An alternative to the Powergraph?

[Keygen]

quote: Originally posted by jpww on 03-20-2001 12:42 PM I've noticed that a medium to high level of pollution is generally a detrimental factor to improving your place in the powergraph. Personally, I agree with PN on producing a more complete rating system by weighing other factors that measure how "civilized" your nation is.

I don't think this is true regarding power graph.
However it is true regarding civ score.
I have seen my self having 0 civ score while my power graph being twice as high as the second's graph and that because of pollution!
[This message has been edited by Keygen (edited March 20, 2001).]

[Solver]

Hmmm. In fact, you are offering also to consider that we make adjustements to the ratings each turn, instead of each 10 turns, and Quinns you spoke about that. But, I don't quite like the idea. Then the amplitudes would also be higher. For example, I am in the last position, but close with the 2nd last (real from R2_Islands). When it comes to *9 turn, we might see changes, but for each turn, I would all the time get minus points. Where I'm in the first place, I'd all the time get plus points, and I think these changes would be just too frequent for the ratings.

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Solver - http://www.aok.20m.com

[Solver]

Also, speaking of the ranking by Civ score - that's what we use in Alpha Centauri, where each *0 turn is measured by player's AC score, not Power Graph. But, I repeat, there's completely no perfect in-game measure. A person 1st on the graph might lose. A person last on Civ score might win and so on.

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Solver - http://www.aok.20m.com

[PN]

I'm not offering to display the rankings every turn, the SLIC code is just designed to do that at the moment so that I can test/debug see how the ranking changes versus score and powergraph.

I'd imagine that quinns would be swamped with admin, and I haven't seen much change in ranking anyway (or Civ score) each turn. It's volatile at the beginning, but settles down after about turn 10.

[Franses]

The least you can say is that the Power Graph is not a good measure of the chances of winning the game. As I mentioned elsewhere I, and I suppose that is true for you too, are always lowest or close to it on the Power Graph in a single player game for the first 150 turns of so. And I always win unless I restrict myself severely. Even it is obvious for me that I can no longer loose a game, the Power Graph may not agree with me .
[This message has been edited by Franses (edited March 21, 2001).]

[quinns]

Thanks for all your work on this PN. I wasn't suggesting that the new graph be "recorded" for ratings each turn, only that it be "displayed" to all the players each turn. I would still only record the *9 turns graph.

This each turn frequency of graph generation isn't that big of a deal. The main thing would be exactly how we all agree to "weight" the new proposed graph. This will be very tricky, indeed, to agree upon. We all have different opinions on what is the "best" measure of a civilization. Maybe Lung is right. Maybe the power graph IS the best measure we could hope for to measure POWER (not CIVILIZATION)... but I doubt it Lungster !!

[quinns]

Agree with Francis. The Power Graph could have been a good measure with just a little more effort from Activision's group. I don't really think there was much thought put into this. The "playtesters" at Activision probably had a large input into what they considered was "important" to power. If these same "playtesters" had any contribution to the existing CTP AI, then no wonder the graph is so skewed.

Maybe we can fix it! What are the attributes again: Population, Geographic (amount of land you own), number of cities, military power, science/knowledge, wealth/gold, number of trade routes, Undersea cities, Space exploration.

Here's my general take on it:

Population Factor: affects production and gold per turn.
Geographic: not important( you could own a bunch of swamp land!)
Number of cities: also affects production and gold per turn (due to the fact that you get one free worker per city.)
Military Units: Direct correlation to power.
Science/Knowledge: Debatable (St Jon brought up good points regarding the value of this)
Gold: Direct correlation to power (Due to rush buy capability).
Number of trade routes: (already factored into the gold number)
Undersea cities: like cities
Space exploration: Debatable
Buildings: already factored into above.
Wonders: already factored into above.

So this is how I see it:

Power = (Production Generated Per Turn) + ((Gold Generated Per Turn) * (Gold Factor)) + ((Existing Military Units Production Cost) * Military Factor)) + ((Existing Gold) * (Gold Factor)) + ((Technology Level?) * (Tech Factor?))