Scoring in 1.05 - we need your input

I believe that as a strategy game, Galciv should idealy
be played independent of how the metaverse is scored.

What strategicly makes sense for a player to acomplish
within the game should be the choice that a player makes.

Such things as techs, wonders, powerful economies,
large populations, these things promote a players
ability to acomplish the goal of winning(by which ever
method) They have a direct effect on a players success.

The metaverse should be a measure of a players skill
in acomplishing the goal(winning)

As the prior items directly effect the goal, they should
only be measured indirectly through the result of
winning.

I dont want to be playing the game and be presented
with the option of making a bad strategic choice of
rush buying a trade good for a better metevarse score
when the option to do that is strategicly inferior.

Wonders/tradegoods are very powerful items and greatly
enhance a players ability to win. But all good strategy
games present choices to the players, and these should
include the choice of not building said wonders.
This is actually well balanced within the game, with
the cost of leasing being painful but not unreasonable.

But the metaverse in its current and proposed form
would always reward the act of purchasing the wonder.

This is flawed, sometimes its better to not purchase it.

The same goes for maxing out the tech tree and population.

It makes no sense to reward players for getting all the
techs on a tiny map when the game was effectively over
20 years ago. Its not really fun to play such a game,
and its no real demonstration of skill(same for pop of course).

In my ideal scoring thread I have outlined a system I
would perfer. Its not very popular, but hey, its
my ideal

In general I favor a flat scoring system, all victory
types should be equally scored, with such factors
as how long it took to win, and how much control
over the universe being the only differation.

I favor a fairly large differation between difficulty
(good idea on using opposing alignments for the AI's)
levels, and a modest differation between size.

I dont favor higher overall scores in 1.05, but thats
cause I have the highest overall scores, so im not impartial

I will fire off a few saves tonight.

Edit: If I wasnt clear, I dont think wonders/tradegoods,
economies and even population(though some measure of
galactic control is needed imo) should even be a factor in the score.
[Message Edited]

This sounds really good. Can I send you my save game? Mine got really out of hand.

I really like the idea of players who challenge thensleves more getting higher scores (higher difficulty levels). Also, I don't know if it's because I understand the game bettr or what, but the last several builds I've had an easier time winning.


Actually maybe this is the reason... I made sure no one ever attacked me by having 3 defense ships at each planet. Personally I think I was a little weaker than some AI's, but when they saw lots of ships (even though they were crappy) they wouldn't take the risk of attacking me.

Can I send you my savegame?

I don't think wonders/trade goods should factor in either. I just buy them all if I'm winning, which makes me even stronger, and in many cases having trade goods/wonders has very little reflection on a person's strategy.

I kind of view them as this "the rich get richer, the poor get poorer"...

Would a penalty for changing alignments be desirable?

By way of explanation you start off neutral then say take the alignment hits to get huge starship bonuses or PQ improvements then later bombard some useless planet with colony ships to get back to being good by taking all the good choices (who cares if the PQ of that size 6 world will be reduced if you destroying the colony immediately anyway). This would penalise a cheesey strategy.

I have some games on crippling with a couple different sizes. Not sure if any of them are high enough to factor into your calculations. I'll be happy to send you what I have if you want (I had a huge game that showed a fairly high score before I submitted).

One thing I would offer as input is to request that there be a greater separation between difficulties than currently. It just doesn't seem right that any normal game should score higher than even the worst masochistic game (not to mention beginner games ranking in the top 25).

When you say it goes through each turn, does that mean that large population at the beginning helps more than large population at the end, or that the entire population score is adjusted based on the ending turn?

I agree with Staffa that I would prefer the scoring system to ignore tech, pop, tg/wonders, etc. That is how I reach the win, not the quality of it.

In order of impact on the score, I think the factors should be:
(a) AI of opponents
(b) galaxy size (a minor multiplier to give extra rewards for large galaxies, countering the time penlity for those sizes)
(c) "quality" of my empire as a proportion of the galaxy (sum of the PQ of my planets/sum of the PQ of all planets over PQ15) - so alliance wins get reduced to the proportion that is mine
(d) time taken to win
(e) morality modifier - I suspect the game is easier with non-standard moralities...

Ack how dare you rephrase my 3 page post in 5 lines!

Thx though, concision isnt my strong point, snicker.

[Message Edited]

Btw, I havnt actually had a really good scoring game
in 1.044. My scores have generally been lower then
1.040.

You want saved games from sergey!

This is good feedback guys. This is definitely an area where the consensus in this thread is going to have a major impact in the final scoring algorithm.

I also agree with Staffa's scoring suggestions. This is quite painful to agree with someone from GROSS our arch rivals. You know he must have good plan then.

~SDC~

The scoring sounds pretty good as is, just a few thoughts:

-I'd prefer if victory types were scored the same way (except Alliance, which would be a portion of what the military victory would have been), but I imagine that didn't work in the past.

-How is map size factored in? The bigger the map, the bigger the score? I'm of the opinion that "Medium" is actually harder than "Gigantic" in a lot of cases, though the latter of course takes much longer.

And thanks for asking our input, it reassures me that you're doing your best to resolve whatever problems do exist in a way that will hopefully please most of us.

alas, the double post...
[Message Edited]

Frogboy says:

>You start out with score X which is based on the difficulty level that is based on adding the intelligence levels of the major races.

Just like taxes in excess of 4x PQ are "capped", large deviations from the base difficulty score should be "capped". I'm referring to deviations above and below. Exactly where the caps should be set will require some experimentation. I don't think the spread should be more than 2x-4x for a given map size and difficulty combination.

By having a cap, that means that any undiscovered flaw in the score system will also have limited value.

If you put a cap then an undiscovered flaw may remain permanently undiscovered. If there is no cap a flaw may reproduce an outlandish score, a score large enough to attract attention and thus investigation.

"To Frogboy"

I am sure that you've started this thread to request save games and not to receive instructions on how to create a scoring system, but you should have known better what will happen to your thread:)

So I feel obliged to jump in with my suggestions too:)

How about displaying the month/year of victory on the metaverse?

I guess I'll ruin the consensus by saying that I like the Idea of wonders, trade goods, and economic power having some impact in scoring. It seems like if you build up an economic superpower you should get something for it.

I think maybe instead there should be some kind of Bonus for finishing quickly to offset not having all the techs. Maybe if you finish before 2200 you get some extra points.

Well, I'm also going to be a bit of the voice of dissent. I don't want GalCiv to be a pure strategy game, pure strategy is boring and dry. This idea that your score is based purely on winning is pretty much exactly the opposite of why I've enjoyed this game so much. If that is what gets you the highest score then, really, what is the point of any sort of role playing, what is the point of finesse games, what is the point of just playing the game how you feel on a given day? No, do what Staffa and some of the others suggest and you might as well go through the tech tree, wonders, and trade goods and remove a significant portion of them from the game because they're never going to be researched/built, and if the AIs do go for them, it will be to their detriment.

It's too late for me to apply my brain power in too much analytical detail but what we need is a bell curve situation for victory scores. At the left hand is the pure strat, rush to the soonest victory - that may demonstrate you are the master of min/maxing but it should not get you the max score in my opinion. At the absolute right hand of the curve is the milker - this is the researching the entire tech tree, running the pop until every planet approaches equilibrium.

The highest score is by striking a balance of these factors, don't dawdle, but smell the alien roses while you're at it.

One way of achieving such a bell curve is leave the general base scoring algorithm more or less as is. Then, from studying the metaverse data, determine brackets for time to victory on different map sizes & densities along with difficulty. At the quickest end of the set of ranges, you get a significant bonus to your score, at the other end, you get a significant penalty.

Now, things I want to see implemented:

*Take victory condition out of the calculation. It shouldn't matter how you win IF you're using those things like population, wonders, economic power, etc. to build up the turn by turn points. If you combine my above time scale idea for bonus/penalties to your base score, alot of it will balance out, e.g. the long tech victory which has a huge pop, huge numbers of techs, huge everything is also going to suffer the biggest time penalty; conversely, a quick military victory is going to have a fat multiplier to the lower base score.

*Allow the score of your allies to contribute to yours. It's just stupid that by sitting around and milking a good relationship for several years you can double or triple your score when the alliance win was possible several years ago.

*Don't just go by map sizes, but by planet density for modifying scores. That said, I do agree with one of things Staffa said even if I don't agree with his idea on how to address it: on a tiny map, regardless of density, the game is unlikely to go much farther beyond Dreadnought tech. Because of this scaling phenomenon (you go farther in the tech tree and build more by default the bigger the map and more dense the planets), things like tech scoring should have an offset bonus applied to it on lesser maps. Otherwise, you just encourage milking (and, with a scaling time penalty, going ahead and doing something as wacky as going for a tech win on a tiny map will have the tech score bonus ameliorated by the time penalty).

Oh well, it's late, I've got to be at work early, and I'm sure I've taken enough of your time. Thanks for asking for our input on this issue.

Here I was joyous at the fact that there is an actual official request for feedback about scoring (thought that Stardock would have been sick of the number of scoring suggestions volunteered by now).

But after taking my gloves off, I found that all that I really want to say have been said by Staffa and Ralegh. :notsure:

I totally agree that pop/economy/tech are already inherently important to win the game so there shouldn't be further bonuses to scoring to reward them. This would stop the practice of milking pop/ economy/tech.

The only other issue that we could consider is whether to make starting location a factor in the scoring. Yes, we do have players who insist that they never Ctl-N but I believe there is consensus that starting location has a tremendous impact on the game.

Winning a game with just one PQ16 Earth is hell of a more difficult task than winning with 102 colonies. The ability to win from a more difficult start takes a lot of more skill and should be rewarded if Metaverse scoring is all about skill.

I could send you my Tiny/Maso/Rare 1.044 game, Frogboy. It has a low score but maybe that could be a good gauge for the Tiny/Maso baseline.

There should probably be something in the scoring formula that factors in the number of 15+ class planets, the thinking being that in many ways the scoring is clamped a bit by lack of habitable planets.

I like Ray Chua's idea about the planets within certain radius suggestion. I'd be for that. It'd certainly encourage people to start more often from the corner spot with no planets.



I like this idea as well




The only thing I might voice in the way of dissent is you're going to see alot of people setting everyone to possibly good, and then shooting for the evil alignment. It seems in most games I've played it takes ALOT longer to get to align:100 than it does to get to align:0

While I like the idea, it should take the same amount of effort to work up I would think as it does to work down. But that's the only gotcha that I can see from this.

SeanB

"I like Ray Chua's idea about the planets within certain radius suggestion. I'd be for that. It'd certainly encourage people to start more often from the corner spot with no planets."

Thanks for the support, force. Unfortunately, I was not the one who suggested that. My suggestion was to have a running counter of the cumulative PQ colonised and use that as a modifier to the score (so my example above will have the most difficult start as 16pts and the easiest start as (102 colonies x 17 avg PQ) 1734pts. This would also have the side effect of discouraging the multiple colonising cheese and crappy culture bomb planet tactic.

"The only thing I might voice in the way of dissent is you're going to see alot of people setting everyone to possibly good, and then shooting for the evil alignment. It seems in most games I've played it takes ALOT longer to get to align:100 than it does to get to align:0 "

I could certaintly see folks doing this on easier difficulty levels as it is relatively easy to ignore diplomatic implications and just crush everyone. But on Maso, I would not want 5 Good enemies breathing down my Evil neck.

Scores played on version 1.044 or lower should be boosted, if scores on 1.05 are going to be greater. I have a feeling that once 1.05 hits the stage, veteran players like Staffa, RayChua, Sergey among the many other top 10s will be hurt by this scoring change, because of their older scores.
Also, come to think of it. Staffa is correct, collecting Wonders should be a fun part of the game also population should be a fun part of the game, but not included in the scoring mechanism. If it is I have a tendency to horde all wonders, but that's no fun.
:notsure:

(WARNING: This is a long post, but please read it and feel free to leave an opinion about it.)

Well, my first suggestion would be to make difficulty really, really matter. Like make a fool AI worth one point, a normal 5 points, and a maso 10 or more points. This way, a player with one fool AI gets a straight score, while someone with a full five normal AIs gets 25 times the score, and a real maso game would be worth at least 50 times base value. Or do the reverse and divide the score, so that if 50 is the max multiplier, then your score would be total factors divided by 50. The exact values would have to be juggled, but I think it is worth a consideration.

Right now, we have players who can get obscene scores on simple and beginner while crippling and maso players get a totally devalued score in comparison for what is obviously a much tougher game. Sure, this means that the base scores for cakewalk players would be next to nothing, but isn't that how it should be?

Time for me to think totally outside the box a bit. We all know there comes a point in a lot of games where the Terrans become the superpower and are basically unstoppable. The game will be won, it is just exactly when and which way, even if everybody declares a holy war on Earth.

This may be difficult to code, but it would be nice if there was a way to introduce a very effective anti-milking device. Have the program determine when the humans reach that unstoppable stage and freeze the scoring from all other factors except (optionally) the way victory is achieved from the turn that point was reached. That way, you could win in a year or a hundred years and it wouldn't really matter score wise. If the "unstoppable" situation was somehow reversed, then start awarding the other points again until total dominance is re-asserted.

Now, the question would be: How to determine when the Terrans are the unbeatable superpower? It would definitely start with a combination of military might, systems owned compared to all the other majors, and size of the Terran economy. Other factors could be thrown in as well.

This radical idea would not penalize anyone who is in a real tough game where winning was never certain and it is usually very tempting to take any way out that presents itself. But it would really stop the "I conquered the galaxy, but the other fools just don't know it yet for another few decades" syndrome.

Onto old scoring issue business now: it looks like score inflation is official and deliberate. The theory is to make it more tempting for folks to go to the newer versions. The sad part is that it really penalizes players who have been around longer and rewards noobs who come out of nowhere and can outscore the whole Metaverse in a very few games. (This has happened before.) There is a big difference between a talented, aggressive newer player that earns those spots by competing on the same scale as the experienced players vs. any noob who can get a head start with vastly inflated scores while the experienced players' old version games drag them down like stones. From my perspective, a total, complete recalc of all games ever submitted from the root data using the new scoring standard when it arrives is the fair solution. It should not be "old player = instant penalty due to old version scores and new player = clean slate and inflated scores to boot."

Thank you for your attention, now happy conquering!

My 2 cents:

First and foremost:
The biggest factor for scoring should be the TIME TAKEN TO WIN. This is it. Everything else should be icing on the cake. This way you avoid the pop/tech milking stuff.
Of course, time should be discounted by galaxy size, but that's what should be the core score.

Second:
I don't believe in discounting tech or cultural victories. They're very hard to achieve, and if you achieve one you can probably achieve military victory as well. Alliance victories, that can be debated because it can be used as a way to weasel out of a hot spot.
In any case, if you reward time the most, then you intrinsically reward military victory. Edit: Oops of course, difficulty level is a major multiplier. So basically I suggest something like: score = (sum intel)*galaxy_size*(max(0, 2500 - end_date)) where (sum intel) is the sum of the intelligence of the majors, and as said by someone in a response above, the intel scales exponentially.
[Message Edited]

I don't really mind whether trade goods, population, tech, production, economy are used in the score calculation, so long as the maximum affect they can have is controlled. I believe that the score should primarily be decided by the difficulty of the game and that everything else just modified the score within an envelope. For example

Basic score => set by difficulty levels of AI, size of galaxy and starting conditions.

Score can then be modified by up to a maximum factor of 2 by tijme taken to finish, type of finish, tech, economy, population, etc...

This would mean that you will never get less than half the score of someone who plays the same game differently.

I certainly think starting conditions should be taken into account more than population, production or economy. It has a much bigger influence on difficulty (hence why so many people use control+N)

Paul.

~SDC~

While I disagree with fsk+ on some of the other details, I think this is a superb idea. Our experience with OS/2 taught us to put caps in on the economy to limit the damage of unexpected behaviour. I think the same logic applies.



I think that this is what Influence (and a cultural victory) is in the game. I do see your point, but I am less worried about the last few turns to finish 'em off than I am with the endless mouse clicking to move ships or conduct trade.