Fun with Steam achievement statistics!

[Polycrates]

I really like the Steam achievements for this game - not so much for the thrill of unlocking them, but for the fascinating glimpse into how everyone else is playing the game (not just people who answer polls at this forum). I thought I'd share some, because some are exactly what you'd expect and some are a little surprising. Bear in mind that these can be somewhat misleading; they mostly only chart finished games, and I'm sure plenty of people (me included) don't follow games through to the inevitable conclusion when they're clearly massively ahead. They chart the game since its release, through all the balance changes that have happened since. And they don't chart number total number of times something has been finished, only the percentage of people that have finished it at least once. They also don't chart modded games, but then only 12.5% of people have ever even downloaded a mod. So grain of salt and all that.

The most unlocked is Treasure hunter (found a ruin) at 90.5%, indicating that about ten percent of people are either really really unlucky or bought the game and never actually played it. The least unlocked (apart from DLC scenario achievements) is Model of a Modern Major General at 0.1%, which I've heard may be bugged anyway (?).

It can sometimes seem around here that everybody but you is playing Deity, and that you must be immensely hopeless if you aren't too. Not the case at all, as it turns out! Even when you take into account that these statistics include when the game was just released and generally considered considerably easier. Percentage of people who have won a game at each level:

Chieftain 27.8%
Settler 18.1%
Warlord 16.8%
Prince 14.8%
King 5.7%
Emperor 2.8%
Immortal 1.4%
Deity 1.1%

Most popular civs, which has very little correlation with the "most powerful civs" polls that always pop up here. Civs by games won (apologies if I missed any):

Washington 13.6%
Caesar 10.9%
Napoleon 10.2%
Catherine 10.0%
Ramesses 9.8%
Oda 9.5%
Bismarck 9.5%
Alexander 8.6%
Elizabeth 8.0%
Gandhi 7.2%
Wu Zetian 6.6%
Harun al-Rashid 6.4%
Darius 6.4%
Montezuma 6.3%
Hiawatha 5.4%
Ramkhamhaeng 5.2%
Askia 5.1%
Genghis 3.9%
Suleiman 3.5%
Nebuchadnezzar 1.3%
Pachacuti 1.1%
Isabella 1.1%
Kamehameha 0.9%
Harald Bluetooth 0.7%

Most popular victories:
Domination 28.9%
Space 23.2%
Cultural 14.5%
Diplomatic 14.0%

Most won map types:
Continents 31.2%
Pangaea 16.7%
Earth 14.2%
Archipelago 8.9%

Most won map sizes:
Small 24.9%
Standard 20.4%
Duel 14.4%
Tiny 10.9%
Huge 10.7%
Large 9.6%

Most-finished policy trees:
Liberty 45.9%
Tradition 35.5%
Honour 32.9%
Piety 31.6%
Commerce 27.7%
Freedom 27.2%
Patronage 19.7%
Rationalism 19.6%
Order 19.2%
Autocracy 7.2%

Anyway those are the most interesting stats, I think!

 

[mitsho]

Nice list-up. Ruins btw. also don't appear in some of the later advanced starts and I'm not sure wether the ones in scenarios count? plus, some might have gone directly to mods. Still, around 10% is high.

All in all, these numbers do have considerable bias (f.e. counts games WON), but it's still an interesting contrapoint to the community here. As for the civs, it is interesting that the DLC civs are all at the bottom. Do they sell that badly?

 

[Polycrates]

Nice list-up. Ruins btw. also don't appear in some of the later advanced starts and I'm not sure wether the ones in scenarios count? plus, some might have gone directly to mods. Still, around 10% is high.

Good point, though I would figure most people would first play with an ancient start? I dunno.

All in all, these numbers do have considerable bias (f.e. counts games WON), but it's still an interesting contrapoint to the community here. As for the civs, it is interesting that the DLC civs are all at the bottom. Do they sell that badly?

Isn't that only to be expected though? I mean everybody has the original civs, and not everybody has the DLC, so that's how I'd figure the numbers would be most likely to turn out. And the DLC percentages go from earliest to latest released, suggesting a steady stream of people buying the DLCs over time, rather than just in a burst one the week they're released (or alternately that people are starting to not buy the new ones as much now). Don't know.

 

[Kevin J]

These numbers are probably pretty representative of the general population playing civ, but I dowonder how accurate these numbers are for the civfanatics community. I always play with mods on (well, infoaddict), so I have basically no achieves - I'm sure there are plenty of others in the same boat.

Would be nice if achievements were still granted when playing with mods that don't materially affect gameplay (i.e. ui mods).

 

[fmlizard2]

Surprised that Diplomatic is the least popular victory condition. It is probably the easiest to get and the benefits of Patronage are significant. We need to spread the word of alliances and their benefits!

 

[Polycrates]

These numbers are probably pretty representative of the general population playing civ, but I dowonder how accurate these numbers are for the civfanatics community. I always play with mods on (well, infoaddict), so I have basically no achieves - I'm sure there are plenty of others in the same boat.

Oh they're undoubtedly entirely unrepresentative of this board - there's plenty of deity players here and not many settler players, for starters (unless people are telling porkies ). And yeah this is undoubtedly a disproportionately mod-heavy community too - I was using balance mods constantly for the first six months or something, so I'm only just catching up with some of the really basic achievements myself.
I like these stats because it's such a contrast to the mindset around here that everyone is playing the high levels except for some occasional simpleton (there are people here who are very insulting to people who struggle at the lower/middle levels), whereas in reality the vast majority of people are playing the game at settler, chieftain and warlord (and probably entirely oblivious to these forums).

 

[Furycrab]

Surprised that Diplomatic is the least popular victory condition. It is probably the easiest to get and the benefits of Patronage are significant. We need to spread the word of alliances and their benefits!

It's slowly getting harder, but from what I gather from many new players and/or some more casual players that didn't really get into the game is that City States aren't very intuitive as to how powerful they really are... I mean to someone new they seem like harder to take cities that just get you and trouble if you DOW them and cost a ton of gold to keep them friendly.

 

[Zyxpsilon]

Would be nice if achievements were still granted when playing with mods that don't materially affect gameplay (i.e. ui mods).

If i can get some other qualified coders interested with the LeoPaRd mod, localized statistics would track out more than just Steam Achievements since *some* Mods will be required to feed their individual DB slots.

Haven't had much luck yet, though.

Call it the "Re-Balancing" gameplay mood everyone's been lured into since release.

I gave myself until July 15th to decide how *we* might have to proceed on the Front-End extra components necessary without any official Firaxis DLL.

 

[noncognosco]

I mean everybody has the original civs, and not everybody has the DLC, so that's how I'd figure the numbers would be most likely to turn out. And the DLC percentages go from earliest to latest released, suggesting a steady stream of people buying the DLCs over time, rather than just in a burst one the week they're released (or alternately that people are starting to not buy the new ones as much now). Don't know.

Personally, I have all the DLC but haven't finished a game with all of them yet. Currently playing with Spain and have yet to use Denmark, Babylon or Mongolia outside of the scenario. Part of the fun of having them is playing against them and I have also enjoyed the scenarios.

 

[starrywisdom]

I think it's worth pointing out that only a few of the achievements are unlockable in multiplayer which will further skew the statstics. I have yet to boot up a single player game, ever, so any achievements I have(or I should have but don't because I only play MP) skews it quite a bit.

 

[fmlizard2]

I'm also amazed how many of the super easy to get achievements are not done. Like only 85% of players have founded a second city. That basically means 15% got the game and never played it beyond 10 minutes. 10% haven't even found a hut, so it isn't a huge cult of OCC players.

Only a little over a third of all players have gotten in a boat and proved the world was round. Another super easy one to get. Only 34%.

Only 40% have ever completed the tech tree. From this we can basically guess that about half or more of all players have really never played even a full game after buying it.

 

[starrywisdom]

Only 40% have ever completed the tech tree. From this we can basically guess that about half or more of all players have really never played even a full game after buying it.

Not really hard to understand when the grand majority of people were having such long 'turn times/loading' as the game progressed, lol. I've got a few friends who play up to about turn 200 or so and then quit without ever finishing the game, just to start a new one.

 

[Mods]

Not really hard to understand when the grand majority of people were having such long 'turn times/loading' as the game progressed, lol. I've got a few friends who play up to about turn 200 or so and then quit without ever finishing the game, just to start a new one.

I know a weird guy who only starts games, and never continues them

 

[Polycrates]

I'm also amazed how many of the super easy to get achievements are not done. Like only 85% of players have founded a second city. That basically means 15% got the game and never played it beyond 10 minutes. 10% haven't even found a hut, so it isn't a huge cult of OCC players.

Only a little over a third of all players have gotten in a boat and proved the world was round. Another super easy one to get. Only 34%.

These low numbers aren't anything unique to Civ V though.
For example, take Portal 2 - a really easy-to-get-into game that's received pretty much universal praise as one of the best games of recent times. And a full-price game that costs a decent bit of spare change, and whose data haven't been skewed by people buying it on a whim and never playing it in Steam sales (damn you Steam sales!).

86.4% have played through the opening cinematic bit in Portal 2
63.8% have finished the singleplayer (and it's both very short and very easy)

Similarly (though in some of these cases they've been on Steam sale):

89.4% have ever blown anything up in Just Cause 2, and only 74.4% have ever gotten through the introductory bits to the open-world bit
88.6% have gotten past the first fight in Metro 2033
87.9% have entered the mine in Torchlight
A whopping 94.6% have done the opening mission in New Vegas, which plunges to 61.3% for the second mission and 51.6% who have actually made it to New Vegas itself (and done the Benny mission)

Only 40% have ever completed the tech tree. From this we can basically guess that about half or more of all players have really never played even a full game after buying it.

Steam clocks me up at a depressing 394 hours of Civ V (most of which was idle time...I hope!), and I don't have that achievement. It's just always over before it gets to future tech. I also often abandon games that are as good as won rather than going through the motions to get to the victory screen. Perhaps I'm just a weirdo, but I'm not sure you can draw that conclusion.

 

[SerriaFox]

10% is probably the percentage who play "offline" and don't get or report steam achievements

 

[Menzies]

I'm never online on steam, always in offline mode. I suspect a lot of others do this too.

 

[flp_ndrox]

I started a similar thread back around Halloween:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=395221

A few things jump out at me comparing the two. First, how little the numbers have changed in the last 9mo. The percentages have only increased by 3.5-5 percentage points for all stats. I would figure that would be higher...because it still looks like about 10% either play offline/quit and a sep 15% are running mods that I think deactivate the achievements. It's also interesting to see how what I'd guess is <5% are beating the game at Emperor or higher. The other thing is that most of the rankings didn't move much, except for the civs players use to win. It seems that folks are having more success winning lately with France and Russia than with Egypt, Germany, or Japan. I don't know what that means, but I am curious.

All in all, these numbers do have considerable bias (f.e. counts games WON), but it's still an interesting contrapoint to the community here. As for the civs, it is interesting that the DLC civs are all at the bottom. Do they sell that badly?

I wondered that myself. It seems like maybe 3-4% of the initial players ended up getting DLC civs, not counting the offline and/or modding community, who I'd imagine would be more likely to purchase it. I wonder how 2k feels about their numbers, and if that means more or fewer updates.

I'm also amazed how many of the super easy to get achievements are not done. Like only 85% of players have founded a second city. That basically means 15% got the game and never played it beyond 10 minutes. 10% haven't even found a hut, so it isn't a huge cult of OCC players.

Only a little over a third of all players have gotten in a boat and proved the world was round. Another super easy one to get. Only 34%.

Only 40% have ever completed the tech tree. From this we can basically guess that about half or more of all players have really never played even a full game after buying it.

For the longest time, the Magellan achievement was bugged. Anyone who hasn't played since the first of the year likely won't have it.

With the relatively high %age of domination victories and the low percentage of victories overall, I am not surprised that the majority of players have yet to complete the tech tree. What I think we can assume is that more than half of the players are getting their butt kicked while being non-modded and hooked up to steam.