Boosting score late in the game against AIs

[axisworks]

I've played many games where, late in the game, the AI scores tend to settle out at a pretty constant upward slope, and I've also noticed my own doing the same. I've tried squeezing efficiency out of the choice of tiles I have developed, using great people to enhance cities' output, and even building gigantic militaries, and none of it seems to make any difference score-wise.

In fact, I've noticed on several occasions that my score will actually start to flatten out in doing all this, and the AI scores will go on steadily increasing, eventually surpassing mine... and there's nothing I can do about it. The only two solutions to jacking up one's score late in the game that I've found are:

1. Boost culture as much as you can all over, and sloooowly take over all the border cities around you. This gives some score benefit, though the amount of time you end up having to sit there and hit enter 20,000 times doesn't give much in the way of satisfaction of achievement once you've finally taken over one or two cities via culture.

2. War. Specifically, conquest of an entire AI territory, and the eventual rebuilding of all their cities.

Post your thoughts.

[trev]

Ignore score, it is an unreliable guide to how good you are. It is heavily boosted by wonders, culture boundaries. The best guide is the demographic screen, get and stay near the top in GDP, and within 20% of top in shields (although a gdp well above the AI can offset a poorer result here with Universal Suffrage), near top in food etc. and several steps above last in military strength.

[swat-spas2]

Late game points are mostly going to come from conquest... technology points are more or less fixed in the sense that future techs are nice for points but become useless in-game. Wonder points are fixed. You either built or captured them or they did. Land (culture) and population are not fixed, but will eventually start to hit practical limits without expanding.

If your empire is big enough then the AI will not ever start to catch up score wise in any practical sense. It can close in tech, but not in wonders if they are built already. It can close in pop/culture but not if you have more cities and are cranking culture since there is no tech to research.

Demographics screen is the best place to check status anyway though. If you are worried about score for a win that way then go conquer someone(s) who doesn't like you very much.

[Yosho]

(shrug) If you really want a high score late-game, say because you want to be on the high-score list or something, boost your population. Build a lot of biology farms.