Scoring Question

from Stardock Forums
How much weight does difficulty have in scoring? I noticed several metaverse scores of players playing beginner level who well outscore other players, and some of their own scores played at normal, painful and other more difficult levels. It seems to me, this should not happen very often and that just about any win on a much higher difficulty level should almost always score higher than a win on a lower difficulty level. Does this make sense, or am I missing something? Perhaps it has something to do with the recent recalculations??

Thanks.
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Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
There's several factors that I've noticed:

As of version 1.04+ these apply

Higher Difficulty scores more than lower difficulty for equal map sizes

Larger maps score more than smaller maps

Quicker victories score more than slower victories

Games on newer versions score more than games on older versions

So what you're seeing is likely a result of one of these factors above

SeanB
Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
It's been said before, but how you win is also very important.

I.e. in my last game, I finished beyond human and scored 1471. I went back to a save game 7 turns earlier, gave 3 planets away to the Torians to get him to sign the alliance, and scored 3572 for the alliance victory. I obviously had less planets and population in the latter but scored more than double anyway because it wasn't a Beyond Human win.

This basically means there you don't want to win with Beyond Human (at least on the larger maps) unless you can't win another way. At least for metaverse purposes.

Elemental: Reforged
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
Cool, thanks for the responses.

~SDC~
Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
I was genuinely shocked at how many points the game awarded me for a Conquest victory -- my suspicion is that conquest gets a substantial bonus of some kind over, say, Cultural. This was more so because I actually hadn't invaded most planets, but had let influence do a huge part of it. (Additional note: The text for a Conquest victory even reads as: --begin quote Paving the way to victory in the blood of their enemies, the %s Civilization has emerged from the galactic race victorious. Their score is one that most likely be logged in the Metaverse, inspiring other would-be leaders for years to come! On the shoulders of his troops, Emperor %s will be raised and remembered as the greatest leader throughout the galaxy, spreading the culture of his nation to the farthest reaches of the galaxy... no matter who stands in his way. --end quote which slightly supports the idea that it's the highest scoring victory if everything else is on par.
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Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top
I have long held that victory method should be completely removed from the scoring formula.

As was pointed out, you can win by military by using cultural to flip everything, go to war before the cultural win, and not only get the score for the military win, but the score boost from the gigantic population compared to most military wins.

Conversely, you can be 98% done with a difficult military campaign, take a planet and get Final Frontier from it and win a Tech Victory and have your score *penalised* because of that because Brad feels Tech victories are too easy.

There's too many variables in this game to say that such and such a victory condition carries such different base scores/bonuses.