News: WOTM 03 - Results & Congratulations

[DynamicSpirit]

Is there an agonising milking stage in Civ4? I thought the fast finish bonus was strong enough to make an early finish better than hanging on for a long time to increase base score?

In my experience, during the late game, eg. post 1600, that is the case. In earlier periods though, you often can increase your winning score by hanging on a while and using the time to increase your population.

 

[AlanH]

Yes, but how long is "a while"? It would be a pretty subtle scoring algorithm that could calculate your "possible best score" based on an actual victory state and projections as to what pop and territory you might achieve, in what number of turns, while the victory bonus decays. Is it really "agonising" to play those extra turns out? You don't *have* to, you know - you could just take the fast finish ... which I understood to be the preferred measure of performance anyway

 

[DynamicSpirit]

I'm fairly sure Ribannah, was joking, not making a serious suggestion . I was simply replying directly to your question.

To continue directly answering your questions (purely for the sake of conveying information ), it's certainly true that a lot of people (including myself) think that fastest finish is a far better indicator than score. However the results are always presented in score order, and that gives quite an incentive to maximize score. I've done it myself by taking measures to increase my population at the end, I'm not sure whether I'd describe it as 'agonizing', it's certainly moderately boring, very repetitive, and gives a sense of 'not really playing properly' - eg. founding numerous cities that will never grow beyond size 3 or 4, and are in effect totally useless - except that they happen to increase your population score in the crucial last few turns.

 

[Erkon]

Is there an agonising milking stage in Civ4? I thought the fast finish bonus was strong enough to make an early finish better than hanging on for a long time to increase base score?

***Spoiler warning***
Read this only if you have completed WOTM4

Spoiler :

Moderator Action: Deleted. Please don't post spoiler information outside the relevant threads during the game. AlanH

I have absolutely no problem with milking. It's up to each player to select their style of play (I play GOTM/WOTM to learn and to discuss with other players). Don't change any rules that are not obviously faulty. It's better to spend the time to create interesting saves

BTW, thanks for the effort you spend on managing GOTM/WOTM.

 

[Ribannah]

As far as I can see (I have only completed two games so far), milking is as big an issue with Civ4 as it was with Civ3, if not bigger.

 

[da_Vinci]

So in order to keep scoring winning players in a sensible manner, your scheme would have to work something like:

(1) If you win, you get your winning score, including early victory bonus just as currently.
(2) If you lose, you get the max base score you achieved (with the small extra scaling to final score that the game gives to losing games)

When I suppored this idea, I assumed that win score is the same, and loss/retire score would be the usual loss score, or the highest ever base score (whichever is higher). Not sure if highest ever base score would need to be modified to maintain the incentive to continue. And I expected that the highest ever base score would never be more than an ultimately winning Firaxis score.

The trouble is that for someone who wins the game very late , (2) could theoretically be bigger than (1). In effect they'd get a smaller score than they would've done by just retiring, or doing something to make themselves lose.

I find that to be insane! (I'm not saying it is not true, as I don't know, but if true, it is crazy ). Does the scoring system really do that, or only if you are winning big, then blow it big, and then pull out a win anyway? And how often does that happen?

A smaller problem is that it could encourage players who suspect they will lose to play 'badly' in the sense of temporarily getting an absolutely massive empire that they know they are in no position to defend and will lose very quickly, maybe not even bothering to defend it, just so they get a high 'highest base score achieved'.

That did not occur to me, but is that any different from the current approach? Since retirement is not penalized at present, this approach, which gives up any chance of winning, could be equally done now as in the socralynnek system, couldn't it?

It comes down to three considerations:

Do we want to incentivize completion? Current system does not.

Do we think that retiring to max score in face of certain defeat is somehow unsporting? Current system does not penalize this.

Do we think that retiring when winning due to running out of time should not be penalized? Current system does not penalize this.

If we like that, no change is required. If we think we would like to incentivize playing on without penalizing the time retirements, the socralynnek system seems to be a way to do this, if the scoring system is not too insane!

And if we think incentivizing completion is not a competition issue, then I am happy to leave it alone, not penalizing the time requirements, and allowing retirement to maintain score as an allowed exploit (posted as such, so all know). Then each player can decide whether to add such a farce score to their GR totals or not.

dV