How important is "score" in the game?

[thelibra]

It occurs to me that perhaps I put too much stock in score during game-play, when I might actually be winning depending on my goal. I was wondering what your thoughts were on this. How deeply does score measure your success, and how is it calculated? For instance, does score only raise as you approach a particular victory condition (such as getting another % closer to a cultural win), or is there a set number of point values for any one achievement, like making another spearman, or X points per beaker points once you discover a tech.

If it's the first, then maybe score is more useful than I thought, but in a much different way. Perhaps if I'm pumping out tons of culture and bring myself within another 1% of a cultural victory, and THAT causes my score to go up, because I'm closer to a victory, then score becomes a bit more relevant.

Versus if you just get a certain standard point value for producing or researching something, which tells me a lot less about how people are doing, and only gives a vague idea of who might be ahead.

Basically what I'm wondering is "how important are points?" and why.

 

[Diamondeye]

how important is "score" in game?

Nada until victory.

 

[magicalsushi]

Score has a small influence on diplomacy. You (and also the AI leaders) receive hidden diplomatic bonuses from leaders above you in the score chart, and hidden diplomatic penalties from leaders below you. Also, the leaders in the bottom half of the score chart all have an extra hidden diplomatic bonus towards each other.

Your score is made up of four factors: the amount of land you control (I think that's land tiles within your cultural borders), the number of techs you have (I *think* all techs have the same magnitude of effect), the number of population units you have, and the number of wonders you've built. I don't know exactly how it works. Your score is then "normalised" by the difficulty and game year. You can see a summary of your score (including the normalised score if you were to win the game immediately) by hovering over your name in the list of scores (the one in the bottom right-hand corner).

Because land and population make up quite a lot of your score, and because domination victories tend to come earlier than most other victory types, you get an insane normalised score from wiining domination. (at least, that was true in Warlords...)

 

[thelibra]

Interesting. So the amount of gold in your treasury, the number of military units you have, and suchlike, has no actual bearing on the score?

So technically, I could have the top score, because I chose a creative civ that covers a lot of land area quickly, play very conservatively and just grow huge populations in my city, and yet be one swift kick in the pants away from losing the game, whereas I could have a low score but have tons of military units, be technologically superior, and gold in my treasury, and a weaker civ would score higher just for covering more land with more people?

 

[magicalsushi]

Yeah, gold, units, etc. don't have any direct effect on your score. Obviously, they help you get the things you need to increase it, but yeah, it's only the four factors I mentioned which influence it directly. Military units increase your standing on the powergraph, which acts as a deterrent from people attacking you. As far as I know, gold doesn't affect any kind of game metric.

Returning to your first post, that means it's the seond system you suggested. You could have two legendary cities and a third one about to reach legendary culture at the end of the turn, but another civ with more land, pop, tech and wonders will still have a higher score, even though you'll win. Generally speaking, stuff which improves your score is correlated with things that'll help you win the game, but diplomatic victory is a bit of an exception. If anything, a low score would make it slightly easier to win that type of victory, assuming you've still managed to retain good relations and get control of the UN.

 

[thelibra]

Very, very interesting. This puts me in a whole new mindset for the game then. Up until this morning, I've been playing to the scoreboard, and stressing whenever I wasn't in first place.

 

[Grimus]

I prefer to look at the power charts instead to compare civs (forget what it's called at the moment). Y'know... where your power, wealth, culture, etc. is plotted out on a chart over time.

EDIT: Though, you also have to be wary of some civs missing on that graph, due to your poor espionage and/or their superior espionage.