Highest Score

[ipavkex]

As a kid I first saw my parents playing Civ1 in the early 2000s... I'm still playing 20 years later.

Thought I'd post my high score game - still in progress, will keep this post updated.

RANDOM Large map, Emperor, v475.01, 3 civs. No fast settlers, no fixed pollution bug (FT will cap at around 70), no save/reload, basically no "cheating" (except for one barbarian defeated by save/reload at the very start of the game - this just saved me a bit of time rather than a few more tries with a few more maps).

Currently at 263% in 1881. I surveyed my entire landmass and it theoretically supports ~2,050 citizens (EARTH supports around 2,600). So if I can make all of them happy (x2 points), plus around 1000 for wonders/peace/futuretech/spaceship, that projects to a theoretical cap of around 500%. Let's see how close I can get. I currently play a turn a day (5-10 min a day) so will take another few months.

Yes, I track it in Excel. Since 300AD my average Civ Score growth rate is 1.1% per turn.


Next up:

1) I have beaten Emperor+1 before, but no luck yet at Emperor+2 after a few tries - once I get to about 10-20 cities and have a nice treasury of ~1,000 with hordes of legions to back it up, I encounter other civs' cities of 30+ and the peace I pay them tribute for doesn't last long enough for me to defend against their tanks and bombers. (at something like 2000BC).

2) Another random map but try a few maps and scout (using Shift-56 cheat) at the very start until we get a really large map. Then, develop like mad, optimise everything, get caravan routes early rather than late as I am in the above game. Basically aim to max out the map and my civ by around 1000AD. Then the important bit starts - trigger runaway global warming, run it to its max - where all land squares (except hills and mountains?) are converted to swamp. Then clean up the mess, irrigate, improve, and max out civ again. On my current map this would have given me another ~460 bread ~= +46% extra score, possibly reaching a cap of 550%.

2a) same as 2) but on the EARTH map - if global warming converts all the 1 and 3 bread squares into 4 bread grasslands, then that's another 1200 bread = +600 extra citizens -> +120% extra score -> peak score of ~700% on EARTH should be achievable.

3) max out a civ using the magical arctic lands. the problem there is sometimes barbarians spawn and their diplomats move endlessly back and forth between two magical squares, trapping the game in a loop. not sure what to do about this other than save/reload, or maybe use bombers to take them out.

 

[LukasDaBukas]

I find @tupi's idea quite interesting: To increase the score by increasing the population beyond what's sustainable. Building settlers to grow underfed cities to 10 is only one way of doing this.

I find it simpler to capitalize on filled granaries at the end of the game. As others have pointed out, due to the pollution bug the only way to reach max score is to max out population. To max out population you need to max out cities, which are limited to 127. The idea is to grow population beyond what 127 cities can sustain on the given terrain.

Assume you have two cities with overlapping squares. One is controlling all overlapping squares, lets say is of size 32, and has a filled granary. Lets assume the other city is only size 10, because it's squeezed in between other prospering cities. So when you know you spaceship will reach Alpha Centauri in 10 turns, you can turn over the overlapping squares to the second city and let it celebrate each turn. After 10 turns you still have your size 32 city, with a degrading, but not yet empty granary. And you have another size 20 city.
You can of course combine this strategy with using settler to grow your smaller city to 10 first.

Using this strategy in a recent game I was able to get a score of 5005, 500% on vanilla civ 474.05, playing EARTH. In the end I got a little bit impatient of micro management, it should have been possible to get an even higher score out the game.

View attachment 583197

Hi,

Recently I also used that strategy of using filled granaries along with another idea to get maximum score.
I ended up making 531% on EARTH. There would still be some more points possible, but i am satisfied now =)

I figured out, that despite the pollution bug setting in if future technologies are more than 65, pollution seems to be delayed 3 rounds after that level is hit... So for the final 3 rounds I set Sciene to 80% (100% would lead to civil wars)
and if your cities good enough, you can make ca. 3 extra future techs per round.
Plus: I built the "Darwin's Voyage" wonder within those last 3 rounds to get another 2 future techs.