The GOTM Scoring System

[kingjoshi]

I didn't vote but I've read the posts in this thread. I'd like to echo some thoughts for emphasis.

Comparing between VCs in a way to please a majority of people will be extremely difficult. Almost not worth the effort. But if people want to go for it, knock yourself out. If you're successful, all the better.

I don't like that we have 2nd/3rd place medals for score but not for 2nd/3rd fastest victories within a VC. I think having 2nd/3rd for each VC would be too much, so I'd prefer to remove 2nd/3rd medals entirely.

As we have two different 'recognition' systems (score and speed), we could create more methods! The new systems don't have to agree amongst all the various VCs, but let's discuss how people want to compare the games within the same VC. And while speed may be a factor, that would still have its own category.

So besides speed, what other factors determine a 'good' Conquest win? How about Diplomatic Victory?

Between two conquest victories, would one with less wars generally signify a better played game? Does number of tiles matter at all? Does how quickly you eliminate other civs matter? What criteria's do people think matter for conquests?

I've only won Cultural once and maybe likewise for Space Race. It's just not my thing. So I wouldn't know how to compare them.

For Diplomatic, I think less wars imply better game. I think favorable ratings from others are important. I don't want to punish anyone for having a large population, but winning votes from others where your population percentage relative to the entire world is small is more impressive than when you have a dominant position. I'm just throwing out stuff that I haven't thought through, so it surely could be flawed.

 

[Littlewolf]

Hi, IMHO, the quick fix, without any significant changes needed would be to compare/announce the GOTM winners separated by victory conditions. That is directly compare only scores within the same victory condition. Everybody would still play the same map, but we would effectively compete only against players who submit a game won by the same victory type. I think this would not take away too much fun from the competition. Just on the contrary, it could motivate more people to try a different victory type than domination/conquest and still have a chance to be the best (albeit in his victory type category). If this sounds too radical to some people, you could at least start displaying the final scores broken down by the victory type, in addition to the 'raw' list of scores regardless of vic. type. Just my 10 cents

 

[DaviddesJ]

Hi, IMHO, the quick fix, without any significant changes needed would be to compare/announce the GOTM winners separated by victory conditions. That is directly compare only scores within the same victory condition.

The "best" cultural victory is NOT the highest scoring one, imho. You would usually get the highest score, in any of the later victory types, by conquering most of the world early, and then milking until you can achieve the desired victory. This is somewhat like what we had in Civ3, and I don't think it's to be encouraged.

 

[AlanH]

If this sounds too radical to some people, you could at least start displaying the final scores broken down by the victory type, in addition to the 'raw' list of scores regardless of vic. type. Just my 10 cents

Have you not discovered the ability to sort the results table by a variety of parameters ... including victory condition, date, score ... in any priority you choose?

 

[godotnut]

Original comment deleted by author. I need to think about this more.

 

[Greebley]

I too like making each victory condition have 3 medals. It puts "highest score" on the same footing as "fastest culture" - sort of like score was another victory condition.

So now we have score vs fast finishes.

This would make it:

score vs fastest dom vs fastest culture vs fastest conquest vs ...


Its a lot of medals (what 18?), but I am not sure this is bad as it allows more players to say "hey, I won something. - I got 3rd fastest space ship".

It doesn't really address the problem with scores in the game, but it does make score less important overall and only one of the 6 ways to win an award. I see less of a need to worry about the scoring being perfect. If I want to go for space ship, I just ignore the score award entirely and concentrate on the 3 awards for fastest finish.

Domination/conquest players may get two awards instead of one, but at least for me, that isn't a bad thing.

To summarize - score is more important because it has 3 medals. If I want to play for space there is only the one medal to win. I would like to have 3 places to get awards from just like the high scorers do.

Hope this makes sense.