Low Score?? What am i doing wrong?

[RigasMinho]

I've been playing Civilization since the first one came out

I picked up Civilization with Warlords package.

I can beat the game on the Settler mode w/o a hitch. But when I do my score is around 5k - which gives me nero

things I do:
1) Build about 20 workers so everything is cut down / built from roads to mines to cottages.
2) Have a population of 50 million by the time i beat the game
3) Beat the game around 1950 AD
4) I play as the Americans - love those navy seals.
5) Have about 7 cities i establish on my own.
6) At the end of the game there isnt a title that has a road or something built on it.
7) I build as many buildings inside the city as much as possible. At the end of the game usually I run out of technology to research and buildings to build. Only thing left for my original cities are military units.
8) I dont start attacking until i have railroads and have tanks.
9) World wonders - build as many as those as I can -
Settings are:
Standard size / normal speed

Any ideas?

 

[LiberiGlacialis]

Step it up a notch! Higher level = more score. More land = more score. Earlier win = more score.

You may want to rethink some of those ideas of yours, though. They will get you killed at higher levels. For instance, it's hard to build and control as many Wonders as you can. However, it's easier to take and retain them....

 

[Supr49er]

Welcome to the Forums RigasMinho.

 

[RigasMinho]

Step it up a notch! Higher level = more score. More land = more score. Earlier win = more score.

You may want to rethink some of those ideas of yours, though. They will get you killed at higher levels. For instance, it's hard to build and control as many Wonders as you can. However, it's easier to take and retain them....

So the game changed huh? Like in Civilization 1 it was all about population and number of achievements.

Game seems to have changed to become more "conquer ASAP"

What does -more land = more score mean?

 

[Joshua368]

So the game changed huh? Like in Civilization 1 it was all about population and number of achievements.

Game seems to have changed to become more "conquer ASAP"

What does -more land = more score mean?

As far as I know your main score is determined by three things...

- Total population (more land, more score, this is why domination wins are so high)
- Early finish date (earlier the more points you get, 1950 isn't that early)
- Difficulty level (settler is for newbies, you won't get rewarded high points for that )

More territory, faster game, higher level. Things like building wonders and founding religions nudge the score too, but they don't make a big difference.


Also I'd recommend playing around with earlier wars. All the different eras can have great military battles, so experiment, perhaps with different civilizations with earlier unique units. There's early rushes (chariots, axemen, swordsmen vs. archers), classical wars (previous three, catapults, horse archers, elephants), medieval wars (macemen, crossbowmen, catapults, trebuchets, elephants, horse archers, knights vs. longbows), renaissance wars (musketmen) and industrial wars (riflemen, cavalry, cannons).

Also the earlier you take someone's land the more it'll be able to help you in the game. Typically if I get land after the industrial era, it's so late that I barely use it as I'm pretty much just wrapping things up for a military win.

 

[manu-fan]

End time, total population, # of wonders, # of technologies researched are what determine your score, I believe.

So, getting wonders helps, but slows down your end time and total population.

The way to get to the most population in the quickest amount of time is to go to war as soon as you can. Once you have conquered another Civ, you now are ahead of everyone else, and can now steamroll them in terms of production and research.

So, one or two key wonders doesn't hurt, but focus most on expanding and warring.

Move up a level or two, because you get higher scores at higher levels.

Read some of the War Academy articles, and also there are articles about city specialization etc.

Good luck.

Cheers.

 

[RigasMinho]

So - this game became more of a fast conquer thing huh?

that sucks I always liked being technology better than everyone else and using tanks while they still have cannons or elephants lol.

PS -
what's a good end time?

 

[Joshua368]

So - this game became more of a fast conquer thing huh?

that sucks I always liked being technology better than everyone else and using tanks while they still have cannons or elephants lol.

Nah, that's only if you want the highest score imaginable. They game can be played successfully many ways, you're still winning, aren't you?

It doesn't have to be conquest either. I was able to get 50,000+ points (well above augustus caesar) in a very peaceful space race. It was on monarch at 1880 AD... also I supercharged my population with Sid's Sushi (which you can't do on warlords but still, early high-level space race or cultural can get you good points)

Actually now that I think of it, I got a large 50,000+ score doing the same thing you describe, teching to tanks and then mowing over my musketmen opponents. Though once again, monarch difficulty and 1810 AD.

Raise the difficulty, tech faster, you can still play the way you like and get nice high scores.

 

[Krick19]

I usually aim to end games in the 1700s-1800s. If I'm going space it'll definitely take longer, but on Prince, I can usually get 50k-100k. Haven't won on Monarch yet.

 

[D_almighty]

For a non-niche win, conquest/domination is feasible before 1700 AD (on marathon at least, which is what I play) although I've won a conquest while still in the BCs with the Zulu on a Pangaea (second highest score), and a domination at 1000 AD with the Romans, also Pangaea (highest score).

 

[shulec]

I don't play my games for score. I always want a high score, but you can win a tough victory and not really get a high score. I once won a diplomatic victory with the apostolic palace very early in the game. My score was not high, but I think I played much better than some of my high scoring game.

I like to play any civ, on any type of map and be able to win on higher levels. This is how I get my kicks. I don't like how the score rewards domination victories. War is gratifying, but very tedious.

 

[DMOC]

I've been playing Civilization since the first one came out

I picked up Civilization with Warlords package.

I can beat the game on the Settler mode w/o a hitch. But when I do my score is around 5k - which gives me nero

things I do:
1) Build about 20 workers so everything is cut down / built from roads to mines to cottages.
2) Have a population of 50 million by the time i beat the game
3) Beat the game around 1950 AD
4) I play as the Americans - love those navy seals.
5) Have about 7 cities i establish on my own.
6) At the end of the game there isnt a title that has a road or something built on it.
7) I build as many buildings inside the city as much as possible. At the end of the game usually I run out of technology to research and buildings to build. Only thing left for my original cities are military units.8) I dont start attacking until i have railroads and have tanks.
9) World wonders - build as many as those as I can -
Settings are:
Standard size / normal speed

Any ideas?

-Try beating the game at around 1600-1700 AD.

-What is the point of building every building in every city?

-What is the point of getting every world wonder?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Oh, if you want a high score, you'll get them alright. By building military and taking them.

Difficulty/finish date/pop. My best is a little over 200k emperor/epic pangaea pre 1500AD domination IIRC. With frederick - a lot of things arbitrarily went right in that game . People have gone over 500k with domination wins on immortal and whatnot so even 200k is far from anything special.

Marathon is definitely recommended if you care a lot about score though - you units move faster relative to time passage so you the opportunity to capture more pop in less time, and units won't obsolete so easily.

 

[Gliese 581]

Couldn't you warrior rush the entire continent on settler pangaea at a ridiculously early date to get a high score?
Though I suppose something like war chariots would be more effective for this.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Couldn't you warrior rush the entire continent on settler pangaea at a ridiculously early date to get a high score?
Though I suppose something like war chariots would be more effective for this.

The main problem with this is maintenance bleed and the fact that very early cities tend to have low pop, enough to hamper score.

Difficulty has a huge impact on score so doing this on settler would make it just about impossible to get anything remotely near what a normal emperor or immortal win would net. I've gotten over 90K with AP wins on emperor more than once. I don't think you can do that on settler no matter what victory condition you go for, and 90K isn't even 1/5 of what virusmonster got on huge/immortal pangaea!

 

[darreljnz]

I often end up in a similar situation (i.e having nothing "good" to build so just making wonders and buildings in my non-military cities and getting uber high tech without being able to put it to good use)

When it happens to me I find its usually when I've gone off strategy. Each of your cities should be playing a part in your victory strategy. A few turns ahead of finishing the next thing you should already know what you'll be building next based on your strategy. If you don't know then you need to re-examine why this is:
-Perhaps you aren't warring enough. In that case produce more units. Or maybe turn more cities into military if your mix isn't quite right.
-Perhaps you can't produce more units as your economy can't support them. In that case ramp up your gold production or build more gold buildings.

The good thing is you've noticed a pattern and realised something needs to be fixed. The next stage is recognising that pattern early and making changes before you get stuck in the "I have nothing useful to build" state. I must admit I'm still really bad at this, but I'm trying.

 

[DMOC]

The main problem with this is maintenance bleed and the fact that very early cities tend to have low pop, enough to hamper score.

Difficulty has a huge impact on score so doing this on settler would make it just about impossible to get anything remotely near what a normal emperor or immortal win would net. I've gotten over 90K with AP wins on emperor more than once. I don't think you can do that on settler no matter what victory condition you go for, and 90K isn't even 1/5 of what virusmonster got on huge/immortal pangaea!

Only time a low difficulty level game can get a really high score (200k-500k, possibly more) is with insane expansion rates, aided by settlers from tribal villages.

 

[Single Malt]

Op, you mentioned that you like to war when tanks come online. If you play on higher difficuties, it becomes quite difficult to avoid early wars. On settler the AI has a tendency to not declare on the player, even with a massive power difference. Even on warlord, the AI will declare if your power level is too low. When I first started playing Civ4 I played one game settler difficulty, which was won space. I had a minimal power rating, yet not even Shaka declared. When I moved up to he next level I was eaten by Ragnar, as again I neglected my military. I won my next game and moved up again, and again the AI was more aggressive. Still, on levels below noble, the player gets bonuses versus the AI, making it easy to out produce, and out tech the AI. On noble even the game becomes a fair challenge, but not so hard that you cannot build those wonders you want.

Well, what I actually wanted to say was that when you move up in difficulty, you will not be able to pick and choose so much when you declare war, as the AI may very well do that for you if you are not constantly prepared for war. Waiting for tanks won't be an option, as you'll need a military throughout the game before then. And what good is a military, if its just standing around?

 

[vicawoo]

A lot of hall of fame deity wins are at 3985 bc.

 

[oyzar]

A lot of hall of fame deity wins are at 3985 bc.

Start a marathon duel game with incans, attack their capital with your quecha until they die or the quecha die(if it does restart with another map).