Board Game Arena

Do BGA players use the Live Scoring option more or less often. My group was wondering that this evening as we playing our first game of TM on BGA. We have played several times IRL, and have used the steam port several times as well. I know you can pretty well just count pts on cards, but we were wondering what the consensus is.

BGA labels the "Live Scoring Disabled" option as "not recommended". All Arena games come with live scoring. Virtually all tournaments I've played have live scoring. I have only ever set up games with live scoring myself. I do occasionally join a table where live scoring is disabled, and that is in real-time games. By way of background, if live scoring is disabled, you will only see the TR score as the current score for every player. Card points, milestones and awards, city and greenery points: you'll have to factor them in yourself.

My take: in real-time play it invites a more "intuitive" approach to the game, as you simply don't have the time to check the scores for all players for an accurate interim score. You will see that in plant hate and other negative impacts getting played on people who seem to be ahead. Players with a lower terraforming rating but higher card score potentially escape the hate cards that would otherwise come their way. Especially in later generations it will be harder to evaluate who is really in the lead and by what margin.

It is also trickier if a player has the ability to close the game, e.g. with one or two standard projects, but doesn't know what the precise scores are. In a real-time game, it will be hard to make that assessment accurately in the limited time available for the turn. In a turn-based game, of course you can do a full point count. But it's a hassle and will cost time, especially if you're playing a game with 3 or 4 (or, heaven forbid, 5 players). You can save yourself a lot of time by playing with the standard setting: live scoring on.

In turn based without live scoring, I use the in-game note-taking feature to keep track of exact scores. In turn based, I find it hilarious that people opt to switch it off. They only hurt themselves by this if at all.

Turn based or real time, if you want to keep track of the score you can; I don't see the point of not having live scoring. You could put a tape on your monitor if you wanted to not see the score of the game... .. .

To each their own, the vast majority of games I see have live scoring turned on. When I host, I enable live scoring. I do not usually join a no live scoring game.