Winning Scores

[Whythat]

I set out to win a game through a peaceful Cultural victory. Unfortunately I was sandwiched between two aggressive cultures and had to waste a ton of money in defending myself. Especially since I had no iron so had to push back their constant invasions using archers or horsemen vs Swordsmen.

Finally I discovered gunpowder and found saltpeter. From there I outpaced my rivals to cavalry and went on an all out war against them, just for the greater good of piece for my people. Well one thing led to another and somehow my small peaceful empire controlled 75% of the worlds population and around 60% of the land. I quickly granted piece to all the remaining empires (I um had accidently destroyed both of my rivals and a couple of the other empires that had joined them in their war against me, its hard to reign in those cavalry armies).

Anyway from here I stalled the game gaining culture and tech advances until 1989 at which point I saved the game then won it through Cultural victory, Space Race Victory and Domination.

I received the following scores:

Cultural - 2944
Space Race 2885
Domination - 2840

So I finally get to the question part of my question. Was it just the minor branches of changes in the final turns that caused the greater points for a cultural victory? Or do they score the different victory conditions differently?

The points were in reverse of the year finished.

 

[vmxa]

SCORES

Everything is multiplied by the difficulty factor. 1-8, Chieftain-Sid.

Population consists of 1 point for every specialist or content citizen in your civ, and 2 points for every happy citizen. This score is multiplied by Difficulty.

Territory is 1 point for every tile within your cultural borders. This score is multiplied by Difficulty.

Future technology I'm not sure on, but it's suppose to be like 50 points per each. This score is multiplied by Difficulty. I think this is broken.

Adding Population + Territory + Technology up gives you your turn score. Adding up every turn score and then dividing by the number of turns played yields the base score. Then the bonus is added.

The bonus is simply by date, the formula is (2050 - Date) * Difficulty. It is awarded for any victory condition.

As you can see the score would only be marginaly affected by things done near the end of game. Probably getting more pop would do the most in the shortest time.

 

[Whythat]

The thing I found confusing is the first on the time line was the Conquest victory for which I received the lowest score. The last was the cultural victory for which I received the highest score.

The difference could have been just that some of the conquered people went from being happy to sad based on me beginning the aggression against their mother country. But if its an average over time and not just the ending number of happy people it doesn't seem as if enough turns would have passed to account for the difference in score.

 

[vmxa]

I would guess that going for culture meant getting more tiles in the empire sooner so they added up over time. The difference in score is not that great.

 

[Chamnix]

The "early win" bonus just isn't big enough. You will often score higher by getting close to a victory condition but then delaying the actual victory for a while.

 

[Spoonwood]

What I find really sad about the scoring system consists of that in almost all cases, you'll score the most points by playing out until 2049 and winning by your chosen victory condition at or as close to possible by that date as you can. In other words, a 2049 AD spaceship launch will outscore a 940 AD spaceship launch, even if you have the same amount of territory.

 

[Lord Emsworth]

Whether the early finish bonus is better or whether it is better to milk, depends heavily on when you can finish the game and the map size. So, for example a conquest or dom game that finishes around 1000BC gets a hard to beat early finish bonus. (around 1000BC the turn last 25 years and are worth 25*level). The other things is that this depends heavily on the map size. You can only get so many points out of a given number of tiles. Milking a tiny map doesn't really yield that high a score in comparison to larger maps, while the early finish bonus is fix.

 

[vmxa]

I just do not even notice the score. I just click out all the events after the pop up saying congrats. Lord is correct, if you can win a rigged game on turn one, you get a massive score.

If you play out to about 300 turns or so, you will do better to milk to 2049/2050. That is is you are taking all the tiles you can and filling cities with citizens.