Relative scores of different victory types

I recall someone once mentioning something to the effect that a military victory was worth 2.5 times your score and a tech win 1.5 times and so on for the four different victory conditions. I've searched for this information in these forums and those at the Core but for the life of me haven't been able to locate anything.

Does anyone remember what these ratios were/are and where the information came from?
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Reply #1 Top
I was looking for this...Still haven't given up. I think that I have, however, found the definitive answer to another long standing question. Does "Society" mean population only, or population plus influence, etc. The answer is population only.

In this thread, changes going into the game for scoring in 1.1 are discussed. It has an explanation from Frogboy about how difficulty levels affect game score and about how they are going to start factoring by the square root of the turn, instead of just by the turn.

https://forums.galciv2.com/?forumid=345&aid=111746

Note this part:

"Each turn your population is taken, then multiplied by the difficulty level to the 1.1 power. That amount is then divided by the game turn. The final result is taken to the square root.

Then your research score is taken into account in a similar way.

And economic history.

And military history."

Bold added for emphasis. Given the context I think it is pretty clear. I think it was an unintentional reveal.

Reply #2 Top
Yeah I'm familiar with that one. This happened around the time of AWTresspasser if you remember those times. They were actually a bit before my time but I did catch traces of this upheaval in various searches that I've made.

That is a good point though that society is probably just population. I didn’t catch that implication previously.

There are actually a number of implications that can be gleaned from this. The first one was that they were essentially taking the discrete integral of the area under the associated curve with of course division by the turn number. This was assumed to cause the score to asymptotically approach a limit. The problem is that even though you are dividing by the turn number you are summing up the total number of slices which of course go up with turn number. The net effect is a sum that is unbounded by the number of turns which was proven by AWTresspasser’s 209 year 6 million point game.

The other point which we have discussed before is more of a supposition on my part and that is that the original scoring method of the sum of the raw values divided by turn number is what forms each component score which is then multiplied by the difficulty to the 1.1 power and divided by another turn number to provide it’s contribution to the total score. This is why good players that build up relatively high values early in the game can have a total score twice as great as the sum of the four component scores whereas average players may eventually reach the same levels of raw score but since they tend to reach these levels later in the game their total score may only be half that of the sum of the four components. This kind of 4 to 1 swing between games that otherwise have very similar “raw score” totals is something I’ve seen demonstrated time and time again.

Like I said we’ve both had this discussion more than once, this is more for the benefit others that may read this, however this is by no means the first such time we’ve tried to convey this concept.

One other thing to mention is that there actually does have to be some kind of scaling involved between population and the other three components simply because populations are in the billions and the other components are in the millions when they score similar amounts. It could be as simple as dividing pop by 1000 (probably is). Also this highlights why research is so useless a place to optimize score since if income and research are similarly scaled then income will always be more significant than research since research is limited to be a relatively small percentage of total income.




As far as my original question a new Diplomat asked this question at the Core and I definitely remember hearing someone spout off the ratios. But this was probably close to 2 years ago. I was hoping that perhaps Kryo remembered more precisely.

Ahh. Found the reference I was looking for. It was at GCII Victory Conditions - Points.

According to Magnumaniac

Currently the ratios are:

Tech 1.0
Alliance 1.5
Culture 1.75
Military 2.5

Now can anyone validate these ratios? Kryo?
Reply #3 Top
I had read that particular thread on more than one occasion in the past as well...This was the first time that I really saw the implicit information. I guess it was just a matter of looking at it in the right frame of mind.

AW Tresspasser was from just before my time as well. You know we are digging deep into history when something happened before the two of us! :)

The most amazing end game save ever! - AW Tresspasser history for a bit of entertainment and his 4.6 Million point score under the old scoring system.

I know that I had seen the ratios before ever joining in at the core. I did eventually find this post by Mag over on the general forums:

Mag's post

It has a slightly longer comment indicating that he figured it out empirically before the change in calculations that happened in 1.1 when you could figure out the score via direct totaling. It's quite possible these numbers are no longer correct and I can't find any newer references, but my inclination is to believe that they haven't changed. It shouldn't be too hard to set up a scenario where you can end the game in one of either two ways on the same turn and do a score comparison analysis to make sure they are still accurate.

As far as the second supposition about the non-arithmetic affects caused by significant early empire growth having disproportionate effects on scoring....We did enough back and forth in the private threads with scoring at several points over several games to be pretty sure that it is more than just a supposition. We never did get an exact formula, but we had sufficient empirical samples to develop a solid outline. Our scores bear that out. For me, the breaking point was when I had developed enough techniques to quite literally see swings in the 100-200K point range for just bringing home a game a couple of months earlier in one game over another.

And, yeah, this is re-hash for us, but it was really a lot of fun to dig it all out the first time around. I doubt that anyone outside of Stardock will ever detail it out as far as we did in the private forums. It really took the right people to put it all together to the degree we were able to do it.
Reply #4 Top
I wonder how Stardock will implement the new victory condition coming in TA, and how much will it weight compared to the others?
Reply #5 Top
AW Tresspasser history

It is an interesting piece of history. It seems his motive was to prompt a correction so that scores simply didn't rise forever and for that we should thank him but then it seemed he took umbridge when the game he used to prove that scoring was flawed was removed.

A bit of searching gets you a bit more detail than the single thread above at least it did last time I looked which could easily have been 6 months ago.

Generally the search functions work fairly well. Even if the threads are real old just as long as there aren't thousands of matches. However if you try and search all the posts I've ever replied to you get 30 pages of matches but can't access any but the most recent page. However if I seach for something in a title that excludes most random matches I can find things I've replied to from 20 months ago.

I wonder how Stardock will implement the new victory condition coming in TA, and how much will it weight compared to the others?

What new victory condition is that?

However, I doubt we will get any definite information, most likely we will be left to wonder. Probably the only way to come up with it is to do a test like Purge suggests.
Reply #6 Top
Hi!
Currently the ratios are:

> Tech 1.0
> Alliance 1.5
> Culture 1.75
> Military 2.5

Now can anyone validate these ratios?

Validating them shouldn't be a problem. Run a game with cheats on, limit AI to one planet in distant corner, generate enough ships to get overwhelming military, cheat all techs but final tech for tech victory, get the needed 75%+ influence and wait 10 turns, save game, and:
1) invade the last AI to get mil victory,
2) reload and research the last tech to get the tech victory,
3) reload and get the culture victory, and
4) reload and make alliance to get diplo victory.

If you'd do that in the same (reloaded) turn, then the base scores for all vicories should be the same. The difference would be the mulitiplier.

BR, Iztok

Reply #7 Top
Hi!
Each turn your population is taken, then multiplied by the difficulty level to the 1.1 power

So here's that "to the 1.x power" I had in memory for scoring for different difficulty levels. Good to know my memory isn't completely rusty, but just rusty. :D

BR, Iztok
Reply #8 Top
What new victory condition is that?


I'm not sure but I think its destroying a (large)percentage of any two opponents' civilizations with Terror stars... or something like that. :NOTSURE:

Once the galaxy knows you have those bad boys and aren't afraid to use them, you win.
Reply #9 Top
No, if you have a look at the current TA editor, you can place a special ressource (something like 'galactic artifact'). Once you mine enough of these ressources, you win. At least that's how I understand the information given out by the devs so far.
Reply #10 Top

I believe that there has been some talk about "ascension crystal"-victory ... assuming that the map editor has that function for a purpose it seems plausible.

Control all the ascension crystals (for some time??) and win!

At least that's what I think.
Reply #11 Top
So here's that "to the 1.x power" I had in memory for scoring for different difficulty levels.
But this then only caused me to wonder what are the numeric representations of the difficulty levels. I mean is suicidal 10 or is it 1.9? Without that knowledge, knowing that the power factor is 1.1 is meaningless.

The Wiki still shows this where the number is refered to as the AI level.

* Cakewalk = 15 (Fool)
* Easy = 20 (Dunce)
* Simple = 30 (Beginner)
* Beginner = 40 (Sub-Normal)
* Normal = 50 (Normal)
* Challenging = 65 (Bright)
* Tough = 80 (Intelligent) *Full AI capability from here on*
* Painful = 85 (Gifted)
* Crippling = 95 Genius)
* Masochistic = 100 (Incredible)
* Obscene = 120 (Godlike)
* Suicidal = 150 (Ultimate)
150^1.1 = 247.6 and 15^1.1 = 19.7 I suppose this could be the correct ratio but who knows.

Validating them shouldn't be a problem. Run a game with cheats on, limit AI to one planet in distant corner ...
An even easier way is for someone to do this for me and then just tell me the answer.  :LOL: 
Reply #12 Top

So here's that "to the 1.x power" I had in memory for scoring for different difficulty levels.
But this then only caused me to wonder what are the numeric representations of the difficulty levels. I mean is suicidal 10 or is it 1.9? Without that knowledge, knowing that the power factor is 1.1 is meaningless.

The Wiki still shows this where the number is refered to as the AI level.

* Cakewalk = 15 (Fool)
* Easy = 20 (Dunce)
* Simple = 30 (Beginner)
* Beginner = 40 (Sub-Normal)
* Normal = 50 (Normal)
* Challenging = 65 (Bright)
* Tough = 80 (Intelligent) *Full AI capability from here on*
* Painful = 85 (Gifted)
* Crippling = 95 Genius)
* Masochistic = 100 (Incredible)
* Obscene = 120 (Godlike)
* Suicidal = 150 (Ultimate)
150^1.1 = 247.6 and 15^1.1 = 19.7 I suppose this could be the correct ratio but who knows.


This is the way I interpret that post. It was not what I was thinking previously.

What was that Iztoc? I can't see you through this rust colored smoky haze...Oh wait, it's not just rust colored. I guess I hit my head too hard and that's what came out! ;)

Reply #13 Top
Currently the ratios are:

Tech 1.0
Alliance 1.5
Culture 1.75
Military 2.5


Now can anyone validate these ratios? Kryo?


Sorry to drudge up this post, but I was just fielding a Q about ascension victory weight and found a Beta 6b patch note thread that gave a weight to this victory condition:

+ TWEAK: Assigned Ascension victory weight of 2.5
Reply #14 Top
+ TWEAK: Assigned Ascension victory weight of 2.5

Not really sure we're talking the same scale here. Clearly these little gems that Stardock inadvertently lets out are probably the "real deal" but how they correlate to what others have empirically determined by playing one game and ending it in different manners, I have no clue.

The ratios quote above are from some work Mag did a very long time ago perhaps close to two years with DL v1.2 or perhaps earlier.

I recently had a 7 year small galaxy game that I was able to end in each of the four different victory conditions all within a turn or two of each other that gave slightly different but very close to exact ratios.

I listed these along with the game conditions and screen shots of the end game summaries in the Score dependency on victory condition thread.

In this case I verified at least with Dl v1.4x the ratios are:

Tech = 1.0
Alliance = 1.2
Influence = 1.4
Military = 2.0

What's needed is to try the same thing in ToA with a reasonable size and length game and then compare all 5 victory conditions, then we would really know what's going on here.

Too bad SD won't simply answer the direct question but they've never been willing to do so before so I wouldn't expect them to start now.
Reply #15 Top
What's needed is to try the same thing in ToA with a reasonable size and length game and then compare all 5 victory conditions, then we would really know what's going on here.


Hrm, sounds like something to do while my "Espionage Intel Level" project is on the back-burner waiting for 2.0's release.

If nobody else has done it, I'll be more than happy to do some more discovery work!
Reply #16 Top
The ratios quote above are from some work Mag did a very long time ago perhaps close to two years with DL v1.2 or perhaps earlier.


March 2006 I believe  :)  and was probably related to v1.1.

In all honesty, I think the only thing that has changed in that time is that tech victories have been given a better weighting - following a lot of "user input" about the relative scores.

Taking my original relative scale:

Tech 1.0
Alliance 1.5
Culture 1.75
Military 2.5

and changing it to:

Tech 1.25
Alliance 1.5
Culture 1.75
Military 2.5
Ascension 2.5

will give the same relativity as Mumbles findings:

Tech = 1.0
Alliance = 1.2
Influence = 1.4
Military = 2.0
Ascension = 2.0

which is probably a much beter way of displaying the relativity, with 1.0 as the reference point, as opposed to 1.25 - although I suspect the SD quote of Ascension being 2.5 means that there actually isn't a 1.0 anymore.

Reply #17 Top
The "rebalancing" of the Tech score seems like a very good guess.

Hmm... Ascension is given the same weight as military?

I suppose that correlating Ascension to any one other victory type would be enough to verify that.
Reply #18 Top
Well, I think their reasoning for it was that since you take a - relations hit for holding 1 crystal and a -- if you have more than 1, people are going to be rather upset with you and you'll probably have to fight your way through the 4-5 years it'll take to get the 1,000 ascension points you need for victory. In which time you most likely would have won a conquest victory due to your heavy-handedness needed to stay alive with everyone upset at you.
Reply #19 Top
Very interesting. I was almost certain they wouldnt ever try to balance the scoring, but looks like they may have buffed up tech a bit. Nice. :)

Kzinti empire2.JPG Sentient species taste better...

Reply #20 Top
Very interesting. I was almost certain they wouldnt ever try to balance the scoring, but looks like they may have buffed up tech a bit. Nice.


personally I think game type might not have that much to do with it. True some are easier to achieve then others and that would affect it but I reckon what you do Ingame would have the biggest effect. Most likely war would be a good way to earn points. Just a thought but I reckon what you do in game would have the biggest impact on points (Which is why diplomacy has such a low points value).
Reply #21 Top
I've said it before, I don't think scores should be changed based on victory type. Of course there's nothing that can be done now without changing all past scores.