[BTS] How does the difficulty affect your score?

[SaintSaens_Op61]

I know that settler, chieftain, and warlord all reduced your final score, and that prince to deity gives a bonus to your final score. How does this work? Is this an absolute amount, a percentage, or something that is calculated based on map size, game speed, number of opponents, etc.?

A silly follow-up question : Is it possible to get a higher score by doing really well on settler than you would have by playing the same game on, say, noble? For example, is it possible to get a very high score by having 100 cities on a huge map on settler, or would the difficulty negate any and all advantages?

 

[Pangaea]

You can play around with it here: https://www.dos486.com/civ4/index/calc.shtml

Don't know the inner workings, but population is the biggest driver.

 

[lymond]

What is that link @Pangaea? My computer does not like it..ha

I don't care much usually about score except some HOF games or BOTMs, but the general idea is that population and land are going to give you the most score, with tech and wonders secondary factors. I don't know the specific rules/code behind score calc, but keep in mind that finish date is a big factor on the normalized score (the much larger score number). Base score works differently and always rises as the game progresses, and you do things that increase it. After a certain date, and I'm not sure on this, but around 1300 or 1400 AD (or the relative turn number) normalized score starts to decline dramatically. So basically doing more sooner will lead to larger scores later, especially if you win faster. (all that probably did not make a lick of sense..ha)

 

[Pangaea]

My computer didn't much like it either, Firefox was very vocal about it. It's a Civ4 site with a score calculator, some writeups and loads of stuff. By a guy called @T-hawk.

 

[coanda]

Every difficulty level away from Noble is a 20% increase or decrease in your final score. Warlord (1 below Noble)? 0.8x. Emperor (3 above)? 1.6x. And so forth.

 

[AcaMetis]

A silly follow-up question : Is it possible to get a higher score by doing really well on settler than you would have by playing the same game on, say, noble? For example, is it possible to get a very high score by having 100 cities on a huge map on settler, or would the difficulty negate any and all advantages?

I believe the best scores can only be gotten on Deity, not just because of the straight score multiplier that you get on Deity (especially compared to the penalty you get on Settler) but also because the AIs being that much stronger speeds up the game noticeably - conquests are much more profitable, tech trades are not only possible but valuable, resource trades pay out a lot more, etc.

 

[SaintSaens_Op61]

Interesting information!

You can play around with it here: https://www.dos486.com/civ4/index/calc.shtml

What is that link @Pangaea? My computer does not like it..ha

Chrome also doesn't like the dos486 link, but it looks like it has good information.

Every difficulty level away from Noble is a 20% increase or decrease in your final score. Warlord (1 below Noble)? 0.8x. Emperor (3 above)? 1.6x. And so forth.

So if diety is 5 levels above noble, your score is double what it would be on noble.

I believe the best scores can only be gotten on Deity, not just because of the straight score multiplier that you get on Deity (especially compared to the penalty you get on Settler) but also because the AIs being that much stronger speeds up the game noticeably - conquests are much more profitable, tech trades are not only possible but valuable, resource trades pay out a lot more, etc.

I hadn't considered that the higher the difficulty level, the more there is to conquer.

So basically doing more sooner will lead to larger scores later, especially if you win faster. (all that probably did not make a lick of sense..ha)

I think that doing more sooner means that you will win faster, but I get your point .

Thanks guys!