Thoughts on live scoring?

[Meeplelowda]

I think I prefer games without the live scoring since it feels more in spirit of the game, but I would like to hear other peoples preferences.

I'm surprised that nowhere in this thread did anyone cite this from the rulebook:

VARIANT

DELAY OF GAME: Because of the various end-game scoring
categories and their connection to popularity, it’s
difficult for players to determine who is in the lead (this
is intentional). However, it is possible for a player to
interrupt the game to calculate the final score for each
player as they plan out their next few moves. That’s not fun
for anyone. The Delay of Game variant says that if a player
delays the game (while the game is being played, not during
end-game scoring) for more than 10 seconds by trying to
calculate the final score, they lose 2 popularity.

That part I highlighted in bold is in the rules. It's not an editorial insertion. So the rules explicitly say that it's intentional that it's hard to determine who's in the lead. I'm not saying playing with live scoring is wrong, just that this seems like a very relevant fact that was completely ignored.

[Meeplelowda]

The game also does not enforce the 7 second opponent analysis rule, but you don't see anyone complaining about that lol

I see one person obliquely referred to the variant rules.

Obviously this is impossible to enforce online because there's no way to tell what is causing the delay, but the spirit of and reason for the variant is reproduced above.

[merlin they them]

I think one downside to live scoring is that some people will end games early because they think other people are so far ahead it's impossible to win.

That may be true or not but I hate when people end games early. I don't care if I'm winning or not. I will always finish a game.

If you start a game, finish it. Unless the other person is being a jerk, finish the game.

[daddyotter]

Just make live scoring optional, then people can choose whichever they prefer.

[Meeplelowda]

Just make live scoring optional, then people can choose whichever they prefer.

It already is optional.

[SaffronOlive]

I prefer live scoring, because you can already do that with the board game. Simply have a piece of paper that starts with everyone's score, and add tally marks whenever they do something that gains/loses score. Sure, it can be a bit much. but you often have enough downtime to be able to even run the calc's during other people's turns. Not having live scoring would be like giving one player simulated physics with the opportunity to knock over pieces, it's just unnecessary.

[EuroGamez]

This game is all math, I think the reserve time should be greatly extended as most moves might be 10 seconds (ie. prioduce) but then you might need your last turn to be 5+ minutes to calcualte the outcomeof doing different attacks and moves.

Who prefers a random kingmaking endgame is a strategy game? I suggest even more detailed score calcualtions. I wish there was a "if you win this combat the socre scores would be XXX" or at least give me enough time to calcualte it myself.

With the clickintensive move and combat system getting only 3 minutes to do everythign yo might need to figure out in yourr last turn is simply not enough and least to bad experiences alla around.

If you wanna turn of live soce and just take random actions and see what happens that's fine. But for competetive games it makes no sense at all.

[FrankJones]

I have not tried this version yet, but, here are my thoughts:

Some move actions are very convoluted and can involve many different actions. What exactly constitutes a "turn" for the purposes of the turn timer? Because, anything less than 6 minutes could be a real problem if one has to complete an entire move action.

1) Decide whether to move, and which units to move and where. This would be very difficult without live scoring.
2) Then actually click all the units, maybe grab and drop off resources, workers, etc.
3) Possibly gain a factory card and decide which to keep.
4) Possibly engage in combat (At which point the other player has to make decisions also, how does that work with a turn timer?)
5) Possibly resolve an encounter.

and then

6) Bottom row action.

I see this getting very frustrating with a short timer.