How do i get a HUGE score?

[shawy89]

I was just wondering how to get a very good score, i want to get a score of over 100,000. my highest with Tokugawa was 83,690, a domination (standard/epic/noble) in 1605 AD. Then i tried for a very early win, with the dutch i got 73,002 with a conquest (small/marathon/prince) in 960 AD.
as i understand it(correct me if im wrong) there are 5 aspects of score (4 are in-game).
Land, population, wonders, techs, finish date. (difficulty?)

I have some questions:

1) How important is an early finish?
2) Does the normalized score go down with each turn? (i.e. one turn earlier=a better score?)
3) Does anyone know a formula
4) Are any aspects more important than other (e.g.-land better than wonders)
5) Does difficulty effect score?
6) Any more general tips?

Thanks in advance!

 

[Kesshi]

shawy89,

You basically understand the concepts behind getting a huge score. Yes, difficulty does affect your score, however it seems easier to get a higher score on a lower difficulty than a higher difficulty because of the reduced maintenance. One thing you are missing is the size of the map. More land = more points. More land = more population = more points. For the maximum score go for a Huge map.

My first >10,000 point score was on Warlord Pangea Huge. I finished with about 1/2 the continent with a spaceship victory and I was very surprised to see myself with a 50,000 score! I had only beaten a Prince game at that point, but I wanted to see how big of a score I could get, and I did very well.

I've now been able to get 80, 90, 100, even up to 130,000 points without actually trying for a high score. Managing a Specialist Economy helps out a bit as SE's tend to focus on high populations.

My advice would be:

Warlord or Noble difficulty
Huge Map
Pangea
Choose someone with an organized or financial trait, and the other trait either industrious or something combat related.

Expand very hard with settlers until you get close to running out of land. Keyword there: get close to running out of land. At that point push into someone who is either A) the wrong religion or B) has the most resources. Backfill in later.

Ideally you'll want to expand in a circle around your capital for minimum maintenance. If you cannot, expand close to your capital as much as possible. Once you end up with an amoeba type civilization shuffle your troops around. That single city in the middle of your empire [probably] won't need 4 up to date units guarding it. If you have an old warrior or archer, move it to that center city just to avoid the whole "we fear for our safety" penalty while putting your stronger more modern troops into the boarder cities. Don't worry about upgrading units in the middle of your empire, if someone reaches that city you're having bigger problems than aiming for a high score I think I have an old picture where I'm pushing into future tech with a shot of a city making over 700 gold per turn that is being guarded by a single chariot.

Build only the essential wonders.
Expand, a lot.
Trade techs whenever possible*
*there are a few exceptions, but for 95% of the time, trading for a tech will put you many turns closer to winning.
Run Slavery for as long as possible. New cities in a large empire have a HUGE happiness cap. Abuse this.
If possible save Liberalism for something late. Like Assembly Line or Combustion.

And good luck!

 

[shawy89]

Ok thanks for that!
Does any1 have any more tips?
I especially want to know about finishing a game early, it that important?

 

[eewallace]

Yes, finishing the game early is probably one of the most important aspects to high score. So I would follow the advice above about a big pangea map and choose a leader with good REX abilities, then have fewer than the default number of AI civs. I'm pretty sure the score does not depend on how many civs are in the game. (Of course, you want to find them fast and go after them quickly.)

 

[r_rolo1]

Guide to 500k+ scores through Huge map domination on Immortal difficulty

The name says it all... but there are some higher scorings there : a 700k one and a 1 million+

 

[Ozbenno]

... but there are some higher scorings there : a 700k one and a 1 million+

I saw killercanes 700k but who got the million?

Btw, VirusMonster's 500k and killercane's 700k were both on Immortal. The higher the level the higher the score

 

[r_rolo1]

Killercane too... but I'm not sure if he HOFed it ATM ( see in the last page of the thread I gave the link ... he only posted the finishing screen so far )

 

[Ozbenno]

Hmmm, have to work on my 164k high score then

 

[Supr49er]

Guide to 500k+ scores through Huge map domination on Immortal difficulty

The name says it all... but there are some higher scorings there : a 700k one and a 1 million+

Just when you start feeling good about your game ability...

 

[gusi]

I find the non-ocean maps like great plains allow for high scores too.

 

[GIO888]

Leader definately affects..I changed from the fragrant Elizabeth to the, er, not so fragrant Victoria, found my scores dipped (Epic,Standard, Prince) by about 20% regardless of victory gone for.

I changed to a Huge map, the scores went up by 20% over the Liz scores. Weird city man.

 

[VirusMonster]

shawy89, in the thread of the "guide to 500k+ scores" article, there is a discussion on the scoring formula. It also has references to the original scoring formula thread. I also plugged in the scoring formula into Matlab (math simulator software) and compared to my game data.

Population is most important factor for high scores. It makes up 50% of the final score. Early finish date is good too, but if you have Sushi cooperation that lets your cities grow much faster, then it makes sense to delay your victory. For example, in the 1M+ score game, Killercane was getting 14 through the Sushi cooperation. Well, to grow 1 population takes roughly 60-100 with a Granary. Then, with 140 cities on a late game Huge Terra map, he grew his base population by 140 every 5-7 turns. Watch that at the victory date he had a population score of 2700, while the maximum population score for that map was roughly 2800. I believe game designers forgot taking Sushi effects into scoring calculations, that is why you are seeing he is getting so close to the maximum possible population limit.

And you need to rex successfully in the beginning, because higher scores require larger empire sizes to support more population. You can't expect to conquer half of the world in 1-2 centuries. So start early, 4-5 cities at 2000BC, 1000BC 8-12 cities, 5000BC 16-20 cities. Once you master starting every game optimally, the rest will follow and you'll get a good score.

Try getting Currency out of the Oracle. Currency will help you bigtime sustaining your research during early expansion. Capture any holy shrines on the way. They are great too.

There is also a difficulty modifier in the scoring formula. 2.0 for Deity, 1.8 for Immortal, -0.2 per level. We play Immortal, because Deity is too tough for early rexing. Also, I don't think the AI has fair bonuses on that level The extra 0.2 multiplier is not worth the early game trouble with rexing.

 

[Diamondeye]

KillerCane has just HOFed his 1000000+ game, I believe.