Please help a frustrated loser newbie ready to give up

[GalileosDaughte]

Playing Civ IV has been very frustrating for me. I played my first game on Settler (the easiest) level, and I thought I had a great game. I had a huge area of the world under control, easily the largest population, and about three cities from neighboring civs joined me. I had researched all the techs, was on Future Tech 9 when the game ended. (Time win, I chose not to enter the space race, maybe I should have??) But then I got "Dan Quayle" at the end. I got so frustrated I erased the game saves from my computer, so I don't remember my score, but it was around 9K, which I know is not great but I thought I would at least do better than Dan Quayle!!

So I read Sisiutil's guide (Thank you!!! You can really tell a lot of effort and good will went into that guide). I'm trying to implement the guide, but feel that things are still not going well (playing as Catherine of Russia, on the Cheiftan level since I thought it would help my score). It's 1390 AD and my score is only 1516.

I'm such a loser!!! And it's making me not love Civ anymore (I really enjoyed Civ III).

Help.

 

[oyzar]

As you get better you will get past Dan Quayle. The ingame score doesn't affect the end score as much as the finish date. Find out how to win one of the other victories do it and you will immediately get better rating. Personally i feel the end score system in civ is rather weak as it is so focused towards early militaristic victories and the convention for how well you played once you get past a certain level never goes higher than Augustus cesar(and you almost always get that once you have played enough). Also the game is far from over in 1390. You can play it out and i am sure you will get higher score..

 

[Refar]

The score you see in the game is not that important. (Neither is final score, if you had fun, for that matters.) Try not to pay too much attention to that score stuff... Just play for fun. Build a army and go boink some heads. Or go wonder hunting.

Still... The score you see in game will be multiplied by some factor X, when you win a victory. And X it becomes higher, if you win earlier - meaning that your end-game score will be much higher, than what you see in the score board while playing, if you achieve a victory fast. So time victory is not good for score. But a victory is a victory.

So if you want to win with a higher score you need to actually actively poursue a victory condition. Choose what way you like to win, and adjust your strategy accordingly. Space is ok. Or just try to conquer everyone.

1516 in-game score at 1390 AD is pretty decent btw.

 

[futurehermit]

Don't worry about ingame score or end score. Just focus on learning the mechanics of the game. Once you learn how to win the various victory conditions (besides "time" victory) you will get a good score. Once you can consistently win ca. 1900AD or earlier, you will almost always get top rating.

So, instead, I would just recommend reading the guides around here and keep trying to move your difficulty up.

I would suggest trying to set a goal for yourself:

e.g., Space Race victory by 1950AD.

Try and do this on Settler. When you achieve that, bump it up a difficulty level. Then again. Then again.

When you are struggling in the midst of a game (maybe your current one?) post some screenshots in a thread on this forum and ask for advice. Works great imo.

 

[The Rook]

The scoring system is rubbish, I pay very little attention to my final score. To me, you either win the game, or you don't. In fact, I enjoy those close nail-biting finishes most.

For what it is worth though, the finish date hugely influences the final score. In one of my games I had a score of just 1889 but the finish date was 1844, so the normalized score was 26362 (Augustus Caesar). I actually rate this win better than my highest score, because my top Hof was at a lower difficulty level.

Incidentally, anyone know what the requirement is for Augustus Caesar?

 

[PimpyMicPimp]

You have an MMO players line of thinking, that somehow the only that matters, more than fun, are high, arbitrary numbers. This is probably the worst way to play games, trust me. Just have fun, screw the score, level, just have fun. Also, is this only your second game? Damn, Civ is such a massive and complex game that it takes tons of games before you begin to understand anything, but it's a blast learning.
My advice is to just play and have fun. Reading these forums and playing the game will teach you everything you need to know. You can't expect to be awesome with only two games under your belt!

 

[GalileosDaughte]

Thanks for the help and advice. I'll start working toward winning a victory earlier in the game instead of a time victory, for starters.

I appreciate the advice to just have fun, it's good advice. The crazy thing is, I was really enjoying that game, had a lot of fun, but then at the end basically getting called a loser ruined it for me. Maybe I should just play and just close my eyes when they do that ranking at the end.

Thanks again, y'all are great (and saved me from dragging my Civ game icon to the trash!)

 

[PimpyMicPimp]

The ranks are totally stupid and arbitrary, definitly don't ever take them to heart

 

[Deriem]

Dan Quayle is just there to make Ethelred the Unready look cooler. Until you understand the game mechanics, expect to get low overall rankings. But, as pointed out already, the rankings are stupid, biased, and apparently they alienate newbies who aren't actually that bad

But really, after getting 7-8 Dan Quayles, it's a good feeling to get Augustus. It's just not anything to get upset about, because a Conquest win in 2049 against a zillion civs will never be better than axe rushes o' DOOM!

 

[troytheface]

True "fun" comes with focus.

 

[vicawoo]

Scores is scaled up with earlier finishes and goes up with population and land. So time is often the lowest scoring option, and it is biased towards domination victories.

 

[futurehermit]

yep, my top scores are always early domination wins.

 

[GalileosDaughte]

You all are so nice!!

Thanks from the newbie.

 

[quill18]

"Ditto" everything people have said, but let me add another detail. Your in-game score is only meaningful RELATIVE to the score of the other players, as a judge to see if you're ahead/keeping up/behind.

And even then, you have to take it with a grain of salt. If you ever read the game reports of the super-expert players at high difficulties, you'll see that they spend almost the entire game at or near the bottom (until the very end)...but they still win and might get Caesar on the closing screen.

So yeah:

#1 - Having fun is most important.

#2 - Your in-game and final score are highly circumstantial. At best, they give you an at-a-glance comparison between you and the other civs.

#3 - Your final score is most heavily influenced by finishing date. Playing until 2050 is lots of fun, but will give you a "bad" score according to the system. Don't worry about "Dan Quayle" -- compare your Time Victory scores to each other, not what Civ 4 calls it.

Similarly, your final score on in a warmongering game will be very different from your final score in a peaceful builder game. This doesn't mean that one is better than the other -- they each have their own unique challenges. PLUS! The map, your civ, and your neighbours have a huge impact and are different each time -- very hard to compare.

Finally, let me leave you with a link:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=253486

This is someone trying to make the jump from Chieftain to Warlord -- still pretty "low" as far as difficulties go. He's playing a game 25-turns at a time and posting online and getting lots and lots of feedback. It inspired me to make a similar post for myself (which you can see in my signature), though I'm trying to learn a higher difficulty. It's a GREAT read, I think.

 

[absimiliard]

Oh, one more thing no one else has yet mentioned. . . . .

Welcome to CivFanatics!

-abs
"Oh, and just ignore the final ranking, it's just plain silly. Did you enjoy your game? If you did then it's all good, the final ranking should be irrelevant to you."

 

[Jaaboo]

I'm sure you can spell "potato" though. You're good.

I'm pretty much 'ditto'ing everything here anyway. My first few games were like that too - time victories with a huge empire enforced by expanding cultural borders with all my workers on auto. Pretty boring. What I've been doing, speaking of Sisiutil, is reading his ALC games. They've given me some great ideas for games and better yet, there is so much pure knowledge and strategy in those threads it really helps. Don't just jump ahead either (well jump ahead for a great narration first) but read the replies in between rounds.

And welcome - as you can see, I'm a newb here too

 

[Solomwi]

Victory itself is almost an afterthought for me. I like to see how the game develops and down which roads it takes me. Usually I'm either "surprised" by a domination win or divert just enough production for a space race win when I get the first "____ has completed the Apollo Program" message. After all, my top goal may not be victory, but that doesn't mean I welcome the sting of defeat. End score is a complete afterthought, just a mildly amusing moment where I see how that game stacked up.