Scoring Based too much on Territory

[eyrei]

Why is territory the end all for scoring? I played a game this weekend on a huge map with 16 civs, monarch level and had to nearly exterminate the English in the BCs just to have a reasonable amount of territory. Once I got a decent world map, I realized I was still possibly the smallest civ on the map. Funny thing was, for all intents and purposes, I was winning by the mid-middle ages until the late industrial, where I had to leave off for the time being. Playing the Greeks, I remained constantly two techs ahead of everybody, five or six ahead of most, built a large army (enough that my advisor said I was on par with all but the largest civs), and had a culture rating higher than all but a few. My score reflected none of this, as I was a thousand points out of the lead, and third to last. The only civs behind me were the Iroquios (exterminated), and the English (one city). My population was actually third, but my territory was so small that my score was insignificant. I figure I should be rewarded for building such an impressive civilization with so little to work with.
I will eventually win a cultural victory around 1950 (Athens produces 72 culture points a turn), but this will most likely not even get me close to the leader. Why have so many different victory conditions, when in reality, only one seems to matter?

 

[Sam_Catchem]

I've noticed this too. It is kind of a dissapointment on the scoring. I do not care about scoring too much..just winning. You are right though..territory is all that counts in the final tally. Kinda lame since the bigger our epire the more corruption.

 

[eyrei]

Yeah. I really only care about winning as well, but it would be nice for the score to reflect many different facets of the game. The game is called Civilization after all, not Land Grab. Is this too much to ask? I am pretty proud of this particular game, but I like my computer to be proud of me too!

 

[cph]

I couldn't agree with you more. And with player corruption inhibiting large territories, it puts the player at a disadvantage if he wants to try and get a large score.

Of course, I have heard that the new patch helps with corruption, so maybe I will try civ 3 again soon. But personally, I think that culture, pop, territory, and science should all count for approx the same amount wrt the score.

It might be nice if furture patches allow us to mod the way scoring is done. What do you think?

 

[eyrei]

Modding the score would be alright if it is only for you to impress your computer, but it wouldn't really mean much to other players unless everyone used the same mod. I wish Firaxis would fix this.

Also, modding the score would actually affect the AI's reaction to you during the game. For example, the game that prompted me to start this thread would have been much more violent for me if I had been the leader in score as I should have been. As it was, the AI just ignored me unless they wanted to buy technology.

 

[Aslan]

I was playing a game as the Americans, and I was ahead of most other civs in tech and culture. I had sooo many of the wonders, it wasn't even funny. The size of my territory was pretty small, but still fairly large enough that score-wise I was in fourth or third. The Zulu had the largest civ and without provocation attacked me and declared war! In order to defend myself (i admit, my military was incredibly weak, which was necessary in order to have gotten as far as I had...i was fully industrialized by the 1600's) I had to pay off all the other civs. It didn't work, it only slowed down the Zulu war machine. It gave oppurtunity for some of the AI rulers to go behind my back and i ended up hurting my score rather than helping it. I should have just let the Zulu walk all over me rather than giving the other civs on the map a chance to play catch-up. I think that territory need not play such a big deal. I think city-size, culture, and finances should play more of a role. Or perhaps make the scoring different according to the type of game you are playing. If you're going for a non-military victory, then by golly the scoring should lend itself in favor of such a strategy. The corruption problem so many people seem to bemoan would only compound the situation. I know there are a lot of hardcore generals out there, but I would really like to take a good pacifist route without having the computer conspire against me and go after me without provocation.

 

[Special_O]

Yeah, the game I'm playing now is like that. I'm going to have invade some people if I want to bring my score up,

 

[Sebastian]

Yep... especially since it's averaged out. I can hear multiplayer now.. "But, I won with the highest score.... " "Err.. you had no cities left, I killed them all.." "But I still rocked you.. look at my score"

 

[Sam_Catchem]

Now, correct me if I am wrong, but in civ2 wonders counted towards points. I seem to remember building wonders for the heck of it to jack the score. I wonder why this wasn't implemented.

 

[jc011]

Yeah, wonders did count towards you score in Civ2, but how exactly is the score in Civ3 calculated?? my scores are pretty low, my highes is 650 or something like that.

 

[cutiestar]

wonders still count in your score, maybe 25 points for each wonder, and 560 points if you have them all. As for territory, yeah it does count a lot, but ofcourse some of you talk about needing to just go and slaughter some civ to get more land and jack your score, well if you are playing on a level suitable to your ability, maybe jacking that score up wont be so easy. lol

Obviously early carnage victory is by far the best way to score.

The only problem is the bonus for averagely having happy citizens isn't high enough to even bother thinking about, 10 extra points here or there, who cares. lol

I gues the game is called civilisation, and well the true stature of a civilisation was how much land they controlled, ask the Romans, or British about that. The other things in the game i guess are there to help you on your way towards achieving that , or managing a victory while achieving that, before time runs out.

 

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by Aslan
It gave oppurtunity for some of the AI rulers to go behind my back and i ended up hurting my score rather than helping it. . . . .
I know there are a lot of hardcore generals out there, but I would really like to take a good pacifist route without having the computer conspire against me and go after me without provocation.

I prefer culture, but if you leave yourself weak. . . . Oh well, history is littered with the corpses of the weak.

In one game I played, I bribed my neighbors repeatedly to keep the peace. I watched in horror as the Russians crossed my border and headed straight for my capital, which was defended by only one spearman. (I do not have trouble with the inconsistency of the combat system. The Russians had plenty of force and were going to wipe me out for sure, fortified in a city spearman or not.)

So, I chalked it up to experience. But for testing purposes, I reloaded the game and this time used my resources to build soaks in my cities. Then I sent a few extra to the capital. The Russians crossed the border, but as soon as the extra soaks arrived in the capital, they turned around, never declared war, and never came back. Now, I never leave my Civ weak. Weakness is an invitation for invasion.

Peace through strength.

 

[Moulton]

One of President Reagan's (anybody remember him?) strong points was to maintain high strength to ensure peace. It worked, and it works in this game. YOu dont have to be a warmonger, but if you don't maintain high readiness, you are an invitation for easy pickings. The AI seems to know exactly how strong you are, and what you have in each city.
I have watched them send an army against a remote city, and turn away if i managed to reinforce it in time.
The score is based on size, but if you get too big, the game slows to a crawl. I have 89 cities on a huge world, and it takes the Comp 12 minutes to cycle through the AI cities, 5 minutes to cycle through my cities before it lets me move a unit. It takes about a minute to bring up the city screen when I build or conquer a city.

When You can put spies in the AI, you can also see how many units they have. This is Industrial era. It has a city view, but I have not gotten anything from that yet... The Iroquois had 5battleships, 3 carriers, 12 bombers and 7 fighters when I started my campaign against them. I sunk their carriers, found the battleships in port, and havent seen their air power yet.

 

[eyrei]

Yeah. Some of my highest scoring games are ones where I retired in the late industrial age because my empire had gotten too large, and my computer could not handle the turns in a reasonable amount of time.

 

[Aslan]

When your empire gets that big and it starts taking so long for the turn to complete, does turning off the animations make it go by any faster?

 

[Akka]

Originally posted by cutiestar
I gues the game is called civilisation, and well the true stature of a civilisation was how much land they controlled, ask the Romans, or British about that.

Completely false.
Look at Athenian Greece. One of the smallest European country and still an extremely famous civilization.
Considering your statement, Australia and Canada are greater civilizations than Rome, Egypt, Greece or Japan.

What makes a civilization great is before all its CULTURE. Then it's military. THEN its size.

Like some people say to reassure themselves : size does not matter

 

[Gruntboy]

Ah but Canada and Australia could (in Civ game terms) arguably be part of an English "civilization".

Where are vaunted Rome, Greece and Egypt now?

Indeed, they have large "cultural" scores but they don't exist anymore. Confined to History and only briefly dominating the worlds that they knew.

 

[eyrei]

Originally posted by Aslan
When your empire gets that big and it starts taking so long for the turn to complete, does turning off the animations make it go by any faster?

It helps a little. I have had it turned off since the first week I had the game.

 

[eyrei]

Originally posted by Gruntboy
Ah but Canada and Australia could (in Civ game terms) arguably be part of an English "civilization".

Where are vaunted Rome, Greece and Egypt now?

Indeed, they have large "cultural" scores but they don't exist anymore. Confined to History and only briefly dominating the worlds that they knew.

That is kind of the point of civ3 though - to (sort of) retry these civilizations, and fantasize about what would have been had they survived. Greece was the example I used to start this thread, but this Greek empire never expanded or contracted, and survived to modern times without having ever been dominated by another civilization. As far as size goes, the Greek empire in this particular game was only marginally larger than Greece in the real world. My Greek empire (how I love to say things like that) led the world in scientific acheivements for 2000 years after the birth of Christ. Speaking of which, one of the things I wish had been integrated into civ3 is the concept of religion.

 

[narmox]

At least it's way better than in civ2, where your _Power_ was determined by number of cities.

You could have 1 city with 100 military units and have a lower power graph than a civ with 100 cities but 1 unit. Go figure...