Longturn Forum

The present point system with "winners" and a handful of "survivors" (that don't really have to use much skill for surviving except being on the right side or at the right location compared to winners) has a consequence that this game is, basically, in its essence a game of carnage and genocide. If you want to win, you have no choice but to exterminate everybody else, literally.

I don't like it, several people have also said that they don't like it, some of them are not playing LT34 because of it (and I have no idea if they ever plan to return) and I have already said that I will not play further games under these rules. Also, I believe that this system is ruining the game for everybody except the top players because, once you realise you will not be the "winner", you have absolutely no reason to play anymore (except for the dubious "survivor" status for which, basically, you have to be friends with the winning alliance to achieve it).

So I have devised an alternative point system, the one that stimulates a completely different type of playing. It's open for discussion - either regarding details or the whole point - and I'll just put it here, everybody can take it or leave it or use it on another server. Basically, the system is best used in a persistent league type of games.

Simply, the moment the game ends (and there are several ways a game can end, more about that later because it's not directly tied to the point system), in-game scores are noted and ranking is calculated. Depending on this ranking, each player scores a number of "League Points", depending on his rank (solely or with bonuses that may be introduced by whatever method).

The formula I've constructed goes like this:

points = 10*N* ( 1 / (N/10 + R - 1) ) - 8 * (R-1) / N

N - total number of players
R - rank of the player

The formula represents a roughly inversely proportional function, with some minor corrections for effect. The effects are:
* 1st player gets 100 points
* last player gets around 1 point (sometimes slightly more, when there are less players)
* all top 10% players get more than 50 points (if N is a multiple of 10, then the first player after the first 10% gets 49 points)

For example, with a game of 10 players, the players get the following distribution of points:
1st player gets 100 points
2nd player gets 49 points
3rd player gets 32 points
4th player gets 23 points
5th player gets 17 points
6th player gets 13 points
7th player gets 9 points
8th player gets 7 points
9th player gets 5 points
10th player gets 3 points

In a 30-player game, the first 4 players get 100, 75, 59 and 49 points. 10th player gets 23, 20th player gets 9 and 30th player gets 2 points.

In a 50-player game, first 6 players get 100, 83, 71, 62, 55, 49 points. 30th player gets 10 points, the last player gets 1 point.

The formula and the details can be discussed and adjusted, but you get the main principle.

Effects this would have on the game

Everybody would actually fight their direct opponents near them in the ranking table, nations who are of similar strength. Weaker nations may be overrun for land, but not as a rule. A potential "first 10%" player may use weaker players as vassals or scouts or whatever, also eliminate them if he wants / needs to, but it would not be required in order to "win" the game. Also, weaker players may find the incentive to survive and compete with their equals in order to get those few extra points. Alliances between stronger players - at least permanent ones - would be strongly discouraged because they are competing against each other and their final score will differ greatly if they fall for even one place in the ranking.

Probably this style of playing is not in the interest of some people, but, as always, those who like it will play while those who don't won't.

The current scoring would take into account the best three scores out of last five games (alternatively: best 2 out of last 3; this can be debated)

-------------------------------------

One consequence this would have - that some would like (I wouldn't, but, again, it can be debated) - is increased carnage as the game approaches its final turn. To make things more interesting, I have an additional idea, not directly connected to this scoring system.

Game ends manually (meaning, admin sets the end turn for the next turn or for 2-3 turns later, to give time for verification) when the previously agreed conditions are met. For example, conditions may be:
- a player populates X square miles
- a player exceeds Y population
- a player researches all techs / Future Technology I
- a player builds a wonder A, B or C
- a player launches a spaceship
- a player holds D coins in his treasury
- anything else in the Demographics Report

Additionally, a player who fulfills any of those tasks gets a bonus for his in-game score, possibly increasing his rank and League score.

It could be a greed that a game ends when one, some or all of those conditions are met. This would make it uncertain when exactly a game would end, although people could get the general idea. To help determine if conditions are met, create a small wonder at a later stage of the game that gives an embassy with all players; this way best players in some categories (land, population, techs, treasury) can be checked and verified by everybody who possesses this wonder (either by embassy or Demographics Report).

Opinions and comments are welcome.

The system used for LT34 may not be the perfect one but the reason we have it is simple. In too many games lots of players have simply tried to survive until the end of the game and never even tried to beat the enemies. In LT33 this happened once again and from my point of view, as a member of the winning alliance in LT33, it was actually strange to see how the game actually ended when two leading nations were destroyed and the remaining nations practically gave up. I can assure you that they would have been able to strike back and possibly even win the game. After a successful attack the attackers have usually lost lots of offensive units and lots of defensive units are moved to the recently conquered cities. Events like that open a window of opportunity for those who want to strike back.

To encourage events like these we now have a limit for the winners and survivors. If it doesn't work out, we will try something else.

What limits possible settings for counting the winners? I'm not sure how easy it would be to get the scores for all of the players. If someone knows how to do that, it would be great. I'm also not sure how to keep track of when players go RIP. We can possibly extract that data from the saves but if more than one player is killed at the same turn, it may be impossible to know the order of the events.

A fixed end turn was not liked that much in LT31 even while the game was too long. Maybe one idea would be setting an end period of like 20 turns and the winners would get 5% less score every turn the game would last after that one.

I like the LW system. It's simple and relatively easy to understand. Some players declare as the winners and if someone objects, the objecting player must be destroyed.

In the end of the day all that matters is a good game. It's really hard to decide how to do this with so many players. A game with veterans and beginners playing in the same game. One suggestion to deal with that was this one http://forum.longturn.org/viewtopic.php?id=437

Then again maybe the number of the winners shouldn't be limited and people should be allowed to win with a 40 player alliance if that's what they want to do?

wieder wrote:The system used for LT34 may not be the perfect one but the reason we have it is simple. In too many games lots of players have simply tried to survive until the end of the game and never even tried to beat the enemies.

To be more specific, why would anyone be obliged to try to "beat their enemies"? Does it say somewhere in the rules? "Thou shalt smythe thy foes or thou are not a worthy Civ player"?

Also, I'm really curious. Why does this bother you? More players "not trying to win" is an easier path to victory for you. Why do you want to force other people to play your way?

In LT33 this happened once again and from my point of view, as a member of the winning alliance in LT33, it was actually strange to see how the game actually ended when two leading nations were destroyed and the remaining nations practically gave up. I can assure you that they would have been able to strike back and possibly even win the game. After a successful attack the attackers have usually lost lots of offensive units and lots of defensive units are moved to the recently conquered cities. Events like that open a window of opportunity for those who want to strike back.

Can you be more specific here? Who gave up? Remaining members of the opposing alliance or third parties?

To encourage events like these we now have a limit for the winners and survivors. If it doesn't work out, we will try something else.

Hence my proposition. Because, in my view, this thing isn't working. There are people who simply don't have enough experience or talent to be among the top players, ever. They will be suppressed forever and, in the end, will leave never to return because this type of scoring can offer to them nothing else but to be someone else's punching bag.

What limits possible settings for counting the winners? I'm not sure how easy it would be to get the scores for all of the players. If someone knows how to do that, it would be great.

Excuse me?

I'm also not sure how to keep track of when players go RIP. We can possibly extract that data from the saves but if more than one player is killed at the same turn, it may be impossible to know the order of the events.

If more players are killed on the same turn, then they share their rank. As for keeping track, I usually notice when there is a new R.I.P. without even actively trying. I don't see why that would be a problem if a few people take this as a task.

A fixed end turn was not liked that much in LT31 even while the game was too long.

Thus my proposition about end conditions.

Maybe one idea would be setting an end period of like 20 turns and the winners would get 5% less score every turn the game would last after that one.

I don't understand this. So how exactly is it determined when the game actually ends?

Then again maybe the number of the winners shouldn't be limited and people should be allowed to win with a 40 player alliance if that's what they want to do?

Nonsense.

"To be more specific, why would anyone be obliged to try to "beat their enemies"? Does it say somewhere in the rules? "Thou shalt smythe thy foes or thou are not a worthy Civ player"?"

It's nice to have winners. If playing for the victory is not something some people want to do, we can start a new game for them. That was probably not suggested by anyone. Beat the enemies is a saying. The idea with the LT and LW games is to end the game with some winners if the game doesn't become a tie.

"Also, I'm really curious. Why does this bother you? More players "not trying to win" is an easier path to victory for you. Why do you want to force other people to play your way?"

It usually bothers me when I see someone wanting something I can't really understand. If people are ok with lots of nations conquering the world and killing everyone else, I guess that's what we can try once again. The last time this happened was in LT30.

"Can you be more specific here? Who gave up? Remaining members of the opposing alliance or third parties?"

The game was practically over once the two strong nations collapsed. At least it didn't look like anyone else but our alliance was trying to win. Then again if people no longer want to try to win the game, there is really no problem. In that case however it would be nice to know it's like that.

"Hence my proposition. Because, in my view, this thing isn't working. There are people who simply don't have enough experience or talent to be among the top players, ever. They will be suppressed forever and, in the end, will leave never to return because this type of scoring can offer to them nothing else but to be someone else's punching bag."

Can you shorten your proposition? Lots of people don't want to read that much and since they play the game, they easily become those who will never want to return. Why not simply use the in-game scores for this? Assuming that the in-game scores can be extracted from the game.

What it comes to end conditions, I have no idea how to know when most of those conditions are met. I'm also unsure if lots of people would be willing to play a game ending without a warning. Like having someone reaching tech x, gold x or land area x. Warning about those would need code and we don't have anyone to do the coding.

"Excuse me?"

I don't know how to get the scores for all the players. In the past games I have only been able to see the scores for players I had an embassy with. If someone was killed before I managed to get one, the scores remained unknown to me. Lots of nations were missing from that list.

"If more players are killed on the same turn, then they share their rank. As for keeping track, I usually notice when there is a new R.I.P. without even actively trying. I don't see why that would be a problem if a few people take this as a task. "

I guess it might work if the people killed at the same turn would be counted with the same rank.

"I don't understand this. So how exactly is it determined when the game actually ends?"

Assuming that the end period would start at T180, the winners would get 100% ranking points if they managed to win at T180. If they managed to win only at T190 they would get 50% of the scores. At T195 only 25% of the scores and if the game would last beyond T200 it would be effectively a tie.

""Then again maybe the number of the winners shouldn't be limited and people should be allowed to win with a 40 player alliance if that's what they want to do?""
"Nonsense."

I don't think it's nonsense. Would you be ok with 40 players teaming up against few players if the 40 players would be allowed to win together? After all this would be unrestricted freedom.

I'm not quite sure what you are looking for. The rules can limit things the players can do and sometimes limiting is the only reasonable way to do something. After LT33 lots of people wanted to take away the tech trading because they thought it was a popularity contest. Preventing the tech trades was the only way to do that, at least the only one we knew, since some other methods used in LT31 and LT32 had lots of undesired side effects like losing techs and prolonging the game.

wieder wrote:"To be more specific, why would anyone be obliged to try to "beat their enemies"? Does it say somewhere in the rules? "Thou shalt smythe thy foes or thou are not a worthy Civ player"?"

It's nice to have winners. If playing for the victory is not something some people want to do, we can start a new game for them. That was probably not suggested by anyone.

Just did. But have a better look at my suggestion: there is a clear winner, but not so clear losers.

Actually, that's the main point here. It's not an issue of winners. It is more or less clear who is a winner in a given game. What you insist on is to name the losers.

"Also, I'm really curious. Why does this bother you? More players "not trying to win" is an easier path to victory for you. Why do you want to force other people to play your way?"

It usually bothers me when I see someone wanting something I can't really understand.

...so you create a rule that makes it impossible for them even to survive... Neat. If you can't understand it, kill it

If people are ok with lots of nations conquering the world and killing everyone else, I guess that's what we can try once again. The last time this happened was in LT30.

Come again?

"Can you be more specific here? Who gave up? Remaining members of the opposing alliance or third parties?"

The game was practically over once the two strong nations collapsed. At least it didn't look like anyone else but our alliance was trying to win. Then again if people no longer want to try to win the game, there is really no problem. In that case however it would be nice to know it's like that.

If you could name the players/nations that were physically able to challenge your victory, please do. Otherwise, you are having a philosophical discussion with yourself because I'm not following you.

"Hence my proposition. Because, in my view, this thing isn't working. There are people who simply don't have enough experience or talent to be among the top players, ever. They will be suppressed forever and, in the end, will leave never to return because this type of scoring can offer to them nothing else but to be someone else's punching bag."

Can you shorten your proposition?

No.

Lots of people don't want to read that much

Well, the documentation for LT34 was an order of magnitude bigger than my proposal. So, what's your point, again?

and since they play the game, they easily become those who will never want to return. Why not simply use the in-game scores for this?

I'm sorry, what exactly are you referring to here? My scoring system? It is extremely simple: one formula that you put into Excel (anybody can do that). Everything else are explanations.

What it comes to end conditions, I have no idea how to know when most of those conditions are met.

Then you didn't read my proposal very carefully. I mentioned a near-endgame small wonder that gives you an embassy with everyone, this giving the data about players with: most territory, most population, discovered technologies etc. Also, Big Wonders are a public thing and can be easily followed.

I'm also unsure if lots of people would be willing to play a game ending without a warning. Like having someone reaching tech x, gold x or land area x.

That remains to be seen. My estimate is that people will be willing to play a game with any kind of rules, up to a point. The difference is: "up to a point". However, the varying end turn is something for a separate discussion.

Warning about those would need code and we don't have anyone to do the coding.

As explained above, no it wouldn't. It would only need a few people who are paying attention. We already have one: me.

"Excuse me?"

I don't know how to get the scores for all the players. In the past games I have only been able to see the scores for players I had an embassy with. If someone was killed before I managed to get one, the scores remained unknown to me. Lots of nations were missing from that list.

Oh, I thought those were all remaining players and you got that at the end of the game. My bad. Either way, again, this is where the endgame all-embassies wonder comes into play.

Actually, maybe it would be possible to make this not a wonder thing, but simply to give you info (basically, an embassy) about all nations once you research a certain technology. For example: espionage.

"I don't understand this. So how exactly is it determined when the game actually ends?"

Assuming that the end period would start at T180, the winners would get 100% ranking points if they managed to win at T180. If they managed to win only at T190 they would get 50% of the scores. At T195 only 25% of the scores and if the game would last beyond T200 it would be effectively a tie.

Ok, I'll rephrase my question: how is it determined if a player actually wins?

Apart from that, my problem with this is that it doesn't distinguish between people who have barely survived, people who had some success and the almost-winners. Seems terribly unfair.

""Then again maybe the number of the winners shouldn't be limited and people should be allowed to win with a 40 player alliance if that's what they want to do?""
"Nonsense."

I don't think it's nonsense. Would you be ok with 40 players teaming up against few players if the 40 players would be allowed to win together? After all this would be unrestricted freedom.

Yes, but this whole discussion is about trying to achieve some result, stimulate or destimulate something. What result would this achieve? May as well abolish the whole idea of winners (which is fine by me, but I don't get your point.)

I'm not quite sure what you are looking for.

I'm looking for a way to throw away the "gotta kill'em all" approach. Nothing else.

After LT33 lots of people wanted to take away the tech trading because they thought it was a popularity contest. Preventing the tech trades was the only way to do that, at least the only one we knew, since some other methods used in LT31 and LT32 had lots of undesired side effects like losing techs and prolonging the game.

Actually, the problem with losing techs is that, unmoderated, it is utter and irrational chaos. However, if you dip into the techs.ruleset and make every technology a "root requisite" for something, then the only techs that are lost are the newest ones which is exactly how it should be. If I didn't misunderstand the explanation I got.

"Actually, that's the main point here. It's not an issue of winners. It is more or less clear who is a winner in a given game. What you insist on is to name the losers. "

We could call the current winners class 1 winners, the current survivors class 2 winners and the current RIP nations class 3 winners but that would be just changing the terms. I don't understand the actual problem if it's not using the term of loser. If you want to have a game with no one called losers, I guess we can arrange that but in that case I would have to ask you some more details because I don't fully understand how to set up the rules for a game like that. I suppose the LT34 ruleset would work fine, even with the planned LT35 fixes but the end conditions would need to be changed.

Just saying because the terms really don't matter that much. Some players do better than the others and the terms are used to define that.

"...so you create a rule that makes it impossible for them even to survive... Neat. If you can't understand it, kill it tongue"

I don't understand what you are saying now. The reasons for for the changes were on the forum. Making the game more interesting than in some previous games where lots of people complained huge alliances teaming up to kill teams of just few people.

"Come again?"

In LT30 there were 20-40 nations teaming up to kill 3 nations. Then again in LT31 we had an alliance of maybe 20+ nations doing the almost same thing. This can't be avoided but it can be discouraged. The game is more interesting to many people if this is discouraged. Just like the game can be more interesting to some people if there are no restrictions for going this.

"Then you didn't read my proposal very carefully. I mentioned a near-endgame small wonder that gives you an embassy with everyone, this giving the data about players with: most territory, most population, discovered technologies etc. Also, Big Wonders are a public thing and can be easily followed."

This is one way but it's also hard to know at what era will the end game happen. Sometimes it took all the way to the end of the tech tree and sometimes it ended with alpines.

"That remains to be seen. My estimate is that people will be willing to play a game with any kind of rules, up to a point. The difference is: "up to a point". However, the varying end turn is something for a separate discussion."

I have no idea how popular that would be. More comments?

"As explained above, no it wouldn't. It would only need a few people who are paying attention. We already have one: me."

Warning about people getting gold/techs/something would need the embassy with everyone. If it would be ok to have one for everyone after gunpowder, that might work out.

"Ok, I'll rephrase my question: how is it determined if a player actually wins?"

We could do that simply based on score and with n numbers of players with top score. Meaning that the game would end for example at Txxx (preferably predefined), with a space race victory or with someone killing enough players.

"Yes, but this whole discussion is about trying to achieve some result, stimulate or destimulate something. What result would this achieve? May as well abolish the whole idea of winners (which is fine by me, but I don't get your point.)"

I simply don't like the idea of unfairly big alliances killing few players. Not that I like the idea of too experienced players all teaming up. I've done all that and it really feels that it should be avoided.

"I'm looking for a way to throw away the "gotta kill'em all" approach. Nothing else."

We now have tie for all and one winner + the rest as survivors. No reason not to improve this but we must understand what we are trying to really do here.

"Actually, the problem with losing techs is that, unmoderated, it is utter and irrational chaos."

Yeah, that's true but another side effect was advanced people losing too many techs, like 15, in just 3-4 turns.

wieder wrote:"Actually, that's the main point here. It's not an issue of winners. It is more or less clear who is a winner in a given game. What you insist on is to name the losers. "

We could call the current winners class 1 winners, the current survivors class 2 winners and the current RIP nations class 3 winners but that would be just changing the terms. I don't understand the actual problem if it's not using the term of loser.

The problem is that there are very different players within each of those categories and your system doesn't distinguish between them at all. Calling it unfair would be an understatement.

If you want to have a game with no one called losers, I guess we can arrange that but in that case I would have to ask you some more details because I don't fully understand how to set up the rules for a game like that. I suppose the LT34 ruleset would work fine, even with the planned LT35 fixes but the end conditions would need to be changed.

I'm not sure what you are talking about here. You mean a game with the score system I proposed?

"...so you create a rule that makes it impossible for them even to survive... Neat. If you can't understand it, kill it tongue"

I don't understand what you are saying now.

I don't understand what you don't understand.

The reasons for for the changes were on the forum. Making the game more interesting than in some previous games where lots of people complained huge alliances teaming up to kill teams of just few people.

How does limiting number of survivors have effect on this?

"Come again?"

In LT30 there were 20-40 nations teaming up to kill 3 nations. Then again in LT31 we had an alliance of maybe 20+ nations doing the almost same thing. This can't be avoided but it can be discouraged. The game is more interesting to many people if this is discouraged. Just like the game can be more interesting to some people if there are no restrictions for going this.

Keeping in mind that we don't really know what discourages more people, if LT31 style discourages less people than LT34,I'd say go for it. However, I'd rather go with a third option.

"Then you didn't read my proposal very carefully. I mentioned a near-endgame small wonder that gives you an embassy with everyone, this giving the data about players with: most territory, most population, discovered technologies etc. Also, Big Wonders are a public thing and can be easily followed."

This is one way but it's also hard to know at what era will the end game happen. Sometimes it took all the way to the end of the tech tree and sometimes it ended with alpines.

The thing is, this "full-embassy" thing isn't a victory condition. It is only a tool to check if victory conditions are fully met. If it happens that they are met before the full-embassy wonder, we could say that the players are supposed to report it, but not REQUIRED. There are several other games with this feature, stuff doesn't happen unless you report it. This way someone could (legally) manipulate endgame turn to his benefit (however unlikely). What remains is an issue of score, but then the admin could simply set the next turn to be "end turn" and also manipulate the game to get this wonder and check everybody's score.

BTW, are you sure that, when the game reaches official end turn, more things are not revealed? It would be slightly pointless, to be impossible to determine scores ince the game is finished.

I have read the description of current scoring system several times and still cannot claim to understand it all. Maybe not because it would be too complex for me to apprehend but merely due to lack of interest about the subject in general. I am a motorist and when I ride my bike I enjoy more of the journey itself than reaching the destination. When I play (free)civ I enjoy playing the game and don't really care who wins and even less who loses.

Too often civilisation games are seen primarily as war games. To me it is more about developing my nation to it's prime, to let it stand proud amongst other nations. Going to war is one but by all means not the only way to achieve that. War is always one part of the game but it includes a lot more than that. Total annihilation of my neighbours is definitely not something I take pleasure of. The current scoring system seems to encourage that kind of behaviour (again, not sure I fully understand it).

Corbeau's proposal gives room for other kinds of strategy than just "kill'em all". That still remains as an option for anyone who likes to play like that. But there would be alternative options to win the game for those who are seeking victory. The idea of everyone scoring some points is brilliant. No need to artificially classify players as winners, losers and survivors. Some did better than others, don't have to call names on them.

If the in-game score displayed in one of Corbeau's posts is to be used for ranking it should be modified a little bit. It includes built units (1 point for every 10 units built during the game) and killed units (1 point for 3 kills). I can easily picture someone building loads of least expensive units and disband them to build more, just to increase the score.

I give my support to this proposal. You should give it a try outside the current ranking system. And if it proves to be a good one, someday start a new ranking based on it.

The "Math of FreeCiv" page says that the score is "number of citizens + number of techs * 2 + number of wonders * 5", so no units are calculated in any way.

Unless I misuderstood and you're actually saying that units *should* be calculated?

The current ranking system is used for ranking the players in one way. It's on the rules that there can be several ranking systems. There is no reason why someone couldn't start a new ranking system and rank the games based on that. The thing is that we currently have a limited amount of data available.

Pre-defined end turns have been quite unpopular and made some people feel that the game was ended prematurely. Then again since this is just a matter of decision, the players could choose, before the game starts, if they want to have an end turn or not. Those players who wish to play until, say T150, could keep playing until that time. When T150 was reached, we could get a snapshot of the game and for players playing until T150 we could post the scores on the forum or on the web site. After that we could remove those players from the game and let the rest of the players continue playing until the game ends because of some other condition.

Who would be happy with this kind of game? There could be two ranking systems or you could simply ignore the rankings.

Yeah, ignoring the rankings. If you don't like the rankings, simply ignore them and play the game. There is absolutely nothing preventing anyone from doing whatever you want. You can form 20 player alliances and either kill anyone else or keep developing your nations and kill no one. If you don't care about winning ranking-wise there is really nothing stopping you from doing that in LT34. You can launch the space ship and end the game that way. Ally with everyone and end the game that way.

If you don't like the winning conditions, just ignore those and play the game the way you wish.

Then why do we have rankings? It's because some players like to have that and the rankings are for them. You can be one of them or you can just ignore that. What you can't do is to make the ranking focused players to consider you as the winner(s) if you didn't win the ranking way. However if the rankings are not your thing this probably shouldn't bother you anyway.

If the problem are some players playing an offensive game, it's happening because of the players and not because the rules really. I can't see how there could be a way to prevent some people on focusing war only if that's how they wish to play. We can of course discourage that, as we have in a way done with LT34, but preventing that from happening would require making fundamental changes to the ruleset.

If you don't care about winning the game, would you still like to see some kind of ranking system (ranking you based on several games) other than the game score?

Basically, a ranking system is secondary motive here. My primary point is that this ranking you guys have actually stimulates aggression and carnage. People who are not interested in it can't simply "ignore it and play" because very soon someone who does care about ranking will come knocking, even if you are not a direct threat or an opponent, but simply because the ranking system dictates that everybody is to be eliminated (except a handful of survivors who are actually hand-picked by the winning alliance).

Corbeau wrote:The "Math of FreeCiv" page says that the score is "number of citizens + number of techs * 2 + number of wonders * 5", so no units are calculated in any way.

Then the Math of Freeciv is wrong about it. Or maybe the units parts have been removed from the calculation since 2.3 (for obvious reasons)? Reading from the source code, the score is calculated as a sum of:

• Number of citicens (the sum of city sizes)
• Number of known techs * 2
• Number of known future techs * 5
• Number of wonders * 5 (the big ones)
• Spaceship score (100 points for every 10.000 citizens on the spaceship multiplied by success rate)
• Number of units built / 10
• Number of units killed / 3

The Math page does not mention the future techs either.

It seems that this formula was added to the page (not changed) on February 10, 2013. What was the newest version at that moment?

I'm sure there are always some people who want to simply destroy every possible nation no matter what kind of rankings there are. In this case the best way to fight back is to fight back.

Kryon knows about the rankings formula. I have no idea about the versions.

wieder wrote:I'm sure there are always some people who want to simply destroy every possible nation no matter what kind of rankings there are.

Of course there are. And we should cherish those players because they give the game diversity and unpredictability and act as true barbarians, instead of the watered down computer version. And those people will exist no matter what, regardless of the ranking.

However, there are also many people who do this only because it is required and, if the ranking doesn't require it, they will not burn everything in their path.


On another note, can someone verify that scores become (or don't become) visible when the game comes to a natural conclusion? For example, say it's T211, the admin sets the End Turn to T212, then T212 comes, map is revealed to everybody... Don't the scores become revealed, too?

Then again the other way would be making it easier for the peaceful players to build their nations. Making it harder to fight wars and easier to build the economy and research science. This was actually done for LT34. In the previous games there were much more players gone by T71. It's almost unheard of that it's T71 and only one nation has gone RIP. We now have restrictinfra on, markets, banks, etc. give 50% bonus compared to 25% in some previous games and we have cheap wonders making it easier to keep the nation up to date. We also have techs becoming cheaper when someone researches them. The problem of course is that everyone can do the same and if someone simply plays well enough, that person will always be able to have better resources than the others and is ultimately able to wipe out everyone if desired.

Maybe there could be a second ranking encouraging peaceful people to stand up and prevent the militaristic ones from destroying them? After all there can be several rankings.

We could of course remove all the limits from alliance sizes and allow anyone to ally with anyone and with any number of players. In the past that has also become a popularity contest and in one game there even were about 60 players in alliance A and maybe 15 players in alliance B. The alliance A won that game because they were simply more popular. With a teamless game it's also hard to figure out who is really allied with someone next to you. 60 vs. 15 players situations are one reason why there has been limits for the number of winners.

One popular way to play the game is of course just trying to see how far you can get and not really trying to win. This is perfectly fine but usually those players are eventually conquered by someone trying to conquer everyone. I don't think we have easy answers to this.

It's always difficult to achieve some balance and different players will try to ti the balance towards peaceful or towards aggressive game, depending on their personal preferences. In such dispute, I always like to call up the issue of realism. So, peaceful and aggressive play should both be possible to gain benefit, but depending on how you perform and who you meet.

Well, about specific settings and all, again, I believe reality is the best model we can take. Restrictinfra is realistic. So is tech leakage; for example, looking at current events, ISIS has no science, but still they use tanks and advanced weapon systems. Yes, the mechanics of their acquiring this is depicted in the game in a very wrong game, but the end effect is actually the same.

About the example you mentiones, 60 vs. 15, it all depends on goals. If the goal was "alliance victory" without a limit to the size of the alliance, the, seriously, what else did you expect? It was absolutely the most logical choice, actually, the only logical. This is why I think "allied victory" doesn't make sense unless you have a strictly prescribed size of alliances. However, using this example again, with 75 players, if they used my scoring, only the first ~10 would get some serious points (and out of those 10 there would be huge differences between different ranks among them), so it is likely that this alliance woldn't last long. Or, if it would, it would have completely different causes having nothing to do with ranking and all coming directly out of gameplay - which is actually something that is desired, in my opinion.

Yeah, then at a later time it was tried to limit the alliance sizes by saying that only 10 players can actually win and all the rest would not. What happened in that game was that tons of people announced how they only cared about playing and winning the game was irrelevant. That game ended up with a 40 vs. 3 setup where the 40 players simply decided who will be among the 10 winners and who will not be one of them. This was more than fine for the players in that 40 player alliance since surviving the game was enough for them. Naturally a 40 vs. 3 situation is not that desirable for anyone. Some stuff happened after that one and as a result we now have this experiment with limited winners and survivors. The idea was to discourage people from trying to both win and survive. It's still possible to have that 40 vs. 3 situation but the difference is that there can't be winners ranking-wise. The 40 players winning the rest can consider themselves as winners but they will not be counted as winners on the web page.

With LT33 this was kind of avoided, from one point of view, by simply hiding the fact that some nations were allied. Then again from another point of view there were many teams effectively joining forces.

Is there something on the ruleset you would like to change to make the game more interesting?

A LOT OF THINGS! I've even started working on a pretty different ruleset, but it's been dragging on for months, I have too many other things in life that have priority and I'm simply not making it. I started long ago and have some general outlines, started babling about it here: http://civland.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=1125

But, as short as possible: I definitely prefer x2 movement, smaller citymindist and LESS amphibious units than in current ruleset. But those are my personal preferences, can't really say it would be better, only different, probably favouring less aggression (meaning: making aggression a bit harder to perform)

wieder wrote:Yeah, then at a later time it was tried to limit the alliance sizes by saying that only 10 players can actually win and all the rest would not. What happened in that game was that tons of people announced how they only cared about playing and winning the game was irrelevant. That game ended up with a 40 vs. 3 setup where the 40 players simply decided who will be among the 10 winners and who will not be one of them. This was more than fine for the players in that 40 player alliance since surviving the game was enough for them. Naturally a 40 vs. 3 situation is not that desirable for anyone.

Well, to me it seems those three players had a tragical fail in diplomacy You just don't play Civ without diplomacy Especially one-turn-per-day variant. I hope they learned from their mistakes

BTW, this game seemed like a total success marketing-wise. So, you had 40 happy players who would likely play again and only 3 unhappy ones. So, where's the problem?

Yeah, it's true that some diplomacy is needed but the game shouldn't be just about diplomacy. With LT33 something similar happened with tech trading and some people were able to trade techs more than the others. Because of that we now have disabled the tech trading even while that limits the options for the players.

Not all of those 40 players were happy once the game was over.

You have some good ideas but making the upkeep of the units more expensive would allow democratic nations to have those super armies without a problem and the rest would face quite heavy costs. In the late game that is.

wieder wrote:Yeah, it's true that some diplomacy is needed but the game shouldn't be just about diplomacy. With LT33 something similar happened with tech trading and some people were able to trade techs more than the others.

And did it do them any good?

Not all of those 40 players were happy once the game was over.

Well, then I hope they realised what ruined their fun and will be able to take a different path next time

You have some good ideas but making the upkeep of the units more expensive would allow democratic nations to have those super armies without a problem and the rest would face quite heavy costs. In the late game that is.

Well, I believe I mentioned new concepts. One of them is: it's stupid to have despotism or a monarchy in a modern world, either adapt or die. You can't have "balance" between middle-age and modern-era governments, some are clearly better under some circumstances. Simply, to maintain hi-tech army, you need money. And I'm reconsidering, maybe even double or triple upkeep costs mentioned there.

On the other hand, I may consider reducing *financial* cost of upkeep under communism (for obvious reasons). But, like I said, all this takes a lot of time that I don't have right now.