Post by SirPartyMan on May 26, 2003 14:03:32 GMT -5
A GUIDE TO WINNING GAMES BY POINTS
I would like to share with all who are interested what I have learned about winning CIV3 games by scoring the most points. Of course, a points or histogram victory is just one of several ways to win. But it's no guarantee. Points only matter if you survive to the end of the game. So never forget to have a good defense, at least, even for those who aren't warmongers.
Let’s begin with the exact point scoring algorithm, which is often misunderstood or misquoted:
In CIV3, score calculation is done at every turn, based on the following rules:
1) For every Happy Citizen, you score +2 points
2) For every Content Citizen (or Specialist) you score +1 points
3) For every Unhappy or Resisting Citizen you score zero points (not -1 as Prima's strategy guide says)
4) For every land square inside your cultural borders (including Coast squares, but NOT Sea nor Ocean Squares) you score +1 points
5) For every future technology, you score +1 points.
Your score is calculated at the end of each turn. It is then multiplied by the game’s difficulty level (Chieftain is 1, Warlord is 2, Regent is 3, Monarch is 4, Emperor is 5, Deity is 6). It is then added together with your previous turn scores and divided by the number of turns. Thus, your score at any given time is a running average of your turn scores.
For example, most people begin the game at Regent level with 30 points. This is calculated by taking the 9 squares your first city contains and 1 content citizen. The math goes (9+1) * 3 = 30. However, if you happen to land on a nice resource which makes your content citizen happy, all of a sudden you have (9+2) * 3 = 33 (reflecting the difference between 1 content and 1 happy citizen). Some people have been known to convert their worker to a citizen and to raise the luxury enough to make them both happy. This yields 39 points at the start, which is (9+4)*3=39, because two happy citizens is 4 points.
Remember your score is a running average. So if on turn 1 you earned 30 points, but on turn 2 you jumped up to 36 points, your score after 2 turns would be 33, which is (30+36)/2. Note your score can go down, based on this calculation.
Now here are my 10 tips for improving your score in a points race.
1) A significant factor is to expand your cultural boundaries. This is a major component of the score. There are two ways to do this. One is to build a lot of cities, and the other is to culturally improve each city. These two approaches must be used in combination for maximum effect. Understand that when you first put down a city it occupies 9 squares, and will stay this way until the city accumulates 10 culture points. Your first city has a Palace automatically, which gives it one culture point per turn. So after 10 turns, your capital city automatically expands from 9 squares to 21 squares. This jump from Influence Level 1 to Influence Level 2 is a major infusion in points. For cities, other than your first, to expand this way, you must add cultural improvements. Remember the rule: after accumulating 10 points you expand. So, for example, building a Temple in your 2nd city, will cause expansion in 5 turns. Similarly, you can expand from Influence Level 2 to Influence Level 3, producing 37 squares, after accumulating 100 points (this happens even in short games). And from Influence Level 3 to Level 4 (61 squares) after 1000 points. There are Influence Levels 5 and 6 as well, but rarely will you reach 10,000 or 20,000 culture points in one city, and certainly not in a 2-3 hour game. Thus temples (+2 culture points per turn) are a priority for me in all cities, except my first, or except for cities which overlap so much with others that cultural expansion isn’t worthwhile. Other ways to increase culture points: library +3 per turn, university +4, colosseum +2, and wonders (ranging from +1 to +5 culture points per turn). Also after 1000 years of being “in place” the per turn points for a cultural improvement or wonder doubles, so temples, for example, go from +2 to +4 after 1000 years. .
2) Be careful, however, if cities overlap in their boundaries, because you can only get credit for a given square once. This leads to my second tip, which is optimal city placement. Try to arrange cities in relationship to each other to maximize points. Think ahead to when the cities will be 21 tiles and try to make sure that the maximum overlap is 2 squares out of 21. I personally put most cities 4 squares away from each other. Some people advocate closer formations for defensive reasons mainly, but its a points killer.
There is an excellent article on this topic in the CivFanatics forum:
www.civfanatics.com/civ3acad_builders_dream.shtml
Scroll down to his screen shot examples entitled OCP (Optimal City Placement). Well worth some study.
Also, there is a little known "BONUS" square feature when you lay down a city which is about 4-5 squares away from another. Because when the distance between two city borders is only one square, the game gives you that extra square, or actually up to 3 squares, in addition. So instead of getting 9 squares initially for a new city, you can get 10, 11, or even 12. Experiment with this. Observe when the settler is active that an outline of the land he will "claim" if you create city on that square is shown. There is a nice points bonus here for just being careful about city placement. Consider an example of 3 players, who all have 3 cities early in the game, the one who is cramming them in probably has 21+7+7=35 squares because of overlap, the one who is doing it normally would have 21+9+9=39 squares, and the person who goes for optimal placement has as much as 21+12+12=45 squares. That difference is multiplied by difficulty level (usually 3) for every turn. So the optimal placement person is scoring 30 points extra per turn at this stage.
3) Have the right number of cities. The name of the game is expansion. When expanding, expand in the direction of your opponents. While this may sound counter intuitive, but you are at the same time, increasing your empire size, and reducing theirs. When you lose a match based on points, watch the game replay at the end, and observe the number of cities the winning players built. In most games, the winner of the land grab phase of the game, wins ultimately. There are two tables in the Prima Official Strategy Guide on pages 36-37. Study them. They tell you the optimal number of cities based on map size and difficulty level. For example, on a small map at Regent difficulty the optimal number of cities is 90% of 14, or 12.6. Strive to come close to that number (Commercial civs can grow about 25% larger, due to decreased waste/corruption).
4) Have a lot of Happy citizens. Notice the scoring algorithm incentivizes happiness. Do everything you can reasonably do to make your people happy, such as build roads to luxuries, increase luxury tax, build temples, etc. Micro-manage happiness. And pro-actively make sure that there is no unhappiness, especially never let a city go into civil disorder. Smoking cities are hazardous to your health, and scoring. You can use the City Governor to Manage citizen happiness – this eliminates disorder. However, the City Governor is satisfied with content citizens – to maximize happiness you must micro-manage. Convert unhappy citizens to specialists. Also, sometimes it costs you nothing or a minimal amount of gold to raise your luxury tax 10%, but it can pay a dividend in happiness points. Near the end of the game, it often pays to shut down science completely (or at some low minimal value such as 10-20%) and raise the luxury tax so that everyone (or nearly everyone) is happy.
5) Make your city populations large. It’s nice to have 10 cities of 3 citizens each. But it’s even better to have 10 cities of 6 citizens each. To increase city population, try to place cities near resources (i.e., wheat, cattle, enhanced grassland) which promote growth. Especially look for squares that border on fresh water (Rivers or lakes, not seas) since they can grow to population level 12 without aqueducts. Rivers also provide a food bonus and a defensive bonus. Nothing like a city on a hill surrounded by rivers with perhaps a few cows nearby.
6) Also build granaries, early, and in all cities where you wish to rapidly expand (both to create settler/worker factories and to maximize score). Your optimal goal is a city which produces +5 food each turn – the population will go up +1 every 4 turns, and you can produce a settler every 4 turns. Never stop producing new settlers unless your elimination is threatened. I've seen many games won in last 10 moves by someone who is building extra cities in safe territory.
7) When capturing another city, be careful of resisting citizens who hurt your score. Try to put city under siege/bombardment before capture, hopefully reducing population. Once the city is yours, start work on a temple immediately. Be proactive about reducing resisters.
(continued in next post)
I would like to share with all who are interested what I have learned about winning CIV3 games by scoring the most points. Of course, a points or histogram victory is just one of several ways to win. But it's no guarantee. Points only matter if you survive to the end of the game. So never forget to have a good defense, at least, even for those who aren't warmongers.
Let’s begin with the exact point scoring algorithm, which is often misunderstood or misquoted:
In CIV3, score calculation is done at every turn, based on the following rules:
1) For every Happy Citizen, you score +2 points
2) For every Content Citizen (or Specialist) you score +1 points
3) For every Unhappy or Resisting Citizen you score zero points (not -1 as Prima's strategy guide says)
4) For every land square inside your cultural borders (including Coast squares, but NOT Sea nor Ocean Squares) you score +1 points
5) For every future technology, you score +1 points.
Your score is calculated at the end of each turn. It is then multiplied by the game’s difficulty level (Chieftain is 1, Warlord is 2, Regent is 3, Monarch is 4, Emperor is 5, Deity is 6). It is then added together with your previous turn scores and divided by the number of turns. Thus, your score at any given time is a running average of your turn scores.
For example, most people begin the game at Regent level with 30 points. This is calculated by taking the 9 squares your first city contains and 1 content citizen. The math goes (9+1) * 3 = 30. However, if you happen to land on a nice resource which makes your content citizen happy, all of a sudden you have (9+2) * 3 = 33 (reflecting the difference between 1 content and 1 happy citizen). Some people have been known to convert their worker to a citizen and to raise the luxury enough to make them both happy. This yields 39 points at the start, which is (9+4)*3=39, because two happy citizens is 4 points.
Remember your score is a running average. So if on turn 1 you earned 30 points, but on turn 2 you jumped up to 36 points, your score after 2 turns would be 33, which is (30+36)/2. Note your score can go down, based on this calculation.
Now here are my 10 tips for improving your score in a points race.
1) A significant factor is to expand your cultural boundaries. This is a major component of the score. There are two ways to do this. One is to build a lot of cities, and the other is to culturally improve each city. These two approaches must be used in combination for maximum effect. Understand that when you first put down a city it occupies 9 squares, and will stay this way until the city accumulates 10 culture points. Your first city has a Palace automatically, which gives it one culture point per turn. So after 10 turns, your capital city automatically expands from 9 squares to 21 squares. This jump from Influence Level 1 to Influence Level 2 is a major infusion in points. For cities, other than your first, to expand this way, you must add cultural improvements. Remember the rule: after accumulating 10 points you expand. So, for example, building a Temple in your 2nd city, will cause expansion in 5 turns. Similarly, you can expand from Influence Level 2 to Influence Level 3, producing 37 squares, after accumulating 100 points (this happens even in short games). And from Influence Level 3 to Level 4 (61 squares) after 1000 points. There are Influence Levels 5 and 6 as well, but rarely will you reach 10,000 or 20,000 culture points in one city, and certainly not in a 2-3 hour game. Thus temples (+2 culture points per turn) are a priority for me in all cities, except my first, or except for cities which overlap so much with others that cultural expansion isn’t worthwhile. Other ways to increase culture points: library +3 per turn, university +4, colosseum +2, and wonders (ranging from +1 to +5 culture points per turn). Also after 1000 years of being “in place” the per turn points for a cultural improvement or wonder doubles, so temples, for example, go from +2 to +4 after 1000 years. .
2) Be careful, however, if cities overlap in their boundaries, because you can only get credit for a given square once. This leads to my second tip, which is optimal city placement. Try to arrange cities in relationship to each other to maximize points. Think ahead to when the cities will be 21 tiles and try to make sure that the maximum overlap is 2 squares out of 21. I personally put most cities 4 squares away from each other. Some people advocate closer formations for defensive reasons mainly, but its a points killer.
There is an excellent article on this topic in the CivFanatics forum:
www.civfanatics.com/civ3acad_builders_dream.shtml
Scroll down to his screen shot examples entitled OCP (Optimal City Placement). Well worth some study.
Also, there is a little known "BONUS" square feature when you lay down a city which is about 4-5 squares away from another. Because when the distance between two city borders is only one square, the game gives you that extra square, or actually up to 3 squares, in addition. So instead of getting 9 squares initially for a new city, you can get 10, 11, or even 12. Experiment with this. Observe when the settler is active that an outline of the land he will "claim" if you create city on that square is shown. There is a nice points bonus here for just being careful about city placement. Consider an example of 3 players, who all have 3 cities early in the game, the one who is cramming them in probably has 21+7+7=35 squares because of overlap, the one who is doing it normally would have 21+9+9=39 squares, and the person who goes for optimal placement has as much as 21+12+12=45 squares. That difference is multiplied by difficulty level (usually 3) for every turn. So the optimal placement person is scoring 30 points extra per turn at this stage.
3) Have the right number of cities. The name of the game is expansion. When expanding, expand in the direction of your opponents. While this may sound counter intuitive, but you are at the same time, increasing your empire size, and reducing theirs. When you lose a match based on points, watch the game replay at the end, and observe the number of cities the winning players built. In most games, the winner of the land grab phase of the game, wins ultimately. There are two tables in the Prima Official Strategy Guide on pages 36-37. Study them. They tell you the optimal number of cities based on map size and difficulty level. For example, on a small map at Regent difficulty the optimal number of cities is 90% of 14, or 12.6. Strive to come close to that number (Commercial civs can grow about 25% larger, due to decreased waste/corruption).
4) Have a lot of Happy citizens. Notice the scoring algorithm incentivizes happiness. Do everything you can reasonably do to make your people happy, such as build roads to luxuries, increase luxury tax, build temples, etc. Micro-manage happiness. And pro-actively make sure that there is no unhappiness, especially never let a city go into civil disorder. Smoking cities are hazardous to your health, and scoring. You can use the City Governor to Manage citizen happiness – this eliminates disorder. However, the City Governor is satisfied with content citizens – to maximize happiness you must micro-manage. Convert unhappy citizens to specialists. Also, sometimes it costs you nothing or a minimal amount of gold to raise your luxury tax 10%, but it can pay a dividend in happiness points. Near the end of the game, it often pays to shut down science completely (or at some low minimal value such as 10-20%) and raise the luxury tax so that everyone (or nearly everyone) is happy.
5) Make your city populations large. It’s nice to have 10 cities of 3 citizens each. But it’s even better to have 10 cities of 6 citizens each. To increase city population, try to place cities near resources (i.e., wheat, cattle, enhanced grassland) which promote growth. Especially look for squares that border on fresh water (Rivers or lakes, not seas) since they can grow to population level 12 without aqueducts. Rivers also provide a food bonus and a defensive bonus. Nothing like a city on a hill surrounded by rivers with perhaps a few cows nearby.
6) Also build granaries, early, and in all cities where you wish to rapidly expand (both to create settler/worker factories and to maximize score). Your optimal goal is a city which produces +5 food each turn – the population will go up +1 every 4 turns, and you can produce a settler every 4 turns. Never stop producing new settlers unless your elimination is threatened. I've seen many games won in last 10 moves by someone who is building extra cities in safe territory.
7) When capturing another city, be careful of resisting citizens who hurt your score. Try to put city under siege/bombardment before capture, hopefully reducing population. Once the city is yours, start work on a temple immediately. Be proactive about reducing resisters.
(continued in next post)