Timm-E wrote: ↑28 April 2026, 07:11
Agreed with OpeningsPost. Now it is in the Arena as well.
I'm unsure what that second sentence means. In the Arena, the score is updated at the end of the turn. Outside the arena, we can choose whether to play with updated scoring.
Timm-E wrote: ↑28 April 2026, 07:11
I dont like this, it doesn't feel like the game. In real life, you also count the points at the end of the game. If someone is willing to write down everything, be my guest, but do not show this by default.
People are always going to be divided on this. And likely close to a 50/50 split, because we've had both settings in Arena in the prior year.
Personally, I find it annoying to calculate the score in a point-salad game, and I am glad to have the computer do this for me. In real life, we do not update the score at the end of each turn because that would be tedious. But if the game somehow came with a digital score tracker that automatically updated, I think a lot of people would be happy to use it (not just in Earth, but in many games). Isn't that one reason many games have a score tracker around the edge of the board? Granted, some of those games would not be difficult to score without using a "score-as-we-go" tracker, but theoretically, we could: In games such as Azul, Blood Rage, Carcassonne, etc, we could just use a large pile of identical game tokens to create an increasingly-larger pile throughout the game, and then count how many tokens we have at the end of the game. But why would anyone want to do this?
And that is (to me) what makes digital implementations so great: It's
not the same as the "real game". If I want to play the real game, I will get out the physical game and play it. In a lot of ways, the digital game is
different and (in my opinion),
better.
There exist sites where you can use an actual simulator of the physical game experience by moving around virtual components using the mouse - which would be as close to the "real thing" as we can get when using a computer to play - but I'm unaware of any game for which that is the preferred way to play online. I did it once, for Terraforming Mars, and then never again. Because, it was a nuisance and a hassle. If I'm already staring at a computer screen, I'd rather the game automate whatever can be automated.
When I play on BGA, it's because:
1) I do not want to shuffle a 353-card Earth deck, and randomize a small stack of island cards, and a small stack of climate cards, and a stack of Fauna cards, and a stack of ecosystem cards.
2) I do not want to constantly have to check and re-check how many even-point cards my opponent has to see whether I can get to 10 of them first, nor perform a similar calculation or visual inspection for various other in-game goals.
3) I do not want to deal with moving around physical cubes, soil tokens, growths and canopies.
4) I do not want to always be worrying that I am spending or taking too much soil, or cards, or sprouts, or not applying combined discounts properly, etc.
5) I do not want to spend the time taking all the components out and putting them back in the box.
6) And last but not least, since all the scoring categories are visible, I do not want to win or lose a game simply because one or more players were confused or unclear what the game situation was.
I find it odd that players complain about the live-scoring (not just here, but other games as well), but the reason given ("the real game doesn't do this") never seems to be applied to all the various other ways in which the computer does things for us to make the game experience faster, easier, and less error-prone.
After choosing a plant action, the real game does not show card discounts when we hover our hand over the card or physically touch the card, but the digital game does show the discounted price before we commit to planting it. Oddly, nobody ever complains about that.
Also, a germinate action in the "real game" is a major hassle. I had to take the bottom 40 cards off the bottom of the deck for one germinate action the last time I played. I am thankful that we have computers and digital implementations that eliminate the need to perform cumbersome or tedious tasks, especially a re-shuffle of the discard pile if necessary.
