However, I'm not very happy with how some victory types are favoured with certain types of maps/civ traits, since that will encourage (even more than before) many finishes of the same type (like in the Tournament) instead of a mixed display of skills for a given map.
Currently this is mostly because the map generator doesn't do a very good job at giving consistant results on the same settings. I've had to base the modifiers off of the settings which don't always turn out the way they are expected to. I am working on a utility that will analyze the map directly and base the modifiers off what the map 'really' is, instead of what we would expect it to be based off of the settings.
1. Pangea map setting disfavours Spaceship victories more than conquest victories
The reason why GOTM 11 was such a conquest/domination fest is that it was 80% water. There are two vastly different 80% water Pangaea outcomes with regard to conquest/domination. One is a very small landmass (or group of landmasses connected by galley crossings) with everyone on it, which will very much favor early conquests and dominations. The other is two or more small landmasses with ocean crossings, which will keep conquests and dominations restricted to post-navigation/magnetism, basically making them irrelevant.
Until I get the utility working to analyze such discrepancies, map generator quirks like this are going to throw things off quite a bit.
2. Why the cultural 100k modifier for deity is so much lower than the conquest and domination modifier? IMO, the 100k culture victory condition on deity is much more difficult than a domination or conquest victory.
It's actually not more difficult (at least in most cases). Normally you can get enough land for the cultural victory by fighting just 1 or 2 AI's early on, conquering ~30% of the overall landmass. The rest is building cultural improvements and trimming back any competitors at your leisure. The AI's don't pursue 'extraordinary' culture, so while initially the AI's on deity will be in the lead (or often are), they tend to stagnate later on. Even if you run into a real culturally advanced AI, they never will resort to ICS like the player can. So even in roughly the same area the player will be able to generate 2x or more culture.
3. Maybe I misunderstand, but won't the heavy modifier for the conquest victory over the domination victory lead to situations where people will try to come as close to the domination limit as possible, after which they will continue by razing the leftover AI cities to reach a conquest victory to make the modifier applicable to their score, even though they actually went the domination way in their game?
I tried to account for the difficulty differences that show up between conquest and domination. On higher difficulty levels, the balance is opposite what it is on lower difficulty. Domination takes longer on the lower levels because you have to basically build all the cities to claim the land yourself, after conquering the AI's in the way. It's more difficult than just conquering the few scattered (and poorly defended) AI cities. At higher difficulties, all the land is going to be claimed early on, and so the difference between domination and conquest is going to be conquering 67% of the world, or all of it. In that case, conquest will take longer.
The map plays it's role here as well. Sometimes there is enough available landmass to trigger domination well before there is access to all the AI's. If 67%+ of the land is accessable by land/galley, but one or more AI are on a landmass accessable only by navigation/magnetism, then conquest will take much longer than domination.
Basically... the utility should fix most of these problems once it is finished. Until then, the results are based off guesses as to the form of the landmass.
So that's why I got my highest ranking so far in this competition...
