Idle villager post-game graph and Score

Age of Empires III: DE III - Discussion
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Can we get a cumulative idle villager graph in the post-game? The current idle vill graph tells you idled at some point, but it’s extremely noisy and the impact of short idling times is very hard to discern. It’s also very difficult to compare idling between players in a meaningful way.

A cumulative graph would show the overall impact of short idling periods, as your cumulative graph will steadily increase. You could actually see how much collection time was wasted total for each player, which would help players identify when they need to improve their idling.

About score:

I believe buildings that do not actually improve one’s income or protect one’s base should not be calculated into score. namely: houses, manor houses, longhouses, villages, community plazas, tribal marketplace, livestock pens, mills, estates, rice paddies, arsenals, capitols, consulates, barracks, stables, saloons, and artillery foundries.
These buildings are investments that have not necessarily paid for themselves upon being built, and therefore they do not actually indicate a player’s present advantage.
For example, say a french player spends the first 5 minutes of the game building 20 houses while his swedish opponent builds 15 torps. Assuming all else equal, their scores will be the same, but the sweden player is actually far ahead of the french player because the french players’ houses provide no economic value.
The same can be said about any of the above buildings. A player could rush to build 10 of any of these buildings, but since the building itself provides no direct value, the player who builds 10 stables by minute 8 is actually far behind his opponent. This should be reflected in the score.
This would help ease score discrepancies between civilizations, and economic score would actually indicate the size of players’ economies, which would be helpful for post-game analysis. It feels bad for a lot of players to see their British opponent miles ahead in score, when in reality that score is massively inflated by the manor houses, which provide no really benefit of their own (besides LoS) after being constructed. Overall this change would make the game friendlier for newcomers, and easier to analyze for players who are trying to improve.

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Heck yeah, I was so confused every time I saw the graph.

It would make more sense to show the accumulated seconds of idle vills to see who was paying less attention to his/her economy.

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I agree with the villies idle time, it’s just not useful as it is currently displayed, an accumulated graph would be more interesting to check out.

Disagree about the score though, the score is supposed to give an idea of how much you’ve got, in resources and assets, such as buildings, techs, and units. You lose score when you spend resources, but gain it back from your investment, and permanently lose them when your unit is killed or building destroyed.

Even a house has some value, it provides +10 max pop, and like every building can potentially be used as part of a wall or act as a stationary scout because of the LoS. I can’t think of any building that has absolutely zero value upon being built.

Even then, the torps will give you more score overtime than normal houses, because they collect resources which add up to your score.

I mean there’s no doubt it’s a poor strategy choice to rush 10 stables early game, but the score isn’t supposed to be smart or know about strategy. 10 stables are still 10 military production buildings, an asset poorly used is still an asset.

Each manor gives a free settler though, 20 manors indicates a 20 settlers advantage, who all gather resources, giving even more score. A manor boom is literally an economic boom and should be shown in score.

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Your points are all good ones. I suppose what I’m really asking for is a repurposing of score (or even just a new number for post-game purposes). My opinion is that score as a valuation of all of a player’s assets is just not entirely useful. The part which is useful – the part that measures the value of a player’s military and resource-producing assets – is really what people want to see (especially in-game), and the rest is just noise. I think focusing score to be an indicator of a player’s present advantage would make it much more useful.

I’d classify houses as maintenance buildings. They have value and they’re certainly not meaningless, but you only build them because you have to. They exist in the game to slow players down. If they weren’t counted in score, houses would still be necessary for one’s score to grow, so they would actually influence score in a way that’s very parallel to their actual influence on the game.

A manor costs 135 and provides score for both a settler and manor house, worth 235 resources. It’s common knowledge that brits “over-score.” The game isn’t broken of course. Obviously, when people say this, they mean that their score doesn’t accurately represent their present advantage because the manor house boom provides 2700 + 2000 res worth of score, when only the 20 villagers are relevant.

Anybody who has ever mentioned some civs “under-scoring” or “over-scoring” is actually trying to use score an indication of present advantage. If this is what players want for score, why should we not re-focus the mechanic?

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In Age of Empires III , the score simply measures the value of all the players assets, summing up the resource values of all units, buildings, stored resources, and technologies and dividing it by 100.
Score | Age of Empires Series Wiki | Fandom

Not sure if it’s accurate and I assume this is for Legacy, but I suppose it still works the same way, except for the division by 100 now. Basically, score is the sum of all resources into bank or still in play.

Reading Player Scores - Age of Empires III Heaven Forum

So, from what I understand, you’d like that the score only counts units and some buildings. I guess I can see your point, I’ve watched youtube tourneys where casters have a custom UI keeping track of military pop and economy pop (combining vils count + trickle buildings) of each player, it makes it easier for them to evaluate the strength of both player, it’s very useful. Although that would be too powerful for in-game players, that would just give too much intel. So I guess you’d want the score to be somehow a sum of the both and just ignore everything else.

There is a problem with that though, let’s imagine: 1v1, both players have 30 vils, both have 40 musks, both have the same score, still, let’s say somehow p2 managed to gain an advantage from previous fights, and now has 4 barracks while p1 only has 1, p2 has 2000 more resources in the bank than p1, and last but not least, p2 even’s got veterancy upgrade, I don’t think I need to explain why p2 is in a better position at this very moment, yet the score would let you think they’re exactly the same ; because we’re ignoring stored resources, buildings, and techs.

I personnally think that resources in the bank or invested into buildings and techs are still an indication of someone’s strength or potential. And also I don’t think score should be used to accurately know what or how’s your opponent doing anyway, just give you an approximative idea, which I think it’s good enough at doing that already. But I guess that’s up to personal preference.

Yes, 20 manors would bring 2700 + 2000 = 4700 total res in score, but you’d already have the 2700 if you didn’t spend the wood anyway, these 2700 aren’t coming out of thin air, they’re just considered as assets instead of unspent resources now. So you’d only notice the positive margin of 2000, which are representing the free vils that came out of it.

I don’t really know what you mean about under-scoring or over-scoring though, I know about the card Heavy Fortifications, which gives you score as if you had research the upgrades yourself (worth thousands of res in total) , which can really inflate your score with just one card, I suppose that’s not the only one.

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I’ve considered this, and tbh I’m not really sure why score is public in the first place. Free scouting is certainly dubious design. But of course score can’t be hidden at this point, so my perspective is that we might as well make it accurate, or at least transparent. It’s just strange that there’s an in-game number that leads players to believe they might be losing to their Brit opponent when they aren’t, or that they might be above their lakota opponent when they’re not. Experienced players know better, but why lie to the little guys at all?

I don’t think stored resources should be ignored. In treaty mode, stored resources compose almost the entirety of a player’s relative advantage, and I don’t think it’s negligible in supremacy either.

Techs are complicated. I think techs can be left as-is

The current system of simply adding the resources spent on techs into score is probably sufficient, and a request to make changes to scoring techs is probably unreasonable. However, in an ideal world, military techs would simply apply score based on their actual effect on active units. i.e. veteran musketeer would apply 0 score by itself, but 20 score per musket because it makes musketeers 20% better. This works for most military upgrades, but arsenal techs and multiplier adjustments are not so straightforward, and I can’t pretend to know the correct way to apply those types of upgrades to score. Same with villager collection rates techs. since each tech only applies to one type of collection rate, we can’t just add score to every vill and expect an accurate reading. So for lack of a better solution, I think techs can be left as-is.

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Then I’m not sure what you’re suggesting.

We should keep units, unused resources, techs, and some buildings for the score, right?
Which would mean, from the current system, we should only remove some buildings (eg: houses) from increasing the score, which would then mean that you would actually lose score by spending resources into these buildings ?..

I build a house, boom, -100 score. A barrack? -200. A manor? 100 - 135 = -35. I don’t know, the score would let you think that your opponent is weaker than he really, while he invested in buildings that are most likely useful and making him stronger in reality .

A brit having a greater score than you in age II probably means he is manor booming, the greater the difference in score, the greater the boom, and the stronger he gets (economically), so the score isn’t really lying to you, brits are known to be strong in age II because of their manors. Now, you might be stronger than him in military stength, even if he has more score than you, but that’s not something the score should tell you.

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This is indeed what I’m suggesting. Just the buildings mentioned in the op would be removed, and yes, score would decrease upon laying the building down. As you mentioned before with the manor house, it would be -35, but once the villager starts collecting resources, that difference will be made up quickly. In reality, it is only once that villager collects those 35 resources that the Brit player is actually be ahead of where they were before building the manor. So this matches reality.

This is where I disagree. I think that spending resources on certain buildings really does make you weaker in the short-run. Obviously, with two barracks you can make units faster than you could with just one, but that’s only true if you have the resources to actually do so. Those resources are already reflected in the score, as are the units when they’re trained. In other words, the score still lets you know exactly how strong your opponent is.

This is true, but free villagers means free score. 135 resources magically turns into 235. sure, some of these houses provide LoS, but it’s hard to argue that every manor is providing maximum value, and that an already-constructed manor house is actually worth 135 resources by itself.

There are other weird cases as well. Since lakota requires very little infrastructure, almost every bit of their score is relevant score. Isn’t a lakota’s score a more accurate indicator of advantage than a brit’s score? Isn’t it unfair that players see a more accurate score against some civs than they do against others? And if a house is really worth 100 score, then shouldn’t lakota start with 2k score advantage? The answer is obviously no, because having 200 pop space is not a real advantage until your opponent has to build houses that you don’t have to build. The only way to accurately measure lakota’s score to the score of any other civ would be to exclude houses from score entirely.

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I guess I see your point.

Although to me, any building constructed is an investment in an asset, and I don’t consider an investment to be a loss, unless it actually gets destroyed. So the current logic already makes sense to me. Something I didn’t mention until then, building something bring XP, which can also be considered a resource.

Another point I’d make, a bank also makes you weaker on the short-run, you spend 700 res so you can gain around 2 or 3 coin/sec, same for vils, you spend 100 res to gain some amount of res periodically. Even a factory already brings 5.5/s or 7.5/s res also reflected in the score.
So in the end why even count them in the score, the res they collect should eventually speak for themselves? So why even count any buildings or vils at this point?

About the Lakota example, assuming same total res gathered, while some random civ might have 2k worth of score because of their houses, the Lakota should have been able to gather and use these 2k res in another way, also reflected in score, so if their score is lower it’s probably because they gathered less res in total or most likely invested in units/buildings that got killed/destroyed.

They way I see score is really like : How many resources were gathered, and how many are still usable or already in play, you only lose score when you use an unit or a building, and that makes sense because that’s when you truly lost your resources.

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i was planning on addressing these two tomorrow in my suggestions, glad someone else noticed they could be improved.

at the end of the day buildings are still resources that are in play on the field, and should be counted towards scores, though not walls. other things that add to scores such as eco and age upgrades should not, as they lead to better scores but don’t offer anything of value by themselves.

scores should be 1 point per 100 resources in play, in production, or banked up. military upgrades should only affect the points the military units give, say a 20% increase in musketeer damage is a 10% increase in points musketeers give. whenever resources are destroyed, tributed or invested in eco upgrades, the points they gave are lost as well.

this is the most accurate way of judging a players power and ensuring scores are meaningful.

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I think economic score needs representation. The size of a player’s economy can only meaningfully be measured by their income, so assets that directly add to that income (or accelerate the growth of the economy, like TC’s) should be accounted for. In a perfect world, the score would match the income; but since villagers are so dynamic, the investment value of the resource-generating asset is the only reasonable value to use.

I don’t think there’s an objective way for me to refute your opinion, so we may just have to agree to disagree. Although, I’ll admit that I feel less strongly about my initial opinion than I did before. Maybe some smaller, less invasive changes could be made to normalize over-scoring and under-scoring civs, and that might just be sufficient.