Does score really matter?

[dennisg]

Just curious what people think:

I never play with "Time" victory so I know that the scores shown really don't matter in any real sense, but I still look at them to get a feel for how good (or bad) I'm doing...so

1) Do the scores really give an accurate picture of how "well" I'm doing?

Has anybody ever won a game while being last (or near last) in score?

(Yes, I know I could just hide the scores, but I use the BUG mod and it's nice to be able to see all the extra scoreboard info.)

 

[Lansky]

Score means very very little.

 

[bestsss]

Actually it's good to be lower in the score board. It may allow some more trades.

 

[Badtz Maru]

Score is very important, though not necessarily as an indicator of how well you are doing. If you are higher in score than another civilization, they may like you more or less, depending on which ruler they have. If you are playing with permanent alliances on, someone who is #1 in score will never enter a permanent alliance with you at your suggestion. I THOUGHT that if you were #1 another civilization would not enter a permanent alliance with you, but I had an AI offer to be my permanent ally when I was #1 in score, so maybe it's just that they won't if you ask them.

I used to win by score victory quite a bit, but that was when I disabled spaceship victory. If spaceship victory is on, I think it would be very rare to win by score.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Score matters a great deal near 2050 AD. Score matters only for hidden modifiers before that, although since it is roughly based on land/pop/tech/wonders a higher score is technically better than a lower one...but a low score does not mean a player can't translate his position into an eventual win, even if in doing so he frequently gets to #1 or close in score at the time of victory.

Functionally, don't use it as an indicator of anything for most of the game though. If you want an idea of an AIs size, open their diplo screen and count their cities. If you want the tech picture, press f4. If you want to know if an AI will tech well in the future, look at the size and quality of its land and its choice of tile improvements (the AIs that do go cottages will tech extremely rapidly with a lot of green land. AIs that spam workshops might still do OK but it won't be the same...although they'll have far more troops).

 

[pi-r8]

I think the score is affected more by wonders than anything else. So you can get a high score even if you're way behind in land, tech, and power, in which case you're obviously not doing too well.

 

[Willem]

If you want an idea of an AIs size, open their diplo screen and count their cities.

Or get the BUG mod and let it do that for you, then place the results in your scoreboard.

 

[binhthuy71]

Score is a broad and often deceptive indicator of how you're doing. I've lost games when I was the runaway leader in score and won them when I was in the bottom half of the pack. These days, I pay more attention to the information in the graphs and the diplo screens.

 

[r_rolo1]

Score basically is a agregate of pop,controled tiles , techs and wonders divided by the turn you are in ( more details here and here ) ....

The big issue is that score has a lot of important things out ... the biggest of which is the civ power ( well, power has also some wonders and the pop in consideration... ). So if you are focusing on military your score will not be a decent indicator of your civ potential

 

[binhthuy71]

r rolo1, thanks for those links. They cleared up some of my misconceptions about how Score is calculated. It's interesting that health, culture, military units, happiness, and commerce don't seem to be explicitly among the factors that are used to come up with a score.
Now to see if I can massage that fact into an explanation of why I play so badly.

 

[VirginiaRounder]

I agree that during the game, the relative power between Civs is more important than the relative score.

At the end of the game, of course it's nice to have a really good score for HOF purposes, and nobody wants to be Dan Quayle.

 

[jauggy]

What do people use the score delta in BUG mod for? I've disabled it, because I'm not sure what useful info I'm supposed to glean from it.

 

[Silu]

What do people use the score delta in BUG mod for? I've disabled it, because I'm not sure what useful info I'm supposed to glean from it.

To see when non-scouted AI cities change hands in a war. Useful way to see who is winning in AI v AI wars fought in the fog.

 

[Bushface]

Population counts more towards your score than do land, techs or wonders, due to the weighting in the elaborate acoring formula. Winnning early gives a higher score than a later one in which your scores for the four items are the same as for the early win. The level also affects your score (higher level means a bigger factor applied) but the map size, map type, victory type, number of cities, military power, and finances do not enter into the score calculation.

 

[Ramesses]

Welcome back to Whose Civ Is It Anyway, the game where history's made up and the points don't matter. That's right, the points don't matter just like Gandhi's army.

 

[Fredric Drum]

Of course points are an indicator of how well you're doing. Aren't tech, land, pop and wonders all important factor for how well you are doing? If you use BUG (who wouldn't?), you'll have the power indicator to show your relative strength.

You just have to know what the points tell you and what they don't.

 

[Iranon]

I'd say it matters little.

For example, a bloated corporation-fed empire that needs to keep its monstrously huge cities pacified by heavy use of the culture slider or Hereditary Rule will have a high score, but it would likely have a higher useful output with a leaner approach.

Winning while last in score is quite common for quick diplomatic victories.

 

[Fredric Drum]

Random examples of how you can win even if you're not on top of the list are irrelevant, because the points are still a good indicator of how your empire is doing when it comes to size and technology. If you are low on the list, you are not doing well overall, even if you can pull a diplo win out of the hat, or culture. Your likelyhood of doing well is much higher if you're on top of the list than at the bottom, even if it's not alpha and omega.

 

[Lansky]

Fredric Drum: The higher the difficulty you play the less score means anything at all. The more advantages the AI's get the more cities they settle, the faster these cities grow, the more wonders they build, and it snowballs. Quite frankly you WILL NOT be at the top, or even the top half, of the scoreboard if you are playing a level that is difficult for you early in the game. Later in the game score is also useless as you already know you are winning when you have an army conquering the world - don't need to look at the score to tell you that.

For an extreme example a Deity AI can have 20 cities, but be hated due to world diplomacy and have no trade partners. This AI will have a high score due to his bonuses to building/growing cities, however is technologically backwards so you can take most of his territory with cannons while he defends with hordes of longbows.

The less attention people pay to their score the better.


Ramesses: Amazing

 

[r_rolo1]

To say the truth I don't remember any win I had in Emperor and above that hadn't involved heavy land grabbing by force that I had won while being #1 in score....