Changing the curve

[Aeson]

Originally posted by Bamspeedy
Aeson, do you perhaps have a calculater we can use that is using this new scoring curve for inputting dates/scores from GOTM18?

I was looking at what some of our Jason scores would have been, had we finished at 1020 A.D. instead of milking, and what our jason score was at 2050 A.D. doing the full milk, and seeing what, if any benefits there was to milking. I would like to do the same for the new curve for comparison purposes.

I'll probably add in a selection for the 'rules' in the official calculator with the GOTM19 update. Think that will be released with the next spoiler thread. In the meantime, you can use this one:

http://gotm.civfanatics.net/games/calculator18alt.shtml

 

[Aeson]

Here is a PHP version for our Mac users if they are interested.

http://gotm.civfanatics.net/games/calculator18alt.php

 

[Bamspeedy]

Ok, by looking at Sir Pleb's, Bremp's, Shillen's, and my game (all 4 games were milked to 2050 A.D.), here is a comparison from what happened to our Jason scores from 1020 A.D. until 2050 A.D.

Percent increase in Jason score by milking for 1,030 years or 323 turns: (note, that some could have won much earlier, some not until later, but 1020 A.D. is just what I have as data.)

Old curve:
Bremp +2.53%
Sir Pleb +6.47%
Shillen +6.89%
Bamspeedy +7.22%

New curve:
Bremp -4.2%
Sir Pleb -1%
Shillen -1.5%
Bamspeedy -0.17%

So, in these cases, it would have been better for us to just finish at 1020 A.D., but the difference is so small, it doesn't make too much difference either way.

The old curve did favor milkers a little bit if you wanted to spend the time to increase your score by about 6%. But now with the new curve it looks like it may favor the faster finishers ever so slightly.

Edit: The 1020 A.D. scores were figuring that they would win by conquest. A different victory condition will alter the 1020 A.D. final jason score, but not a 2050 A.D. Jason score.

 

[Moonsinger]

Thanks for the analysis Bamspeedy. The moment I heard about this great new curve, I sensed that it would hurt our cows furthermore; that was one of the reason why I didn't vote for the immediately change. I also sense that if we make a mistake in the opening sequence, there will be very little chance for complete recovery down the road. I guess the next step would be to sell our farms and to say good bye to our dairy cows

forever. Moo moo moo.

PS: Let's play a little game of truce or dare. Anyone here would dare to milk the GOTM19 all the way to 2050AD?

{just editted your message to special deliver you personal prize for winning Gotm19- cracker}

 

[Aeson]

Do you have any data on the timeframe of 1400-1800AD? Looking at the score progression in your game, I think you would have been right up there with Moonsinger's game by finishing with a Domination (or other 'later' victory condition if possible) about 1600AD with the old curve. That would be a jump of about 15% (compared to 1020AD) at the peak most likely.

I was thinking that Domination (and to a lesser extent, conquest) should have a slightly lower leeway % than the other victory conditions as getting to the Domination limit quickly (not asap, but closer than any other victory condition) is a big part of milking. If it was ~12% instead of the 15% I used in the calculator, that would bring milking back up to a bit over even, at least for GOTM18.

Given that we now have a cow award, there should still be incentive for milking if things are as close to balanced as possible. Especially on smaller maps where milk runs can be done without too much time expense.

 

[Aeson]

The moment I heard about this great new curve, I sensed that it would hurt our cows furthermore;

I think the new curve saves the cows actually. The highest scores would almost always come from the timeframe I've mentioned (14-1800AD) using the old curve.

Milking still should be a good balancer for luck, as it's so heavily weighted in the second half of the game where luck ceases to be much, if any, factor.

 

[Bamspeedy]

Originally posted by Aeson
Do you have any data on the timeframe of 1400-1800AD? Looking at the score progression in your game, I think you would have been right up there with Moonsinger's game by finishing with a Domination (or other 'later' victory condition if possible) about 1600AD with the old curve. That would be a jump of about 15% (compared to 1020AD) at the peak most likely.

Well, I do still have all of my scores from almost every single turn on a spreadsheet.

New Curve:
1020 A.D.- 10734
1200 A.D.- 10858
1300 A.D.- 11020
1400 A.D.- 11173
1500 A.D.- 11235
1600 A.D.- 11221
1700 A.D.- 11152
1800 A.D.- 10958
1900 A.D.- 10655
1950 A.D.- 10543
2036 A.D.- 10626
2049 A.D.- 10716
2050 A.D.- 10730

Yes, it still peaks at ~1600 A.D. for my game, but with the old curve I was at 10,600+, not 11,200+.

I don't know how the other games went, and how the curve affected them.

 

[Bamspeedy]

And for comparison, my game with the old curve. These are the dates I had checked before the calculator got updated. I'm not sure if the old calculator (with the old curve) is still around anywhere or not.

1020 AD-9994
1160 AD-10086
1250 AD-10192
1350 AD-10413
1450 AD-10556
1550 AD-10620
1600 AD-10630
1650 AD-10627
1700 AD-10614
1750 AD-10594
1800 AD-10520
1900 AD-10359
1950 AD-10339
2036 AD-10579
2049 AD-10699
2050 AD-10716

Other play styles will of course have a different curve and see different increases/decreases. In my game I got steam power at 820 A.D., replacable parts at 960 A.D., and had all tile improvements done and starting joining workers back into cities at 1160 A.D. Around 1250 A.D. was when the Firaxis score was increasing the most (98 pts/turn), and I was probably at, or very near max population at this date, or shortly after.

 

[Aeson]

The 'old' calculator is still at the same URL. http://gotm.civfanatics.net/games/calculator.shtml

It will be maintained at that address (calculator.php for the Mac friendly version), so go ahead and bookmark it.

Thanks for the rundown. That's definitely not how I wanted it to be working with the new curve, quite the opposite in fact.

 

[Bamspeedy]

Well, at least the early victory (1000-1200 A.D., for example) scored better with the new curve, than with the old curve.

Do you want me to send you my spreadsheet so you can disect th information? I know Shillen also kept track of his score every turn, so we may want to look at what happened in his game during that time period for another example.

 

[Bamspeedy]

Here's the scoring progress, in Microsoft works spreadsheet format:

Column C is just my increase each turn of the Firaxis score.

Column G is the Jason score (old curve).

 

[Shillen]

Hmm, even with the new curve my score still increases steadily and then skyrockets after the year 2000. It peaked out at 2050. Here are a few sample points...

1350 - 8244
1500 - 8314
1600 - 8332
1700 - 8393
1750 - 8422
1800 - 8456
1850 - 8464
1900 - 8464
1950 - 8484
1975 - 8539
2000 - 8648
2025 - 8820
2050 - 9054

The biggest difference is milking didn't help me as much with this scoring system. I only increased my score by 800 instead of 1500. Therefore had I finished early I would have scored higher under the new system than the old.

 

[Aeson]

Thanks again for all the game data Bamspeedy! I looked at the curves and how they affect your game more in-depth this morning, putting together this Excel spreadsheet.

It shows how your game would have scored at any date and victory condition using the new and old curves. I wanted to see how much variation there would be between dates and victory conditions. I counted the victory conditions from their best dates on, even though they probably weren't available at those dates with those scores. I think if you were targetting any particular victory condition from the start you could have come pretty close though.

I think the new curve stands up a lot better than the old.
Comparison of New and Old curves EDIT: file updated to include Bremp's game as well.

The results:

[u]Variation      Con   Dom   Dip   Spa  100k   20k  Date[/u]
New            790   771   816   886   920   879   240
Old            755  1080   511  1099  1424  2421  2539

 

[Bremp]

I made a spredsheet with my score through the game. It also show some important events in my game.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/Bremp,GOTM18.zip

 

[Aeson]

Thanks Bremp.

Here's how the variation in your game would have looked:

[u]Variation      Con   Dom   Dip   Spa  100k   20k  Date[/u]
New            870   832   919   961   924   685   240
Old            517   714   605  1313  1530  2230  2539

I updated the Excel file (201k) to include your results.

 

[Qitai]

Information editted out by request of Aeson.

Sorry.. can't think how I can keep this post but remove the socre. So I remove everything.

 

[Bamspeedy]

Yes, Qitai, it seems like you score higher for awhile after you could have won, but the curve starts catching up at some point. You can see that in my game and Bremp's. Bremp had domination at 650 A.D. in GOTM18, but his Jason score peaked at 1050 A.D., but by 2050 A.D., his Jason score was lower than had he won between 650 A.D.-1790 A.D. (by conquest).

So, there is some (small) benefit to milking for awhile, but not any benefit to milking to 2050 A.D., if you could have achieved victory pretty close to the 'best date'.

 

[Qitai]

Agree. Glad to see GOTM improving tremedously. This improvement in scoring is definately good =)

 

[Aeson]

Qitai,

Thanks for the data, but can you edit your post about your GOTM19 results? This isn't a spoiler thread, and so people who didn't want to see that information could run into it accidently.

---------------------

The curve is going to be 'off' more at certain times than others. Depending on the map, that might be earlier or later. Probably the best time to end a game is going to be with a super fast victory, or sometime shortly after reaching max pop/territory.

Of course the speed which you reach max pop/territory would affect how long after you'd peak out. If you reach that 'late', then milking all the way out could keep increasing score, as the average is still being pulled up faster than the curve at that point. On some maps where domination takes a while to get to, milking might well still increase score all the way to 2050AD.

 

[Ronald]

I am totally surprised, how different the scores with the old and the new version of the curve best regards,

Ronald