How is your final score determined?
GalCiv2 Forums
Since your final score is such an important thing in the metaverse, I'm just curious to know how different things factor in to it. However, the GalCiv II wiki does not seem to have a page on it. Could anyone link to a resource describing the factors in your score, or just give them here? Thanks!
There's nothing on it in the Wiki. There has been quite a bit written about it in these forums but it would probably be hard to find the relevant posts. I'd even have difficulty finding most of it and I've contributed to pretty much every discussion that there's ever been on the subject. This can be a very long discussion and I'm not going to be able to give all of it to you in a single reply but I will try to hit the high points.
Basically your score is determined by four things. Your population, income, military rating and research spending. The best thing to do is to look at these four graphs as displayed under the Stats & Graphs tab of your Civilization Manager. Your score is essentially the sum of the "area under the curve" (i.e. the integral) of each of these four components of score. Also your total score is "front end weighted" which means that even modest values of each of the four components of score that are achieved early in the came can be worth as much or even more than high values achieved much later in the game.
I'm pretty sure the mechanics of score are realtively well understood but getting into the details usually adds more confusion than it clears up. Suffice to say that the earlier you can essentially win the game the higher your score will be but winning the game early doesn't mean ending it early. This is because you need to achieve high values of the four components of score and hold them for long periods of time to maximize "the area under curve". That's not to say that any arbitrarily high score can be achieved by "milking" the game because you do hit diminishing returns relatively quickly but the highest scores are accomplished by games that are essentially won in about 2 years with income, pop, military and tech spending maximized and then holding those values for another 3 to 4 game years.
One of the simplest score maximizations is your military component which can be accomplished by building a military starbase array consisting of 24 military SB's whose area of influence (AOI) overlaps onto two parsecs and then building literally thousands (I personally usually build about 17,000) of ships and placing them in the military SB array's AOI to gain the 1500 point per ship bonus. That's the easy part and it's something that everyone does. The hard part is really doing everything faster, better and most importantly *earlier* in the game and that is something that takes a long time to master.
One other point is that games are reported in years and so any game ended on or before Dec 22nd counts as the same length. So most folks always end the game on Dec 22nd. Usually people will get themselves to a winning position with only one AI left with usually a single planet and then build out the galaxy with stockmarkets allowing your population and income to reach it's max while researching tech and building ships for their SB array. Once your pop stops growing then you pretty much reach the limit of pop and income and you'll find that your score growth will slow considerably and eventually stop.
As an example I will set myself up so that I can end the game by the end of the 2nd year and then I'll save it and as a test end the game and see what score I'd get. For me this is usually around 300K or so. I then wait out another year and do another test and generally my score will be 600K so that 1st "extra" year is worth an extra 300K points. Waiting another year beyond that nets about 150K, and the year beyond that 75K and each year the extra points will essentially halve. You can see that after a few years of this the point becomes moot and it's time to end it. Anyway it will take quite some time to get to these levels but the halving of each years point increase is pretty consistent no matter what your current scoring ability.
Hope this helps.
Not for score purposes; just MV display purposes. At least that's how I understood it to be.
Unless you (or someone else) can specifically prove otherwise, anyway.
When I have time this week or next I'll look into it and see if I can determine an exact difference between a week 1 year 1 game and a week 52 year 0 win.
Are these tips equally as true for ToA? What is a high score for ToA?
Unless you (or someone else) can specifically prove otherwise, anyway.
I'm not sure about "proof" but I do believe that score is monotonically increasing in all cases. In other words the score that you get for a 53 week (i.e. turn) game must always be greater than that of the same game ended at turn 52 since the score of the 53 turn game consists of the score of the 52 turn game *plus* whatever additional score was accumulated on the 53rd turn.
But the point is that the *rate* of score increase slows each additional turn due to the inverse nature of score to turn number. I didn't really want to get into the whole thing about score being divided by turn number squared and the fact that since score is accumulated each turn essentially multiplies by a factor of turn number (albeit non linearly) which makes the end result that score is essentially inversely proportional to turn number, not turn number squared. This is the part that causes most peoples' eyes to glaze over and go, "huh?"
In any case it's pretty well accepted that if you want the highest score for a particular length win then you want to end the game on Dec 22nd. The comparison you need to make is not between a 52 week game and a 53 week game but between a 53 week game and a 104 week game because both are credited as a 1 year game. I doubt that there is any situation in which the 104 week game *won't* be a higher scoring 1 year game than the same 1 year game that happened to end at week 53.
As to highest scores for the various versions, I have the highest DL game at 1,093,250. I'm pretty sure the highest DA game is Livonya's 1,457,050 (although my current goal is to surpass this). And Magnumaniac definitely has the highest ToA game at 1,064,000.
One point is that all of these games are gigantiac (or immense) galaxy games with everthing set to abundant. In general the limitation on the score you can achieve is most limited by the number and type of galactic resources in the game (and how early in the game you can gain control of them) which dictates income, military and research bonuses.
My scoremonster friend Mumble forgot to mention that the *type* of victory is a major factor in your score.
The game is inherently biased towards war wins. I forget the exact modifiers and which one goes with what type, but if climbing ranks in the official Metaverse is your top goal, a war win is a must. The AltMeta addresses this problem by providing six ranking ladders, three of which exclude military victories.
TA added a new win type, Ascension, which is more or less a 'soft' military win. It scores better than anything besides complete conquest, and it counts on the war ladders on the AltMeta. But you don't have to do all the scut work of grinding through all those helpless neighbors after you achieve overwhelming firepower superiority--just take those crystals and keep both them and your main territory defended.
The point is that between the MV and the AltMeta there's room for people that prefer many different types of game. Certainly there are a subset of folks to which score is important but just as clearly there are those that don't really care so much. But one thing is certain and that is that you need to play the game the way that is fun for you. If the only reason someone plays is to get high scores to put them high up on some list or other then that's the wrong reason and it's likely that they won't stick with it.
Tech = 1.0
Alliance = 1.2
Influence = 1.4
Military = 2.0
Ascension = 2.0
Which says that all things being equal (which is often difficult to arrange) that the score of a military or ascension victory will be twice that of a Tech win.
I don't know if this holds for all games, or if mine glitched, but a terror star victory gave about 0.15. I finished a 7 or 8 year abundant all with a terror star and got less than 19k out of it.
On the final turn, there were 6 planets left. Three got invaded, the other three got blown up -> 18.5k
Reloaded, on same turn blew up three, then invaded -> 250k
now THAT's interesting and worth checking into. Terror Stars were already a bane to gameplay, adding extremely low scores on top of it would insure their demise.
Reloaded, on same turn blew up three, then invaded -> 250k
Defeat = 0.15 [edited]
Tech = 1.0
Alliance = 1.2
Influence = 1.4
Military = 2.0
Ascension = 2.0
Mumblefratz is best to answer this, but I seem to recall that each Difficulty was a slight modifier to score- that is Tough is equal to 1.0, Painful 1.1, Cripplin 1.2, Maso 1.3, Obscene 1.4, Suicidal 1.5 and vice versa in the oppoiste direction. Though, obviously I can't say that with any certainity, just experience and earlier discussions back in the day
When was this?
Blowing up the final AIs accidentally called the defeat algorithm (even though it called the appropriate special endscreen), but Cari fixed it for either 2.01 or 2.02.
Basically the score modifer was assumed to be difficulty to the 1.1 power but there is a question as to what numeric representation of difficulty was used. One assumption is that it's the AI intelligence level shown in the following list that's taken to the 1.1 power.
* 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)
This would result in ratio of about 12 between suicidal and cakewalk since (150^1.1)/(15^1.1)=12.6. However this seems a lot larger than I would expect. IIRC I would expect the ratio between suicidal and cakewalk to be 2 or 3 at most. But I don't think anyone has really investigated this aspect of scoring in a whole lot of detail.
The problem is that you can't play a single game and end it at different difficulty levels and so it's tough to get an "apples to apples" comparison. However the ratio between suicidal and obscene that is implied by the above is (150^1.1)/(120^1.1)=1.28. I suppose a 28% scoring bonus to suicidal from obscene is possible but that still seems quite a bit larger than I would expect from my experience.
Thanks a lot for the information, but I still have some questions.
First, are the points given from income determined before or after expenses (such as ship maintainance, etc.)? Also, do you recieve points for techs and money acquired through diplomacy?
Gross income, not net. If I make 100BC/wk and my expenses are 95BC/wk, all other things being equal, my score is going to be identical to making 100BC/wk with 5BC/wk expenses.
However, all other things are not equal, and the empire with more expenses will generally have made more progress in other areas that score depends on.
You don't receive score for techs, or money. You receive score for research and income. If an AI gives you 3000BC, your score won't increase at all just because of it. If an AI gives you 5 techs, your research score won't increase, either. Your research score is essentially how much you spend on research-so creativity doesn't actually help your score, either.
That said, it doesn't really hurt it, it's just a marginal difference assuming you "turn off" research sooner because of it. Furthmore, research is by far the lowest of the contributors to score, so apart from actually researching the techs you need, it can essentially be safely ignored.
The reason that I and most folks believed that research couldn't be a significant part of score is that it's pretty difficult to get research to comparable levels as income, pop or military. However Magnumaniac did prove in his 1 million point ToA game that you could get a significant score contribution from research if you really take it to extreme levels. This counts on particularly high levels of research bonus that can be achieved in an immense ToA galaxy along with higher than normal bonuses for resource mining from techs that you can't get by yourself but you can get from multiple AI's. Combine this with a 1 million bc per turn income of which over 400K per turn is spent on research and you *can* get a significant contribution from your research component.
{blink} {blink}
Maybe I can just take a course in this?
On the otherhand, never mind - I refuse to play to maximize my score in any game where the words "Score" and "Integral" are mentioned in the same sentence.
In fact, the heck with it - I'm playing my next game on cakewalk, just so I can beat the AI up and feel better about my intelligence - {G}. Because of you Mumblefratz, the Tor are going to die a meaningless, painful death.
See what you did?
Jonnan
From reply #29 of the Notes from a 1 million point game thread (which is a very good thread to read for those interested in high score games), Mag gives the following details from his 1 million point ToA game.
Society - 141K
Tech - 204K
Econ - 382K
Military - 435K
Total Score - 1,064,000
These values are displayed in the summary screen at the end of the game and these four components of score also deserve significant discussion. However the point is that on can achieve a tech score that is a greater contribution to the total score that the score from population (i.e. Society) and half that of the score contribution that one receives from your income (i.e. Econ). The point being that your tech score *can* be significant.
The other much more difficult point this brings up is a comparison of the sum of the 4 components of score versus your total score and how one can use that to determine how effective one is in taking advantage of the "front end loaded" aspect of score.
If you take a look at Mag's totals 141+204+382+435=1162. Note that the sum of Mag's four components of score is very close to his total score. You might expect that total score is merely the sum of the four components of score but it most definitely is not. In fact I'm pretty sure that the way your total score is determined is that each turn each of the accumulated values of the four components of score are divided by the turn number and potentially multiplied by some constant and then summed into the accumulating total score. I'm also pretty sure that each component of score is calculated by accumulating the value of each component of score at each turn divided by the turn number and possibly again multiplied by a constant.
This is that part about dividing by the turn number *twice* but since this function is summed over all turn numbers (which acts as multiplying by turn number) this results is an effective division by turn number instead of turn number squared.
The whole point of this would be totally unimportant except for the fact that this provides insight into your game by comparing the sum of the four componets of score and the resultant total score with that of another player.
Basically how this came to be is that in the days of DL v1.0 there was only the single division of score by turn number. However people noticed that you could essentially continue a game forever and the score would continue to increase. Finally when someone submitted a 6 million point 209 *year* game, it was realize that this was a problem and an "additional" divide by turn number was added to the score calculation. And I'm pretty convinced it was added at the final stage where the four components of score are accumulated into the running total score.
A lot of folks have heard all this before with a varying degree of understanding. It is both tough to expalin and tough to understand and so most folks don't really "get it" right off the bat, but give it some time and it usually will begin to sink in.
So anyway back to this sum of components versus total score comparison thing. Note that in the same thread that I referenced above I posted some details in reply #38 from a 924K DL game the details of which follow.
Society = 125,210
Research = 35,574
Economy = 499,481
Military = 937,633
Total Score = 924,500
In this case the sum of components is 125+35+499+938=1596 which is far different from Mag's case. I think there's a combination of two things going on here. The first is that definitely Mag's game was more "front end weighted" than my game. The second is because of lopsidedness of my game versus his. In my case my score is predominately based on an extremely high military component and a pretty significant income component whereas Mag's scores were more balanced. This forces me to conclude that his game was better than mine.
However one caveat emptor is that this also may simply be showing differences between DL and DA/ToA since Livonya's sum of components was similar to Mag's and I think even Livonya would admit that it's doubtful he could match Mag in getting high values of score early in the game. That's not to say Livonya is not a great player, it's just that I've never met anyone that could come close to Mag's game.
As I said earlier many people could care less about score and there is nothing wrong with that. Play the way you enjoy and you'll keep playing. Play the way you think others want you to play and you'll get bored or annoyed and quit.
But if a high score is part of what you enjoy and the tedium of creating a perfect galaxy is part of your fun then surprisingly this *can* increase your enjoyment of the game.
You've said yourself that comparatively it's not worth working for. The score you get for researching what you need as fast as you can, yes, that's worth it, but beyond that, it's not.
I neglected to mention that it's actual research done, as due to bonus production that value isn't equal to money spent on research, but the point I intended to make was that the actual techs have no real bearing on it (and hence any techs the AI trades to you have absolutely no direct impact on your score).
The game done by Mag that you mention is interesting due to its high research component, but one wonders if he had spent that money on ships for instance if his overall score might have been higher.
This is of course a hypothetical only and is not intended to second guess Mag or his game(s)-I'm not nearly that good (yet anyway). Additionally, while you don't explicitly state it, for all I know he may have done things that way in that game simply to prove that point.
But yeah the actual tech's have no bearing nor do techs traded or stolen.
In any case it is very difficult and most likely wrong to make any significant cross version comparisons because of these subtle but far reaching differences. For even though I could never get 50K ships in DL, my 17K fully upgraded ships achieved a military rating of over 14 million and was done far earlier in the game than Livonya maxed out his military, plus his 50,000 ships gave him a military rating of only 10 million. This further highlights the version differences.
In any case the point I was trying to make was that yes I *used* to assume that it was best in all cases to just take the "low hanging fruit" when it came to research and spend your resources in other areas. However, now I'm saying that is no longer so obviously true to me, at least not particularly in ToA versus DL/DA.
I think the bottom line is never say never.
Good catch, I think it was 1.95.
Could he have reached 1.2 million if he gave up some of his tech score for ship building. Perhaps, but who really knows? Not me, at least not yet.
That's what I'm here for.
I was planning to milk points this last game of mine. I turned of all victory modes but conquest, disallowed surrenders, and yet when I got the last civ down to two planets it told me that I was "culturally dominating the galaxy" and that the game would end in ten turns.
How do I turn that off?
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