Civ2 doesn't reward space race?

[jez9999]

So, last night I think I had the most exhilirating game of Civ2 ever.

Yeah, I play on King difficulty, I am not that good yet and find Deity so hard it ruins the game. I struggled to manage to build a spaceship and launch it AFTER the computer had, but luckily it had more thrust and my Indian spaceship beat the computer to AC by 1 YEAR!!!! Great game.

However, my score was pathetic. 44%! Despite the fact that I had a strong civ in 2015, not easy when you haven't wiped others out and they're launching nuclear missiles at you for no good reason (global warming happened shortly after I launched my spaceship); yet my score is terrible even though I won the space race?

In contrast, in another one of my games I just went hell for leather and destroyed every other civilization. My score was way higher, 90%! That was far easier. Why doesn't the game reward you for going to all the effort of winning the space race? It's a much harder way to go. Those two scores should be the other way round, given the difficulty of the way I won in each of them.

The image of the high score table showing the scores is here:

[Bloody Monk]

You get points for your s-ship; you also get points for Population. Here your pop is much lower. There may be other factors, too...probably are. But, having a low pop has hurt your score.

That's one way to look at this. Another is to treat the post completion screens as meaningless and focus on enjoying the game.

Monk

[Verrucosus]

Well, after such a great game, I wouldn't really care about the score. If you are looking for a reward, look at the victory movie. The Alpha Centauri movie is much prettier than the dull sequence of chopping of your opponent's heads (unless you have a strange definition of what's "pretty").

With regard to the score, it's true that the spaceship itself doesn't carry an overwhelming amount of weight. I believe you can earn 200 points with the largest one. (You probably have built a small one because you were in a hurry.) That's not enough to make up for the huge difference in population between Caesar's and Gandhi's empires. (For conquest victories, there's also an alternative score for speed, but with 43 million people and a win in 1894 AD, Caesar probably got the normal score.)

I agree about the difficulty level. Civ2 Deity is easier than the Deity level in Civ3 or Civ4, but in my experience the course of the game is less varied than on the lower levels. For example, the happiness wonders are much more important on Deity, so my wonder strategy almost always revolves around them. (I'm so dependent on Michelangelo's Chapel. that I don't think I've ever heard the cathedral bells ring in a Deity game.) When I'm in the mood for roleplaying, I usually pick one of the lower levels.

Anyway, great story. This is something we don't see in Civ3 or Civ4, because in those versions, you win simply by launching the ship.

Verrucosus

[Deity Dude]

the computer also thinks winning in 1894 is better than 2015 even though you were king in the space game and prince in the other.

[jez9999]

Forgot to add, here's my savegame to prove it.

http://www.game-point.net/misc/indians.sav

By the way, I did actually have a big(ish) spaceship, it carried 20,000 passengers (although I think you can go up to 40k or more)... I got 200 for it.

[Bloody Monk]

Re: Civ2 doesn't reward space race?

First sentence, first post...

Originally posted by jez9999
So, last night I think I had the most exhilirating game of Civ2 ever.

Does this not say it all?? Everything else is commentary.

Monk

[Mighty SunTzu]

Nice, i have never seen a space race so it's good to see the save. Do you have another save pre-launch? i'd like to see what that looks like too

ps: for sure as to your score, bloody monk was right... 43 mil population vs. 11 mil is going to make all the difference. Some would say the game weighs population and other factors too strongly for the "score" to mean much.

ps2: i think democracy would have served you a lot better than communism in this situation. you had the wonders and the unit containment to celebrate fantastically attached is the switch with every city celebrating at 40% lux

[candle_86]

lol i still play on cheiftan after 9 years, i just never tried anything else.

[Mighty SunTzu]

Originally posted by Deity Dude
the computer also thinks winning in 1894 is better than 2015 even though you were king in the space game and prince in the other.

Yeah, the whole score thing is pretty screwy, based as far as i can see on mere insanity. To me it is done in such a way as to make going for a high score completely worthless. Nothing like a strong human opponent anyway .