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arethusa -> Scoring Questions (11/6/2003 10:25:53 PM)
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After more than a year of playing only PBEM, I went back to play a game with the AI since my human opponents have been taking so long to return their moves. I found after almost 2 years of playing PBEM, my tactics are so much better against the AI than I'd been before.
Out of curiosity, I then tried to see if I could completely eliminate the AI in a game I picked. I was playing "Mice vs Marshals", which I vaguely remembered from a couple of years ago and had the feeling it had been a tough battle then.
Anyway, the game ended about turn 14 because I'd killed all but 2 AI units, which I couldn't find and I'd taken all the VH's.
The score ended up as a draw, 5055 pts for me and 3278 for the AI.
Me AI
men killed 56 464
artillery killed 0 3
AFV killed 6 55
VH's 20 0
My AFV's killed were: Panzerjaeger 38 - cost 63 x 1
PzkfwIVf2 ------- cost 106 x 1
StuG40 f/8 ------ cost 85 x 1
Marder II -------- cost 71 x 1
Sdkfz 251/2 ----- cost 52 x 2
Now some questions.
1) How does the score end up with 56 men killed for me? I added up all the men actually killed, plus all the crews in the destroyed AFV's that were killed, plus all the individuals killed from AFV and ATG crews, and I'd only actually lost 38 men.
2) How does the AI get a score of 3278? It had no VH's and I'd lost very little. When you add up the cost of my losses, it comes to 377 in equipment, plus 38 men at a cost of 1 each is still only 415. Where does the other side get all the rest of the points.
3) I didn't add up all the points I thought I should get myself because it meant basically going through the entire AI OOB. But the only units not killed were his HQ and one 50mm mortar squad, presumably 200 and 21 points respectively. I don't think though that the total would reach over 5,000 points since the VH's combined were only 1,000 points. So how did I get so many points?
Since I had saved the game at the previous turn (dinner was ready), it was easy to replay it and check the results. There were only 5 AI units remaining on the last turn and I now knew where they all were.
In one try, I lost another PzkfwIVf2 but killed all the AI units, including the HQ and the last 50 mm. The score was 5090:3940
Another try, AI lasted 3 more more turns and got the same PzkfwIVf2 and I got all the rest of the AI's. Score was 5106:3940
Another try, got all AI units turn 15 and lost nothing more. Score 5106:3278
So, some more questions arise.
4) How can the AI go from 3278 to 3940 by only killing one more tank? The tank was only worth 106 and the crew maybe 5.
5) If the AI goes up that much with only one more kill, why did I only increase from 5055 to 5090, or 5106 by getting his remaining units? The mortar was only a cost of 21 and the HQ either a cost of 200 or about 5 men. No combination works.
6) In the one try when the AI got another German tank but took 3 more turns to eliminate, the score went up to 3940 for the AI so I thought perhaps the AI got points for surviving a turn. :p But then in another try, the AI got the same tank but was eliminated in one turn and still got the same score. So where does the AI get 662 points for killing one tank? It isn't points per turn anywhere and the AI didn't find any hidden VH's because he had no more units.
Since the game was saved with so little left to do, it's possible to retry it lots of times to figure this out. But it seems from the data, that there's a [B]lot[/B] more to the scoring than is obvious.
With so few losses and total anihilation of the AI, I would have expected a decisive victory. Okay, with the point spread as it is, just a draw is understandable but the point spread should have been greater if the AI and I were being scored the same way.
Does anybody know how this scoring works?
7) Do you get a [B]lot more[/B] for a tank than you do for a groundpounder unit? What do individual men count for?
8) How are crews scored? Do you get more for a crew killed seperatly from killing the AFV or is the score the same? (You do get another tank emblem on your unit detail if you kill the crew seperatly from the tank.)
9) Do breakdowns and weapon malfunctions go towards points? (I had 4 immobilizations and at least 5 main weapon malfunctions)
10) Is there some kind of scoring for territory control apart from VH's? It just seems odd that the scores could vary like this with so little change from one iteration to the next. Especially when the AI score increases so much and mine doesn't.
While I still won, it raises the question of how the game scores in PBEM games as well. I'm sure we've all had games where it seems we've had a runaway victory and should have beaten our opponent by a lot (or lost by a lot :rolleyes: ) and yet, the end score doesn't seem to reflect this. Some people are going to say, "What does the score matter? A win is a win regardless of the points."
That's true but this scoring seems to be so out of proportion here that perhaps wins haven't really been wins. Or perhaps VH's don't matter and one should dispense with them if the score for a kill can be more than 600 popints for one tank. Compared to 50 points for a VH, why bother with the VH's.
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