High Scores

[conkers]

Sorry if this is a stupid question, but I'm pretty new to CIV 4. I have been playing CIV games since the DOS days of CIV 1, but have found this chapter in the series to be by far the most complex.

Anyway, I was looking at the Hall of Fame on this site, and my mind is blown away on how such high scores can be reached, and at such early times too. I just cranked through a 17 hour and 39 minute game as Caesar on Epic-Noble, and got somewhere around 7500 points, which has been my highest to date. I then see games in the Hall of Fame with play times of less than five hours and scores closer to 20-100,000. How is this even possible?

 

[oyzar]

My best game for score i got just shy of 800K in under 9 hours... I had a very good starting position, and i used my knowledge of how the AI acts to exploits some weaknesses in their actions to get a tremendous tech rate and a lot of very large cities very quickly(won 980 AD irc). Basically score is just pop, land and time(with a bit of tech). Getting more of those will be easier as you improve. As you improve your ability to play civ your scores will most likely improve as well(since you will get more and bigger cities earlier on harder difficulties), however this doesn't mean that a higher score means a better game. An monarch domination game in the BC's would likely score way more than a diety always war game, but you can guess which one was harder .

 

[conkers]

800K... Sweet Jesus.

EDIT: And I didn't realize time played a factor in the score. I guess it goes hand in hand that those high scores are in part due to the fact that the games were finished more quickly?