High Scores Seem Possibly Easier Than Past Civ Games

[Equisilus]

Being one of those that like the long games where civilization building is more important than conquest, I'm disappointed that earlier victories means a higher normalized score. I played the tutorial on Settler and had a score over 10000 (my first Civ game ever) because I won a 'conquest' victory (owned % of land). However, as I've been upping the difficulty, even though I'm playing better and have won the majority of my games so far, my normalized scores are lower (right now in the 3000+ range) because I'm not all about expansion and conquest, which the game seems to favour.

Not that this makes Civ4 poor in any respect (it's one of the best games I've ever played). It's just that I like stats, and the score system doesn't seem to make a lot of sense. It should really have something to do with what you've accomplished and take into consideration the difficulty level. My Settler tutorial should never have managed a score 3-4x higher than my other, harder, victories.

 

[Pounder]

Being one of those that like the long games where civilization building is more important than conquest, I'm disappointed that earlier victories means a higher normalized score. I played the tutorial on Settler and had a score over 10000 (my first Civ game ever) because I won a 'conquest' victory (owned % of land). However, as I've been upping the difficulty, even though I'm playing better and have won the majority of my games so far, my normalized scores are lower (right now in the 3000+ range) because I'm not all about expansion and conquest, which the game seems to favour.

Not that this makes Civ4 poor in any respect (it's one of the best games I've ever played). It's just that I like stats, and the score system doesn't seem to make a lot of sense. It should really have something to do with what you've accomplished and take into consideration the difficulty level. My Settler tutorial should never have managed a score 3-4x higher than my other, harder, victories.

I agree 100%.

 

[LulThyme]

Being one of those that like the long games where civilization building is more important than conquest, I'm disappointed that earlier victories means a higher normalized score. I played the tutorial on Settler and had a score over 10000 (my first Civ game ever) because I won a 'conquest' victory (owned % of land). However, as I've been upping the difficulty, even though I'm playing better and have won the majority of my games so far, my normalized scores are lower (right now in the 3000+ range) because I'm not all about expansion and conquest, which the game seems to favour.

Not that this makes Civ4 poor in any respect (it's one of the best games I've ever played). It's just that I like stats, and the score system doesn't seem to make a lot of sense. It should really have something to do with what you've accomplished and take into consideration the difficulty level. My Settler tutorial should never have managed a score 3-4x higher than my other, harder, victories.

I think before they had systems to make the score comparable between difficulty and victory conditions (in civ 3 say).
They ended up not working that well (see Jason in GOTM and split conditions in HOF) so they decided why bother?

I don't think that's a bad idea.

 

[Svar]

I just finished my second huge epic game on chieftain and even though the first game had more land and much more future techs, the second scored higher because it finished in 1898 AD versus 1959 AD. Both games were cultural victories. The first had an in-game score of 9527 and a final score of 20769 while the second had an in-game score of 6259 and a final score of 22943.

I just completed another much better played game at the same conditions and finished in 1782 AD but it was the adjusted score that suprised me. The in-game score was 6069 which was very close to the 1898 AD finish but the final score was 51449. I really don't know how the scoring works for this game.

 

[Shillen]

Played a standard pangaea map on noble, epic speed. Went to war early and pretty much stayed at war the entire game until domination. Scored 80,000 points. It's no contest; if you don't go to war your score will suck. If you do go to war and early it will be great. I find that wrong, especially in civ4, because having a large empire in civ4 can actually weaken your civ instead of strengthening it. If I was going for a space race victory for instance there's no way I would have wanted that much land. But I would have to take that much land if I wanted a high score.

 

[Fallblau]

There really should be some sort of "difficulty divisor" in play here... No "Settler" rated game should score high at all... Easy enough mod to make given the supplied code...

Though, I have to admit, this section is hysterical (added emphasis mine)

<Define>
<DefineName>SCORE_VICTORY_PERCENT</DefineName>
<!--Percentage of your score that gets added if you win the game-->
<iDefineIntVal>0</iDefineIntVal>
</Define>

"Veectory bonus? We don' need no steenkeeng Veectory bonus!"

You've won! Your prize? NADA, baby, NADA...

 

[Ex-Cop]

Any one else agree that Civ 1 had the scoring system just right. Gave a percentage. And only way to get above 75% was to play a Emperor (toughest level).

 

[Aeson]

It's been an awful long time, but IIRC in Civ 1 it was possible to "flip" the score back to negatives. (Or was it 0?)

 

[Garath]

I never played Civ1, but I know that was possible on 2, I wrapped a score once just before I got bored with the game. If I recall correctly, the wrap was at something like 512%, but it's hard to be sure. So the early ones didn't have *that* good a scoring system.

Garath

 

[alysenne]

Based on my experience, there is definitely a difficulty level multiplier, but it's a lot smaller than it should be. Domination seems to be the way to get the best score.

Here are a few data points...

Score - Finish Date - Game Score - Victory - Difficulty - Size - Speed
107675 - 1240AD - 5089 - Domination - Warlord - Small - Normal
79712 - 1120AD - 2873 - Cultural - Deity - Standard - Epic
73371 - 1305AD - 4024 - Space - Diety - Standard - Epic
52993 - 1920BC - 1067 - Conquest - Noble - Duel - Normal
50966 - 1670AD - 5625 - Space - Monarch - Small - Normal

Note that I cheated for the Deity wins because I wanted to see what the scoring is like for that level. It was the same game that I reloaded to see whether the scores would differ for a cultural vs space win.

Difficulty-wise, that Domination win for the 107675 score was stupid easy. At lower difficulty levels, once you get the lead, it basically landslides into an enormous advantage very quickly. Since it was a small map, I expanded quickly, cut off expansion for several civs, ate them up, and I had a huge amount of room to grow.

 

[Gyathaar]

No, difficulty level has no effect on the score.

I found the formula for calculating the score.

 

[Dianthus]

A couple of other interesting things about the score. As well as no difficulty multiplier the score is not averaged across turns, just based on the game state of the final turn. Also, the scores are normalized based on the theoretical maximum for the map. Assuming the theoretical maximums are calculated correctly this means that the maximum score before early finish bonus on a huge map is the same as that of a small map.

 

[Pentium]

So milking will be done on Tiny Settler?

 

[wilwil]

my lowest point is won by time victory
just 6K ...

 

[storeslem]

Have a look at this:

133k score on settler difficulty?
The settings of that one was Small map, Great Plains, 17 opponents. I was just 1 city short of getting conquest victory, it would most likely had fallen in one more turn. Wonder how a conquest would have affected the score. If I try something akin to that again I will be romans for sure, seeing how my most used units were swordsmen.

The deity game was a duel ice age map with 1 opponent. It appears that having multiple opponents greatly enhance your victory score, thus this score was way lower, although the achievement much higher,

 

[Gyathaar]

What victory condition you win with, the difficulty, number of opponents, or map size dont matter for score.

What matters is how:
high pop you have vs max pop (the x/y after pop score)
how much land you have vs domination limit
how many techs you have researched
and to a small degree how many wonders you have buildt.

Population is by far the most important factor (matters more than the others added together)

This is modified by how early you win (if your score factors grows faster than an extra turn is vs total number of turns it is generally better to hold off the win a few turns to get a higher score)

You can find the exact formulas in the python code that comes with game.


So basically.. to get highest possible score.. expand to 1 tile below domination limit, then grow cities as much as possible (while researching techs, but dont sacrifice growth for techs), then when pop score is maxed, pass domination limit ( or win by conquest).

The faster you can do this the higher score you will get (maxing techs or wonders takes too long vs the number of turns it takes)

 

[storeslem]

Do any of you have the exact formula for score, plain mathematical and not as some piece of a code? Then I'd stand a chance of understanding the mess and could find an algorithm of sorts, telling me when I have milked enough.

And also, if you turn domination victory off, would the theoretic max land score then be 100% of the land, or would it be same as if domination victory had stayed on ?

 

[Dianthus]

Do any of you have the exact formula for score, plain mathematical and not as some piece of a code? Then I'd stand a chance of understanding the mess and could find an algorithm of sorts, telling me when I have milked enough.

Maybe later, when I'm home from work, if nobody else does first .

And also, if you turn domination victory off, would the theoretic max land score then be 100% of the land, or would it be same as if domination victory had stayed on ?

The theoretical max land score is 100% of the land whether domination victory is on or off. There's no reason you couldn't stay 1 tile under the dom limit until the final turn in which you settle all of the remaining land with a bunch of settlers you prepared earlier.

 

[Shillen]

Do any of you have the exact formula for score, plain mathematical and not as some piece of a code? Then I'd stand a chance of understanding the mess and could find an algorithm of sorts, telling me when I have milked enough.

If you hover over your civ's name in the lower right of screen it will tell you the score if you won on the next turn. I imagine when that numbers starts going down then you've milked enough.

The theoretical max land score is 100% of the land whether domination victory is on or off. There's no reason you couldn't stay 1 tile under the dom limit until the final turn in which you settle all of the remaining land with a bunch of settlers you prepared earlier.

This is not nearly as easy as it was in civ3. You can't disband cities or sell off cultural buildings. So staying exactly 1 tile short would be nearly impossible. The only way to prevent domination if a city is about to expand would be to gift that city away and then you're not 1 tile short anymore.

 

[Dianthus]

This is not nearly as easy as it was in civ3. You can't disband cities or sell off cultural buildings. So staying exactly 1 tile short would be nearly impossible. The only way to prevent domination if a city is about to expand would be to gift that city away and then you're not 1 tile short anymore.

There's no reason to stay that close to the limit though since turns before the final turn don't count towards the score.