How do I get high scores?

[kiitos]

Hey everyone

How is my final score for a game calculated? I normally score between 2000 and 4000 points playing on prince or king, but I somehow managed to get a score of 8500 months ago (before I knew what I was doing) on warlord, which is far and away my best score. I tried to replicate that score by doing the exact same settings and everything last night, beating the game in 70 fewer turns than before, but my score was still only 2000ish.

So my question is: how do I get higher scores? I can beat the game handily on king or less, but no matter how efficient I am, it doesn't seem to matter at the end. Difficulty doesn't seem to matter, and I tend to get higher scores on domination victories.

 

[urbancamper]

Score is pretty dumb. Efficiency and time have nothing to do with it. It's mostly just population. Try a game on a huge map and make a ton of cities with a huge puppet empire, and leave one enemy with a capital before just playing out the entire game until time runs out trying to max out your population and future techs, and you'll get a big score.

 

[PScirocco]

On the contrary, time is the biggest coefficient in getting high score, it only seems like a non-factor because of it's ratio nature: (I don't know the exact equation) it goes something like your score (population, tech etc) times total turns in game speed divide by turns spent (and probably some constants like difficulty).

So beating the game within 10 turns of say, a marathon, will give you an insane amount of points, but you won't see a big difference if you win on turn 1700, and improving by another 50 turns or so.

 

[Monthar]

World Wonders add a lot to your score.

 

[urbancamper]

So beating the game within 10 turns of say, a marathon, will give you an insane amount of points, but you won't see a big difference if you win on turn 1700, and improving by another 50 turns or so.

I think that in the cases where it's possible to win insanely fast, the other factors in score will be so low that it doesn't matter--you won't end up with some mega score. I mean, I've done a warrior rush to win by like 1500BC on a duel map, but I've had a population of 4 with no techs or wonders, so my score ended up around 1000. That's certainly a big multiplier compared to the score it showed in game of about 200, but it is not a big score.

My experience is that in games that last for a normal number of turns, time becomes a very small factor compared to population, wonders and technology.

Once you get past a certain point, the techs you are researching are worth more than the time coefficient lost in the turns it takes to research them, so it actually becomes better for your score to just sit around and rack up future techs for no good reason than it does to get the game over with faster.

Oh, and there is a difficulty modifier, along with the time modifier. Not quite sure about this yet, but it doesn't seem to be as strong as it was in past Civs.

 

[kiitos]

Ugh, the scoring system sounds kind of arbitrary. I was hoping it would be a good measure of myself against myself, but it looks like it even punishes me for playing too well. My better scores all come on lower difficulties which makes no sense at all. The few times I have beaten Emperor I only scored in the low 2000's.

 

[chazzycat]

Yeah score seem to favor high population/land/wonders moreso than time. All my top scores are domination games, but I don't think those were my "best" games.

 

[puwen]

Yea, Time is a big factor if won in few turns. At the beginning of my gaming I wanted to do all the achievments and went for alot a future era games. Try starting up a deity 1vs1 on smallest map and win in a few turns since AI cant defend a full attack at capital, you'll get points in 5 digits closing 6 digits.

That was atleast a few patches back, not sure if it still holds.

 

[Pazyryk]

The problem is that population (and other things like science) are increasing in a non-linear way with respect to turns. It's not exactly logarithmic but these things should be growing at an increasing rather than flat rate if you are playing at all sensibly. However, turns seem to be discounted in a linear way (if it is simple division as PScirocco suggests above). So, no matter how hight he coefficient for turns, the gain in points from population is going to get bigger than the loss from extra turns at some point (as long as turns is discounted in a linear way).

Baring some weird set up like dual map conquest, almost any game in a "normal" turn range (I'd guess victory at 1600+, although my earliest victory is 1705) can score higher by delaying victory. If I play in a "lazy/sloppy" way and win Science in 1900s, then I will have 4-5 cities of size 40+ and score 3000+. If I play a very "tight" game and win Science at 1720, then I will have 4-5 cities of size 20-30 and a sad score of 2000.