How to get a high score?

[Cromwest]

Ok so I just moved up to noble for the first time and won my first game with a space race victory with Gandhi (randomly selected). The map was huge terra play not a custom game, normal speed.

My problem is that even though I won my score was crap. I started playing this game two weeks ago for the first time in years. I stared on chieftain and played a few games on each setting before trying noble. My end score was around 5000 which I blew out of the water with games on settler and warlord (both difficulty modes had games where I got a score nearly 10 times that).

I started the game by founding 3 GP farms (one was my capitol) a production city and a commerce city that had a ton of cottages and had one worker per city. I then axe rushed my nearest neighbor and that's where I found my first difference between warlord and noble. It did not go nearly as well as it did on lower difficulties. I can usually wipe out the first AI I axe rush but this took forever and I eventually had to wait till I could research catapults to put a dent in his empire. I eventually took over 4 cities and razed several others and left him with two cities and declared peace (had to give up since I was running out of soldiers and was falling far behind in the tech race). In the mean time I lost out on every wonder I tried to build except for the oracle which I used to get code of laws. I also waited till all my neighbors became jewish and converted to the same thinking it was a safe bet. This came back to haunt me because everyone else on the map who at the time had no religion became christian and they all hated me ( should I wait till mid game to get a religion?)

Mid game I decided I definitely wasn't going to win cultural (no wonders), diplomatic (2/3rds of map were christian by midgame and did not like me), military (map was enormous and after some colonies were founded eventually had 14 civs on it conquest didn't seem practical or possible). So I decided to create a raging economy and win the space race. I ran caste system, representation and state property (because of the overseas towns i made). I started by being the first to discover the empty continent and sent six settlers and musketmen over there along with 3 explorers and founded six towns. I then sent over another six settlers and musket men. As soon as half the continent was mine (all other civs had 2 or three cities on the new continent but nothing close to what I had). I got beat to sushi co and mining inc but got creative conventions instead. I put the headquarters in my commerce city and then tried to pop out a great merchant to get the cereal company. I messed up and selected all artists instead of merchants and got a great artist instead so I made the diamond company in my commerce city. As soon as I had my last town founded on the new continent I liberated them all and got the vassal that I had been planing to get all along so I could flood it with corporations to get more cash and switched over to the civic that gives bonuses to corporations. The problem is my vassal decided to run state property and It wouldn't give me an option for a very long time to ask him to switch it. Fortunately my jewish friends had open borders agreements with me and would let me bribe them to switch to something that would let me give them corps so I flooded three of my allies with corporations until i could run my science slider at 100% + profit on top of that.

At the end of the game I eventually started way out teching everyone else and I kept bribing my allies to attack the big christian super block. This ended up backfiring as one of the civs was able to take over significant amount of my allies land and one of them ended up having a higher score than me and I was never able to catch up in score even though I had four or five more techs than he did for the rest of the game. I built the united nations but lost the election in a land slide and then almost lost the game when the guy who won fell just a few votes short of a diplomatic victory. By the time other civs started to build space ship parts I had the thing 75% built. I was running the science slider at 100% and making 500 commerce profit every turn. I continued to spam corporations everywhere to make even more money even though I had way more money than I knew what to do with (everything unit was upgraded and I had all the buildings I wanted in each city). 8 turns away from winning my closest ally declared war on me but it was too late for him to do anything. It was a huge shock because he was pleased with me all game but I had over 10 military units in every city so even though he had a much stronger military than me he couldn't take cities down fast enough to stop me from wining. He ended up taking one city i stole from him culturally and then one of my major cities on the last game turn.

I then got the worst score I have ever gotten from not loosing the game which was very disappointing because I played for a long time and I was hoping moving up in difficulty would adjust the score to make it higher. Can any one pick apart what I did and give advice for a higher score on noble.

 

[Archon_Wing]

Score is largely meaningless, as it doesn't seem weighted that much for difficulty, (Deity win is only weighted at 2x Noble win) and favors early domination/conquest wins. Naturally it's easier to run everyone over at the easier levels.

Let's just say any kind of win on Noble is worth far more than any kind of win on Settler or Warlord, regardless of score.

If you want a higher score, you'll be wanting to find a way to strike the decisive blow against everyone else, preferably with a tech advantage.

There's tons of threads that talk about the liberalism beeline. Getting Renaissance techs (rifling/steel) is an easy way of running people ever.

Or to say everything in two words: Get Cavalry.

Your wars must be efficient. You want to strike and conquer their major cities quickly so they'll capitulate and you can jump to your next target. Otherwise you'll lose your edge.

It seems to me that you are trying to build too many wonders; I'd recommend not building them unless you can think of a really good reason to.

As for religion, you have to think about who it will please and who it will anger. If it will invite someone to attack you, please reconsider. And remember you cannot please everyone. If there's an outcast, stop trading with them to not anger anyone else

Also, your first priority is to have workers improve food resources. Whip and chop to get stuff out faster.

You didn't seem to have a focus. You need to really be considering your victory options once you heads towards liberalism.

But that doesn't matter yet. Make sure you get more workers to repair your economy after you conquer.

Also, when you rush, you must commit on getting those soldiers out and try not to build too many buildings besides the ones you absolutely need.

Start at the beginning. Next time you start a game, try posting images and saves here, and ask for suggestions, as it's the time that's the most critical and small mistakes here snowball into larger problems later on.

 

[lymond]

I'd say the 3 keys things to boosting score is increasing amount of land, population, and winning early. Earliest Domination generally gives the highest scores. Conquests can get high scores as well when you wipe the map early. Wonders add to score but not as much as land and pop. However, you can just go out and conquer wonders.

Corps like Sushi or Cereal Mills, depending on map/resource availability, can really boosts scores in the later game.

Other victories like Culture, Diplo and Space tend to have relatively far lower scores to Dom/Conquest, but again the factors I mentioned effect how high the score will be. Diplo can be somewhat high scoring if a result of diplomation.

(edit: If you want higher scores with Space, simply win Space earlier and have more cities and higher pop. Spend the early game expanding and conquering. The more cities you have anyway the faster Space will be. Workshop/watermill/windmill economy is great for Space wins, so you should be able to grow large productive cities late. Shoot for at least 30 cities and use the hammers in many cities to build wealth/research to speed your teching a long. Avoid Space Elevator and the corresponding tech. Shoot for dates in the early 1800s. With a lot of cities you can approach the 100k score range which is very good for Space wins)

One thing that helps is that although slavery is awesome, you try to reach a point mid-way in the game where you transfer more to hammer production, using workshops/watermills/windmills. This allows you to rely less on Slavery in order to grow your cities large. Use slavery to grab more land and conquer quickly and then settle in and grow massive and productive cities.

 

[Cromwest]

@archon I looked at your link and saw how score was calculated. That explains a lot of questions I had about score. I was under the impression that the bonuses you got from winning on higher difficulties were a lot higher (not a .2 increase). I actually did win the liberalism race which helped me get a leg up on the other civs for seizing the land on the uninhabited continent.

@lymond I had 10 cities after I liberated my over seas colonies giving me one of the smallest empires on the map (my vassal had 2 more towns than I did lol) but my economy was insane. I had the science slider at 100% and still made profit every turn after I founded my first corp. Even at 100% science for half the game it still took me till 2011 to actually win. How do you win the space race in the 1800's? Do extra towns make you tech up faster even if you have a worse economy and don't have the slider at 100? The only improvements I build are special resource improvements, farms in my GP farms, cottages in my commerce cities and mines on hills. When are good times to build the other improvements?

 

[lymond]

Crom - You are too caught up with the research slider. For a simple example, in your next game try this. Do the usual worker first, build some warriors to size 3 or 4, then build another worker and your first settler. At this point you should have the Wheel teched or soon. As the first settler is being built, build a road to the first city site you have marked (the tile next to where you will settle). Send your settler there and note your beakers per turn (bpts) at the point before you settle. Then settle. Now note your bpts. It should be higher even though you instantly go into defecit research and your slider should drop (unless you play with lucky huts and nabbed some free gold). That is just a simple example of the increase in beakers and doesn't take into account later that you will run specialists, build cottages, or build wealth/research in more cities.

The point is that more cities means more bpts regardless of the slider. Obviously, in the early game you do this within reason, say 6 or 7 cities by 1AD. Currency should be a priority tech generally always, and personally I think it is the most important tech in the game. Besides the extra trade routes, it allows the all important building of wealth.

Heck, I often run my slider at 0% during the game many times. A good time to do this is once you get writing and are in the process of building libraries. Good point to accumulate gold to fund future expansion. Once you get some scientists running in cities you can alternate this to accumulate gold as needed. Once you establish your economy later the beakers will just flow regardless of whether you are at 100% or not, which is very unlikely for much of the game.

The bottom line is that the more cities you have, the more beaker potential that you have. In the later stages of the game, a good portion of this can come from a hammer economy. This means large cities working workshops/watermills/windmills - and maybe some mines to balance. This means more growth and more hammers. Hammers can be converted to wealth to up your slider and then research if you are stable at 100%. A key transition for newer players is understanding the power of hammers and improvement like workshops/watermills/windmills. And don't forget techs/civics that boost these improvements. (take a look a FIN watermills/windmills after rep parts and electricity - they are fine without FIN as well). Caste and State Property make workshops/watermills hella good if not using corps.

Sure build some cottage cities up in the early game. The will help a lot in boosting your research for a good portion of the game. However, later game in newer cities or capture ones, it is rather pointless to build cottages at that stage. Workshops/watermills provide an immediate benefit that can be translated directly into gold/beakers, whereas cottages would take ages to do, even with Emancipation.

So again, if going for Space, try grabbing up a bigger empire in the future and see the results.

 

[Ghpstage]

Its important to recognise that the slider is not a method of gauging your economic strength. It just defines the ratio at which your commerce is spent, it doesn't consider anything else, no other imputs and not even the amount of commerce its using!

Attempting to keep the slider at or close to 100% is a common mistake made by newer players that often leads to serious underexpansion. And with that underexpansion comes poor performance in all economic outputs, hence the slow tech rate your description suggests.

 

[Cromwest]

I tried to make 10 super solid towns instead of expanding since I was afraid the higher difficulty would make too many towns hurt my economy so I'll be more aggressive about expanding in my next game.

 

[God-Emperor]

Like Lymond said: when you liberated your overseas cities into a colony, you may have improved your gold output and been able to bump the slider up to 100 and still have excess gold but even with all that you probably had a lower total research point output. Possibly a lot less. It may have made your economy look good from an "I'm making money at 100% research" perspective, but it slowed your research down.

Running at 100% with 1000 commerce gets you fewer research points per turn than running at 80% (or 70% or 60%) with 2000 commerce will get you. The number from specialists probably didn't change as much.

If you happen to have saves from shortly before and shortly after you split off the colony, compare your total research point output - not the slider percentage, but the actual research point per turn number.

 

[Cromwest]

One of the reasons I didn't attack any more of my neighbors to expand past my first war was because the people who bordered me were my only friends (same religion). From now on I will only pick a religion when everyone has one. The problem though is most of the world was christian and I didn't get Christianity in any of my cities the whole game. What do you do in that situation? Do you just let everyone hate you or do you switch to a religion you don't actual have in any towns and be unable to build any buildings for that religion?

 

[GGracchus]

One of the reasons I didn't attack any more of my neighbors to expand past my first war was because the people who bordered me were my only friends (same religion). From now on I will only pick a religion when everyone has one. The problem though is most of the world was christian and I didn't get Christianity in any of my cities the whole game. What do you do in that situation? Do you just let everyone hate you or do you switch to a religion you don't actual have in any towns and be unable to build any buildings for that religion?

You can't flip to a religion if you don't have it. If everybody around me is x religion and I don't have it, I just don't flip to a religion and hope christianity spreads soon.

 

[Cromwest]

So its possible to play on a huge terra map with crap loads of civs and have most of them hate you and there is nothing you can do about it.

 

[GGracchus]

So its possible to play on a huge terra map with crap loads of civs and have most of them hate you and there is nothing you can do about it.

Well, you could give in to their demands, flip into as many favorite civics as you can, pick most popular religion, get all the bonuses you could, and then most would at least be cautious. It's OK if some AI's hate you as long as if you have somebody who you can tech trade with and the annoyed AI's aren't plotting war.

 

[Cromwest]

When I realized they were never going to by my buddy I stopped caving to demands and let them invade. Since everyone who bordered me was pleased/friendly and I was out teching everyone and rich I would just bribe them into declaring on whoever declared on me and not a single enemy unit ever entered my borders until my own allies suddenly declared on me in the last few turns of the game. Is this about the best I could of managed this since I couldn't get the majority religion in any of my towns?

 

[Archon_Wing]

Trade techs, resources, open borders, give it to demands, use good civics, and especially join wars against their enemies. If you don't have a religion, you can use free religion. Some people will always hate you, so you need everyone else hating on them.

I've gotten even zealots like Isabella, Zara and Justinian to pleased before even when I'm the wrong religion. Just in the last Noble's clubs game, I adopted a minority religion for the longest time, yet all but 1-2 people had no qualm with me. There is no excuse if you have no religion unless you burn down their cities or attack them and their friends.

If someone is the worst enemy of 5 people, don't have anything to do with them, otherwise you will take a ton of diplo hits.

This goes without saying, but please try to appease your strongest neighbors, as it is easiest for them to attack you.

If all fails, settle a crappy city against borders and gift it to them. It works even on Tokugawa, and he's impossible diplomatically.

If someone is pleased or friendly with you, you can ask them for gifts. If they agree, it's a 10 turn peace treaty. Abuse the hell out of this.

 

[Cromwest]

Hey thanks everybody. You all were right about more cities = more research. I played on a standard size, medium and small map with all the settings on random with the dutch. I got a score of 28000ish and won by conquest in 1932 modern armor vs musket men FTW.

Unfortunately I may have to not count that as a real win because I quickly found that playing the dutch on an island map is extremely overpowered. Half way through the game I had to check to make sure I actually had the game set on noble and didn't accidentally check chieftain. Their UU lets you go on a caravel killing spree pre-invasion making it so you never have to worry about units making it to your islands and their UB + the financial trait makes them silly on maps with mainly coastal cities in comparison to what the AI has to make due with.

Oh I wanted to ask a quick question that I don't think needs another thread. Do settled great people use up a cities food like a normal specialist does? Or am I free to funnel tons of priests and merchants into my commerce city and tons of scientists in my science city without fear of starving the city?

 

[Dman4civ]

Do what I did. Playing SP, as Spain, w a locked ally, Britain, I have the benefit of not suffering a revolt every time I have a revolution for changing a civ... I FOUNDED TWO different religions, Confusion, and Christain (totally opposite, i know), both holy cities I built the unique holy building for the religion in that holy city, now gaining my civ ONE GOLD per city where I put ea religion in. Doesnt matter if it my state religion is different. But cities are not limited to one religion, its possible to gain all 7 religions in one city. So the money is potentially great using religion to your advantage. And what that does to CULTURE, AMAZING. Both my holy cities by mid to late game, bringing in 100s of gold a turn, and I constantly try to send as many missionaries of both to add new cities. How was I first to gain both the techs before others, Easy. I started with one locked ally, who shares any of my techs, and I share with him, the whole game. If we both research same tech, same time, it cuts the research time in half, as if scietists share between eachother their ideas to acomplish that tech, YEA RIGHT! Anyway, if you never started yourself with a locked team, try it, its awsome. Not only you share between the two of you everything, except you both control your own units, you actually control his empire. You tell him what to research and when, you tell him to target a town, you can tell him to adapt new civics, anytime you want, communicating with that civ thru the diplomacy. And they comply. It's awsome. So duoble the two up on a tech you want first, one that gives you somthing for being their first, like a founded religion. Or specialist. Or another tech. And watch the time frame spent on tech, at last minute, tech ally to research somthin else, adding a turn or two to your research time, you most likely will still have it before the rest. Not to mention, you learn instantly every tech he learns on his own. I been in first place in point the whole game.

 

[GGracchus]

Hey thanks everybody. You all were right about more cities = more research. I played on a standard size, medium and small map with all the settings on random with the dutch. I got a score of 28000ish and won by conquest in 1932 modern armor vs musket men FTW.

Unfortunately I may have to not count that as a real win because I quickly found that playing the dutch on an island map is extremely overpowered. Half way through the game I had to check to make sure I actually had the game set on noble and didn't accidentally check chieftain. Their UU lets you go on a caravel killing spree pre-invasion making it so you never have to worry about units making it to your islands and their UB + the financial trait makes them silly on maps with mainly coastal cities in comparison to what the AI has to make due with.

Oh I wanted to ask a quick question that I don't think needs another thread. Do settled great people use up a cities food like a normal specialist does? Or am I free to funnel tons of priests and merchants into my commerce city and tons of scientists in my science city without fear of starving the city?

Settled people do not require food. However, it's generally better to use them as academies or bulbing techs. Try going to get US, Emancipation, MT, and Rifling ~1300 AD. Start rushbuying cavalry and killing everybody. This gets a high score, as you finish fairly early and win by conquest.

 

[Archon_Wing]

Hmm, i'm having a hard time considering when to settle great people. It seems to me that getting an immediate boost of 1000-1500 beakers right now seems more beneficial then getting the same amount over so many turns. I guess with rep they'd catch up faster, but...

 

[GGracchus]

Hmm, i'm having a hard time considering when to settle great people. It seems to me that getting an immediate boost of 1000-1500 beakers right now seems more beneficial then getting the same amount over so many turns. I guess with rep they'd catch up faster, but...

Representation only affects specialists, not great people(I think)

 

[Skallagrimson]

So its possible to play on a huge terra map with crap loads of civs and have most of them hate you and there is nothing you can do about it.

Not all of them will hate you. The civics you have are bound to be the favorites of some civ out there. And picking a religion based on popularity is pretty important to shield at least some of your borders from likely attack, allowing you to focus on those civs that will hate you, will attack you, and will annihilate you if they can (SHAKA). And for those civs that you'll have no choice but to be the enemy of, you buy time when you can, how you can, and once your army is good enough and strong enough and you start to not be so afraid to do so, you go bonk heads. Turn those hating frowns upside down, the firing cannons way (or charging cavalry way).