New Scoring Mode: BALANCED

[Hungry 4 tacos]

Hola Amigos

I suggest a new scoring mode which would create a more BALANCED strategic situation.

+1 points for every enemy you kill
-1 points for every loss

This would be far superior to DEFAULT mode and also better than SURVIVOR mode. In DEFAULT mode, there is almost no strategic imperative to protect your own cities - only kill as many others as fast as possible. This creates a mad scramble for easy points without any concern over defense.

Also, it becomes far more important that YOU kill an enemy city instead of it being killed by somebody else. This makes absolutely no sense from the standpoint of a Warfare Simulation, which is rightly oriented to reward victory instead of mere carnage. Also, you can kill every enemy city, and yet leave intact all of their silos and airbases, and somehow still win the game. It stands to reason that the object of every war is not to annihilate civilians, but to destroy the enemy's warmaking ability. But in DEFAULT mode, this logic is entirely reversed.

By using my proposed BALANCED scoring mode, players would still be rewarded for aggression (unlike SURVIVOR) but would have to implement this aggression with more finesse - just like a real battle. In my view, this would make for more interesting and enjoyable gameplay among those of us who enjoy strategic challanges.

MAY THE TACO BE WITH YOU ALL...

[Feud]

Actually, I would say that in Default mode destroying military targets first is a far better strategy then trying just to hit cities (with the exception of an easy kill on a large target, such as London).

As you mentioned, killing nets 2 points. It is thus in your best interest to destroy your enemies ability to make war first. By removing this ability it not only allows you to keep your one point, but also denies them two of their own. Once you have taken this away from them, you may then attack them at will, which then allows the same point ratio to work for you.

But, I wouldn't mind seeing another scoring method, the more the merrier.

[Hungry 4 tacos]

Actually, you are partly right. The problem is that while you are killing the enemy's offensive capacity, somebody else swoops in and gets all the points made possible by your labors. Thus, it becomes highly counter-productive to attack enemy assets unless you are also attacking their cities. Such an attack would require the investiture of nearly all your assets, and STILL can be pre-empted by a competitor.

[Pox]

The only time I find it useful to destroy assets in genocide/default is when someone is a fair amount ahead (or looking like they're going to win) and they have not yet fired their silos - in this case I would take out the silos and follow closely with a barrage all over their cities. Otherwise I find that my nukes are in short supply and should be used for hitting as many people as possible, though that may just be because I split up a lot in 6-player nukefest mode.

[trickser]

Custom Scoring Modes would be great. We all know Survivor and Default give different Strategies, if we were allowed to experiment with the Scoring Mode we might find the 3rd gender