Then don't set the score cap to 1000! If you're playing a Deity game, you're probably NEVER going to have a top score unless it's done by conquest. Either you shouldn't activate the score victory, or you should really devote yourself to kicking some major axeman!
Axe rushing on deity without an ultra-crowded map and marathon speed is ill-advised. I bet if you tried it 10 times on deity/normal/fractal/standard size, you'd fail every attempt.
Nevermind that successfully axe rushing one or even two civs on immortal (which I have done) will still not put you at #1 score. Just saying.
One other way I thought of implementing this would be to have a score-differential Victory condition. If the leader's score is (say) double that of the next-highest player, he wins. (Assuming a minimum number of turns has been played, too.) Or if his score exceeds all other players combined.
Double score is pretty rare in my experience. I routinely complete conquest or domination before clearing that objective. Of course, by that token I then agree with you; that big of a score differential generally = win, especially the case of "exceeds all others' score combined". Unfortunately, this is not a relevant objective since one can generally win any victory condition except time more easily before this occurs.
Besides, if you're really blowing things out like that, things like waypoints, stack move, and stack attack are in the game for a reason. We're talking like 10-20 minutes of cleanup here. If even that is too much for someone, they can just quit. If it takes them longer, it's their own fault and they should learn to play the game more rapidly or accept extra time, not cry over "having" to take a long time or quit.
I'm not superhuman, many RTS players have a higher APM than me (actions/minute). If I can complete games start-to-finish in 2 hours, virtually anyone else can too. Even if they don't want to hurry most of the game, they can certainly hurry up a blowout if they choose. If they don't choose that, there are no excuses.
Dan says there are some problems with score-based victory conditions. He then says the human player with the highest score wins.
Umm... No. That's inconsistent. Which is it, dude?
The answer is "obviously both". In a game where you are not allowed to attack other humans, what is the best alternative metric? Force a space race or culture? A size advantage + espionage abuse can easily cripple someone. If you ban attacks, where do you stop, what arbitrary rules do you impose?
There are actually a tremendous amount of problems with the format the polycast crew uses, such that these games can
only be considered a social experience, which I believe most of us accept. There are serious issues regardless, though:
- Negotiation of settlement: FWIW, this is completely ridiculous. First of all, settlement towards other humans has no protection requirement because of the attack ban. On top of this, that land is gone forever to others once settled. So, what's fair? I think a lot of our players do not realize this (I can say 100% for certain they do not think it through), but early game expansion, war, and wonders are all about tradeoffs. Slower expansion, if managed properly and not dumping hammers into inefficient returns, will lead to a better tech rate in the short term, which can be useful if it gives some kind of long-term leverage. Faster expansion yields better production and long-term potential. Wonders offer some unique benefits
and directly contribute to score. A player building a wonder has to accept that doing that forfeits city sites (this is routinely a sore point). This reality is important to grasp for both our games and in more competitive settings (SP, or PvP MP). Of course, the ONLY optimal course in a typical game is heavy expansion because...
- Tech Trades On: This is a typical setting. And a bad one. I do what I can to host games without it. I covered my opinions on this in my youtube video of one of our multiplayer games, but I'll reiterate. With trades on, humans form a completely punishing and game-breaking tech alliance - trades are essentially compelled. This allows one to pay for what would otherwise be overexpansion...but those that do so eventually have enough territory developed to out-tech everyone and contribute more beakers to the tech alliance. In other words, anyone pushing mass expansion/conquest will essentially sponge off the rest and then give handouts to everyone once they're monstrous. Not good. Trade-whoring the AI also creates an unrealistic tech disparity relative to difficulty level and makes the game very, very easy compared to how the difficulty would otherwise play..under these settings we should realistically look to be playing probably 1-2 levels above comfort zone.
Culture press/espionage: Without the ability to attack, these things really show up. The question then becomes: when someone settles city #2 near your city #2 and heavily chops to get say oracle in there, later engineer-rushing sistine chapel in the same city, how exactly does that not constitute an attack?
It is a deliberate effort to capture a city, and it remains an non-policed weapon for score padding. Declaring on the person and capturing this city isn't allowed, but this city was designed for an equivalent purpose. Artist bombs are arguably even worse, as they add no value to tech rate and alternative uses of the artist (especially the music artist) are generally superior. I've adapted to this and generally win the culture press (I flipped a human's city in a very recent game actually, although since it was my capitol's culture it's hard to argue that's my fault...), but it remains a serious issue.
Negotiation of attacking AI: Obviously, whoever kills the AI gets the land, score, etc. Obviously, whoever does not build military first put those hammers somewhere else. Wonders? Expansion? Where did they invest? The essence of this argument is very similar to early expansion, only here the variance in outcome is even more obvious. When the 20 city empire that already killed an AI has enough force to move into yet another AI before the empire that's yet to fight a war, who is at fault? Many, possibly most people will say the 20 city empire player is being greedy/selfish here, but then what was the smaller empire doing all this time? Their choices influenced the game to this point also. Their building wonders or artist bombing or under-expanding to feed a larger AI all impact the final score outcome. In some ways, they have already hampered the larger empire to an extent. If they can't even build up military in time to cover being spotter 20-40+ turns, what's the complaint? I know what it is, but the reality is that we are *all* playing the game for fun, and the decisions made leading up to this situation have already influenced it greatly.
Tile improvements: Think about it, because it can have a big impact on score
!
The fact of the matter is that we have NO measure at the end of the game to quantify play contribution, and so we can not take the "winner" seriously. The end-game vassaling is really just to see the replay.
The skill disparity and start imbalances are so great that these game *have* to be social, so really the above is just addressing issues that come up in-game regarding how players should act. Unfortunately, a lot of the issues are misunderstandings based on variant understanding of how things work in civ IV, but hopefully the thought process above has value of some kind - most likely for critical thinking purposes as to how different situations change optimal behavior, but also so that people see the implications of their actions that are likely not even considered.
OK, back to TheDS points:
I had a game a while back where I was going to win by Culture in about 50 turns or so, but I also had enough military force that I could conquer and vassalize enough enemy land to gain a Domination victory, but I'd have to hurry. I could've coasted to a win, but I chose to try to win the more difficult way, to end the game sooner, my way, instead of by accident. I fell short of my goal by a single turn because I moved one of my stacks the wrong way and was just a couple units short of taking over one last city to force a vassalization and win by Domination. It was an exciting game, even though I didn't win the way I wanted to.
I'd like to point out this is moot on high difficulties. If you don't find a way to win or block a win by the late 1800's or early 1900's AD, you *will* lose. None of this "time victory" stuff. You find a way to win 100+ turns before that or you lose every time. On deity, you rarely have until 1900 and could lose culture pre-1800 AD unless you do something to stop it. I had a deity game where Justinian founded mining inc at 1715 AD...using the engineer you get from reaching fusion first. How far do you think he was from launching the ship at that point? Needless to say, I lost badly, but obviously there hardly needs to be any consideration of score victories on these difficulties - there is plenty of pressure.
By the same token, if you know you're going to win (or lose) one way if you do nothing, maybe you want some kind of motivation to push yourself and try for something a little harder. This could provide that same sense of excitement as it did for me. I often set up three cities to do a Culture win as a way to give myself a shortened game, so that I don't have to play out a boring endgame. The score-based end is just an extension of that idea.
Culture is *not* a fast out. Especially if you were not gunning it from the very early goings. You can win faster, both using in-game turns and real-time played, by using military. If you wanted domination, you would have had it if you didn't set up those culture cities. If you plan it out, domination is consistently possible before 1800 AD on any difficulty, although only the best can do that on deity (and I'm not one of them, but I've witnessed it enough times). This of course comes back to learning how to micro to play quickly.
I have no sympathy for those who do not wish to learn the hotkeys and methods of playing quickly. I do have a guide on it, but the real reason I have no sympathy is that the dearth of players who look to play quickly is partly the reason Civ IV's developers spent so little time/effort optimizing the game to that end. Unit selection and several other control issues have been BUGGED - since vanilla. How many 100's of subtle changes have we seen across 20+ patches without fixing the controls? Obviously, the company foots the majority of the blame here, but they *are* catering to their dominant demographic, and I'm an obvious minority in terms of play speed. If I am not mid-war, I spend more time WAITING for the damn game to get to the next turn on large+ maps than I do playing the turns, and that's on a machine that is far, far beyond the "recommended" specs for civ IV in every category. Most people...don't care about this.
So I'm not going to care when people argue that the late game (or finishing games in general) takes too long, other than being a little annoyed in that most of the people making that argument could probably play 4-8 times faster or so...in some cases more.
. Do you mean the one in 
