaningless, doesn't really represent what happened in your game, just a measurement of some arbitrary figures and stats. I agree that the stories and writeups are where the action really is, but measuring that is of course just about impossible.

I hate the idea that you get higher scores by winning faster. That really is a disincentive to play longer...except the enjoyment of the game is supposed to be in playing it. So they've invented a scoring system that penalizes you from spending more time enjoying the game. Terrific, brilliant, genius!

--Julian

 

[Shillen]

I'm not sure I understand what you're saying. You're saying that people shouldn't try to be skilled at the game? That's what early victory is. If you assure yourself of victory in 1200AD, why would you keep playing until 2000AD? The game's already won. There's no challenge left. What is the fun in that? I'd rather start a new game than continue playing that one. But the scoring system should make me play longer just to get a higher score? Sorry, I think the scoring system is terribly flawed, but suggesting that you don't score higher with an earlier victory would be silly. That's the one biggest measure of skill, which is what score is supposed to indicate.

 

[DaveMcW]

Ideally, we would have a scoring system that doesn't penalize longer games, and doesn't reward you for playing past a winning position.

Designing such a scoring system will be quite a challenge.

 

[LoneWolf5050]

I'm not sure I understand what you're saying. You're saying that people shouldn't try to be skilled at the game?

No, just that the game shouldn't be designed in such a way that the ideal situation is to play for as short a time as possible. Civilization is a game that notoriously takes a long time to play, it is epic in scope, etc. And yet if you can conquer the world by 100AD, you're rewarded. Well it might take you a lot of playing time to do that maybe, but in a significant sense doing that cuts the game short.

I think what DaveMcW says is a good point. Don't penalize longer games, but don't play past an optimum point.

--Julian

 

[remconius]

No, just that the game shouldn't be designed in such a way that the ideal situation is to play for as short a time as possible. Civilization is a game that notoriously takes a long time to play, it is epic in scope, etc. And yet if you can conquer the world by 100AD, you're rewarded. Well it might take you a lot of playing time to do that maybe, but in a significant sense doing that cuts the game short.

I think what DaveMcW says is a good point. Don't penalize longer games, but don't play past an optimum point.

--Julian

It takes a lot of skill to launch a spaceship, achieve cultural victory, win by diplomatic victory early on. Even conquering the world fast is difficult. This should be rewarded greatly.

Launching your spaceship on 1950 should give more points than launching in 2045. Of course in 2045 you have more points through more population, tech, cities, etc. It would be silly if you had to wait with launching for 100 years to milk the game...unless you want to - you've won and now have to sit around turn after turn maxing score. You've shown great skill by getting the spaceship ready asap, and should be rewarded.

I do feel milked (long) games should be able to score similar amounts as fast (short) games. Will be a serious challenge to get this equal.

In the past it was done by determining the optimum date per victory condition. If you were sooner you get a bonus and if you were later you get a penalty.

 

[Shillen]

I can't disagree more about "milked" games. I think milking is a disgrace. The person wins the game but decides to continue playing for hours and hours just to improve their score by a few points or to win a medal in a stupid category so they can complete their medal "set". It is not fun to play a game that has already been won. I would suggest people that enjoy that go play a simulation game instead of a strategy game, like simcity or the sims. I think milking should be absolutely discouraged by the scoring system.

You have now entered the Civilization IV era!

That's exactly right. One where milking isn't a "strategy" anymore.