They seem to have gotten rid of them. I remember some AoE2 pros saying that scores should not be in the game, because they offer you information you shouldn’t get for free. (e.g. when an opponent clicks up, how far behind are they etc)
What do you think about this? I think it was such an AoE thing, like a trademark.
well you can hide scores in aoe2, so maybe they hided the scores in those seconds of gameplay
I think scores are useful. To me it adds tension and awareness. I don’t think it needs to be removed as you can hide it if you want to.
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I’m one of those people who have suggested that before, but I’m no pro.
I always have scores on, but I think it should be possible to make lobbies/games where opposing scores can’t be seen by anyone. It’d be another step toward being able to have a ‘hardcore’ match. If I played online ranked games, I would certainly use this. If it were implemented, it might actually attract me to play more ranked games.
You see, some players attack just because they see they see they are nicely ahead in score. (They know it will be less risky or not risky at all.) Others quit a game just because they have the lower score for too long or by too much, or because they get alerted that the enemy aged up to the next age before them.
I’ve always appreciated games, in general, more where I’m able to find out for myself info like this, rather than have it be broadcast to me. It’s somewhat why I don’t like that sheep can be used as explorers/cartographers. (That’s a can of worms, though; let’s not get into that. Just take it for what it’s worth, which may not be much 
)
I think decisions to attack should be based more on the intel you’ve gathered and/or how strong you think your might is, rather than by simply seeing in the lower-right of map that you are in Castle Age (III) and your enemy is in Feudal Age (II) still, and you have 300 more points than them… or whatever be the case.
Trust me, I do enjoy seeing the scores sometimes, too. And it can create its own version of tension, in and of itself – because when you see your opponent age up before you or have a higher score, it can be stressful. But I just wish there was a way to disable it for all players, for those who wish to play a more hardcore game every now and then.
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It could be that they are just off because it’s a Scenario but I think that a modern game doesn’t need those scores.
I don’t know why they were really there in the first place. Maybe they make some sense for PvE and help new players.
Absolutely agree with those who want to get rid of the scores. I think it’s about time to finally remove them.
They’re exactly as you mentioned it, free intelligence on how your opponent is doing. Also it can often be a misleading index and lead you to wrong conclusions/decisions as it is impossible to quantify every parameter in a fight. Things like map control, pressure, psychology or a plan in your head that still hasn’t given material gains.
I see people resigning too often based solely on score which is wrong and shouldn’t be happening.
If there are any chess players in here they should be able to recognise how problematic the concept of showing scores is.
When you analyse a game the engine gives you a score +/- after each move which shows which side is doing better.
Those scores however are not necessarily an absolute indication of who is doing better at that moment. The AI is just calculating a number of parameters with near perfect accuracy and depth of moves that human players can’t.
Humans are not engines, in the sense that they are fallible and with way more limited computational capabilities. They can’t calculate their eco or military scores while playing, they can make mistakes, be tricked, take irrational decisions or not assess the situation correctly even if their numbers are better.
Now imagine playing chess and being able to look at yours and your opponent’s scores after every move is made. How would that affect your decisions or your psychology? Your opponent may make a blunder that you don’t even see it but looking at the score you suddenly become aware of it.
It would completely ruin the game and deprive it from its creativity as players would just try to “please” the numbers instead of think of their own.
I think the case is very similar with AoE and the game would eventually benefit from such a change, even if people complained at first.
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Player score could simply be hidden by default like in Age of Empires III: DE but can be shown with a hotkey.
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Agree scores should be removed or removable via lobby toggle for ranked matches. Wanted to say, though, that the chess analogy maybe doesn’t work that well, for in chess there is a score you can derive by adding up the value of various taken pieces. Pawn = 1. Bishop/Knight = 3. Rook = 5. Queen = 9. It may not seem very advanced, but it does give a fairly decent assessment of how increasingly easy or difficult it will be to beat your opponent, imo
The pieces’ values though do not give away information that you are not already aware of, do they?
I mean, those values are assigned to reflect the relative strategic value of each piece.
This is something however that you can already infer intuitively.
A pawn moves only once in one direction, a Knight can do more than a pawn, a Rook can do more than a Knight and a Queen even more, thus Pawn<Rook<Queen etc.
You already know that your queen is more valuable as it can move more squares on the board. You wouldn’t need the value 9 to tell you that right?
I agree however that AoE is a more complex and fundamentally different game. A whole comparison with chess just can’t exist and fails miserably.
Some extra geek stuff here :
Starting by the fact that AoE is a simultaneous or dynamic game as they’re called in game theory, meaning that players either make their moves simultaneounsly or the latter player is not aware of the earlier player’s actions. In RTS terms, this is the “fog of war”.
Whereas chess is a sequential game where each player is perfectly informed of all the moves that were previously made.
So, even if someone could argue that scores do not reveal anything that you can’t already know (and thus they can be displayed without issue) because a man or several men could somewhere exist with yet unknown superhuman capabilities (we can’t forbid their existence) that they are able to calculate all possible lines and then add up the scores and pick the line with the best score like an engine does
(thus being already aware of what an engine score says because the pieces already have a known assigned value which both them and the engine makes use to calculate its outcome)
Then they would indeed be right as this man or men can make use of their extreme computational abilities due to the perfect information and sequential nature of the game. The game allows that, yet people decided to not reveal the scores in chess as super humans are probably not the norm 
Similarly if this man was able to perform in real time all the complex calculations required for the eco and military scores in AoE or whatever else the game is taking into account to display the final score, then this man wouldn’t be able to make use of his super human powers as this information is by default intentionally hidden due to the “fog of war” and not meant to be known by the enemy player . Unless of course they manually scout them (and they could still be unaware of tech upgrades, passive bonuses or cards)
I think in that extreme case the absurdity of showing the scores becomes obvious as our super genius guy who could hack into chess and deem engine’s score useless (because he knew the assigned values of the pieces) wasn’t able to do the same in AoE due to lack of information, because the very nature of the game forbids him to magically know. Yet he takes this information for free