Maximizing Your Score

[Arrian]

Thanks for the replies, guys.

Sorry, I should have been more specific, but I'm going off of memory. I believe the first win was in the 15th century and the second was in the 18th. Let's put it this way - the first win was while I was still using Cavalry... and I think I was just building hospitals = early industrial. By the second I had recently discovered Tanks.

Normal map, continents, Monarch.

In the end I just didn't have the patience to milk it properly, I guess. I fully intended to take it as far as I could, but the second accidental win pissed me off because I had spent a long time to gain only 20 points.

I have a newer one that's milkable (although culture is gonna be an issue again)... perhaps I could post it. It's 1490AD, I believe. Same setup, though this time I know I'm comfortably shy of domination because I tried to quickly dominate just to check what the score would be (thanks for posting the info on the score bonus, I can figure it out now without actually winning and then reloading). For some reason, the domination limit on this particular normal map is higher than on any other I've seen (usually around 130k sq. miles, this appears to be well over 150k).

-Arrian

 

[Bamspeedy]

Sir Pleb,
A few of us were discussing sea tiles and points in the CivIII Hall of Fame thread and discovered something. JFL_Dragon found out that:

Sea Tiles Do Not help in score!

Carthouche Bee confirmed this and I ran some tests and found this to be true. It is included as part of your territory in the demographics screen, but not territory score. I don't know if this had been changed in the last patch, or nobody noticed this, but this fact can change alot of strategies!

 

[SirPleb]

Originally posted by Bamspeedy
Sea Tiles Do Not help in score!

Ouch! Thanks Bamspeedy. It looks like I fouled up on that. I've edited two posts in this thread which were incorrect in that regard. Grabbing sea tiles isn't always a good thing after all. Not a bad thing I think, just not advantageous unless a map is low on grassland areas. Oh well

 

[Bamspeedy]

Two wonders which are especially nice for score are JS Bach's and Cure For Cancer because they boost happiness, without requiring any culture-producing city improvements. Smith's Trading is also especially nice on large maps because it makes the Marketplaces maintenance-free. Longevity is another nice one, dramatically increasing the rate of population growth during the expansion phase of milking.

I'm having second thoughts on the greatness of Longevity. Sure it is great if you are not close to maximum population, and if you get it real early (because of the fast tech rate of Deity). But if you already are at max. pop then Longevity will really hurt you.

Example: In my HoF game right now, every city is at max. pop. I have a bunch of cities that are producing or losing 1 food (hills, whales on sea, plains, etc.) that I can not move this excess food to another city to stabalize the food production. I was thinking that longevity will give a small boost in that these cities when they do grow because they will get 2 citizens instead of 1 for a short time. But now that I think about it will hurt me in score.

Let's take a metropolis for example. It would take 60 turns for a metropolis to add that extra citizen, then 30? (only half of the food is stored in the granary, I believe) turns for it to lose that citizen, because now it is losing 1 food/turn as opposed to gaining 1 food. If I got Longevity, I would be losing 3 food/turn, so after taking 60 turns to gain 2 citizens, I lose both in 11 turns.

Without Longevity +30 pts (1 'free' citizen for 30 turns). With Longevity +21 pts (2 'free' citizens for 10 turns, then only 1 for 1 more turn, because you only lose 1 citizen/turn from starvation). This is adding the internal per-turn score of all the turns from when the city added the citizen to when it loses them. Granted, this is a very small effect on score, but still could be a factor in a few points.

I think the best way to deal with this 'excess' food is to try and get a size 12 (or 6) city to grab that 1 extra food. A size 12 city will take 40 turns to gain a citizen (smaller granary), but need 30 turns to lose it (bigger granary now that it is considered a metropolis). Of course, then you need a hospital in that city, but you should only bother with this if all other (more important, like marketplaces)scoring potentials are already taken care of.

 

[Bamspeedy]

Some calculations (temple for example, democracy, standard rules):

Building and disbanding units (1 turn)
Production in City A - 120 shields/turn (modern armor)
Production in City B - 120 shields/turn (modern armor)
City C - build temple (disband 2 armor - 240 /4 = 60 shields)
Additional : - 2 gold for maintaince armors

Buy improvements: (4 turn)
Production in City A - 120 shields/turn = 30 gold (wealth)
Production in City B - 120 shields/turn = 30 gold (wealth)
City C - buy temple - 60 shields*4 = 240 gold
Additional economy: + 4 shields in city (during 4 turns) = +16 gold

I'm figuring that it is almost always better to be building something to disband in another city. The only time it would be better to build wealth is if the city is only producing 1 uncorrupted shield. For example, if a 1 shield city is building a swordsman, after 30 turns the swordsman is worth 7 shields, but lost out on 30 gold since it wasn't producing wealth. 30 gold = 7.5 shields. Plus, you might have some maintance costs if you don't disband that unit immediately. But then, if that city will ever in the future need to build something (hospital, mass transit, etc.), then it would be smarter to be hoarding the shields by having it build a bank or something so you can start saving up the shields to make it cheaper when the building becomes available to be built.

Banks aren't that bad, even if you did accidently complete it, because even in the most corrupt city, with v1.21f, having a marketplace + bank, and building wealth a city will still be making a minimum of +3 gold, without a courthouse. Without the bank if you build wealth, you have +2 gold. This is if you have Smith's trading company, so the marketplace and bank is maintanence free, of course.

In other words, if a city is producing more than 1 shield, it better be building something!

I also think that if you already have aqueducts in most cities, you could have a massive draft and really speed up completion of buildings. This of course depends on how tightly you build your cities, so as to not lose much happiness. This is great when alot of cities are at size 7, so that they regain the population really quickly. I could draft over 200 infantry in one turn for (22*200= 4400 shields!) Just make sure you don't draft too much!!

 

[el_kalkylus]

Good information. This will be helpful in future gotm; I only had the intention of winning the game otherwise. Now I have a few points that I have to remember.

 

[Darkness]

Originally posted by el_kalkylus
Good information. This will be helpful in future gotm; I only had the intention of winning the game otherwise. Now I have a few points that I have to remember.

I don't think milking will help your score much in the GOTM, 'cause the've implemented the Jason score there now, which really evens up the field between milkers and non-milkers.

 

[Bamspeedy]

Well, you can still use this information for doing a 'well-milked' game, because that is still an option. It's just not as easy for the milker to win, like in the past.

One part of this article will still help any victory condition. Get to domination ASAP. Maximizing your score while you are trying to get your quick victory will greatly improve your Jason score.

 

[Darkness]

That's true, of course....

 

[Greyhawk1]

I just did my first bit of milking (barring any stray cows). I ended the game first time over with a score of 1870, dissatisfied with that I reloaded and milked (even though it wasnt quite a clear cut victory) and ended up with the same victory condition but 2170 points (my best score).

I'm a beginning player so its not that high but it highlights the benefits of milking.

 

[Xerol]

oops. i thought the big explaining posts above were current..i saw the may date and thought 'oh these are recent' but then i realised this was 2002...

 

[SirPleb]

Originally posted by QwertySoft
oops. i thought the big explaining posts above were current

Not to worry, nothing has changed in this area - the information in this thread remains correct for the current versions of CivIII.

 

[Svar]

Originally posted by SirPleb

Not to worry, nothing has changed in this area - the information in this thread remains correct for the current versions of CivIII.

Is it relevant for Gotm? In my present game I noticed before starting to milk that in 10 years the score went up by 52. Since the game is a monarch level game the potential loss would be 40 so the net gain would be +12 before the Jason score correction.

I tried this in Gotm 19 last month and actually lost Jason score even though the raw score went up by about 400. It wasn't a very successful effort since I got an unintential culture win about 40 turns later than the potential space race win.

I just started with Gotm 20 so the Gotm 19 wasn't official, I need the practice. After I finish Gotm 21 I will practice on Gotm 18. I get to play two a month.

 

[Bamspeedy]

Well, some of the principles here will help your Jason score, but not all of them.

You still want to get to the domination limit as fast as possible. You still want to try and keep people happy while you do that (or after reaching the domination limit and you are working towards whatever other victory condition you want).

But you don't want to 'milk' to 2050 A.D. You can, but that won't always result in the best Jason score.

This article is based primarily on how to maximize the Firaxis score, not the Jason score. Knowing how the Firaxis score works though, can help your Jason score (just drop off the part about 'milk as long as possible').