scoring system

[cgrecu77]

Does anybody think that the scoring system sucks? The bonuses for higher difficulty are very small and therefore I got my best scores on Prince and Warlord. I had an amazing game on Warlord where I got 2 settlers in my first 2 huts (YES, it's true, not sure what the odds are - but they must be really high). As you can imagine I saved the game at that point and then tried various ways of achieving the highest score. Unfortunately nothing except killing everybody right away could get you a really high score. The max I got was around 72k by achieving a domination victory around 700AD. Basically the bonus for time is by far the biggest modifier.

Except for that game, the highest score I could achieve was around 21k also by finishing sooner then the timelimit.

Playing on Monarch the only way I can win so far is by disabling space/diplomacy and then winning by score. This gives me most of time scores around 5k. Playing on Prince I can always get scores around 8k or above because I'm able to finish a few turns before the deadline. So the jump in difficulty doesn't compensate at all the fact that you finish a few turns earlier ...

[BigWilly1974]

I haven't gotten into the mechanics of scoring too much, but to me it's ridiculous to give a score of like 50k for playing on a weak setting...or playing a duel map where you can run the table in the very early/mid game.

My highest score is somewhere around 15k having won a Space Race game on Monarch. Most of my games to date on Monarch have been sub 10k scores, win or lose.

I definitely agree that the turns remaining modifier on the score has to be "smart" enough to recognize the differences presented by the individual game's settings.

[cgrecu77]

exactly, ANY win on a higher difficulty level should earn you a higher score than ANY win on the lower level. Few people can win on the highest difficulty levels so winning a game there should earn you a very high score I would think ...

I know it's meaningless in the end, but the srroing could be a good way to measure your performance against other people. If the highest you could achieve is 5k and most people can achieve 10k then you know you're still very weak and you should improve your game.

[xxFlukexx]

Yes, the score system is competely broken. A lot of people found this out during the first Single Player Tournament here at Apolyton. A fast noble victory at around 1600 A.D. netted somewhere over 30k points, which grabs the best title easily and many more points than any normal type of victory.

Aside from fast domination/conquest victories, the score system is pretty good, but really a victory on noble handily beating all my victories on Emperor in my Hall of Fame is just wrong.

You can say it's meaningles, but I feel that the 'pride' in getting an Augustus score is now trivialized because I can get it so easily on a noble or lower setting. Now the only enjoyment I get is achieving a score of Nero or LouisIX (I think that's the right number) and still losing, hah that's funny to me.

[Calvin Vu]

It sounds seriously broken if the best warlod victory can beat the average Monarch victory in score.

[Tau]

Also, the emphasis for finishing quickly isn't really in the true spirit of Civ. Who enjoys a quick game, anyway? And is it really that great to win in AD 1400? I guess I'm not the only one who's fond of modern era games, and it's sor of sad if we get a lower score just due to our style.

[LeoV]

I would disagree (with Tau's statement). I think early domination/conquest victory SHOULD be rewarded, and here is my reason:

When you win early domination/conquest, you have a dominant position and no real rivals left. If the game continued until 2050, you could build a massive empire with no worries about war, defense, diplomacy, rivalry, etc. So even if scoring was done at 2050, you would get major points for building a (potentially) planet-spanning empire with all world wonders. You could also vote yourself an early diplo victory or build a SS for kicks. All of those extra points in the score points seem to reflect the "time value" of the early victory.

On the other hand, scores SHOULD reflect the difficulty of a particular victory, so they clearly aren't infuenced enough by game difficulty. Also, cultural victory doesn't fit into this scheme, as it usually would get very few points.