Overall Score: Request for comment!

1. It forces you to get a good scoring in all categories

2. It does not consider how well you did in the category compared to others

The first is bad in my opinion because Illyriad is a game were you could play a lot of different ways (and more important the way you like most) and still be successful. With the change you would need to be a "Jack of all Trades" and do everything equally - i don't like that.

The second point needs more explaining. It contains two similar downsides:

a) In the new scoring place 1+99 would be as good as 50+50. It is a LOT easier to achieve the second one compared to the first one. Top 10 in most categories are quite hard to get and would not get rewarded with the new system.

Attack/defense: Has to be done on the map against certain NPC's, or defending certain sq's.

Diplo: Steal them from NPC's but then they can be stolen from you.

Trade: Simply buy them from NPC's or players 

etc

Then each player has to stock pile them in their city or alliance hub (perhaps have personal points and alliance points).  But your alliance/player/city gets a real benefit from how many they have reduced tax rate for trade influence for example.  

This would give players something to really fight over for a benefit rather than just destroying enemy cities.    

You want to change the scoring system after 8 years. I would expect one to have an extremely good reason to do so after such a long time. I do not see an extremely good reason. What do you mean by "a bit broken"? Thundercat said in the other thread:

"We consider it a surprising outcome that if you gain score in a category it can cause a player ranked higher than you to gain more score than you for doing nothing."

Based on the old formula, I do not find this surprising. He gave examples of the point changes, but I think that's the wrong way to look at it. So what if the other guy gained overall points for doing nothing? If he keeps doing nothing, he will eventually be overtaken, then start losing those points for doing nothing. A better way to look at it, is what I think you all did at the start; create a formula with a mathematical idea of how you want people to be ranked. If the outcome works well, do these points matter? Keep in mind that points and ranks in each category aren't changing, just the magic calculated meaningless overall number. (Edit: Suggestion: make this overall number hidden, just display the overall rank)

Furthermore I find the old formula to actually be quite brilliant. You mention not wanting to argue over which category is more "important". With the old formula, that "arguing" is done automatically via the points that people gain. If one category is easy to "cheat" and gain tons of points in for doing nothing (ahem...magic), then that means lots of people can do it, and the percentages will balance themselves out. The complexity adds a nice extra bit of fun to anyone chasing ranks.

There is nothing majorly wrong with the proposed ranking system in this thread. It should also work fine...IF it was put into place at the very beginning of the game. Any scoring system in any game isn't going to be a perfect way to rank players by skill or intelligence or dedication or whatever. They merely set a goal to strive for, and that goal alters how they play the game. In a way it makes the game. If you change it now, essentially you're changing the game.

One final point against the proposed new method. Consider the defense ranking. Malek holds #1 spot with a score well above the #2 spot. With the old system, this gives him a well-deserved healthy percentage boost over the #2 guy, with the proposed system, not so much, he only gets a lousy ranks reduction of 1.

I think the real question here is, should we reward specialists (players who ace a certain category) and how... 

By just summing up positions, there will be no reward for players who are leading a category by a huge margin, as detailed by Thirion in his post above.