Well let's see, at various times I've been at the top of the Starcraft Battle.net ladder, and I was during the Warcraft 3 beta the  third top ranked "human race" player, I was for most of the life existence the #1 player on Boneyards in the "winner take all" category and I played various ladders sponsered by the PGL.

So I do think I'm qualified to assert that every ladder has its issues. Even if we put all our development resources into the Metaverse's scoring system, so that the couple dozen people who are compulsive about it, it would still be a waste of time because it's a never ending battle.

I remember on Stellar Frontier, the development team ended up spending most of their time fighting the cheaters and it's a never ending battle.

The metaverse isn't perfect but it works pretty decently. You are free to disagree of course.

Let me give you an idea of some of the stuff that would be involved in this, because we have given this issue thought for a long while:

1) You would need to do CRC checks on approved mods on the library vs what the user has when they submit a game. If they are using a non-approved mod then their score is heavily penalized depending on the values of that mod.

2) You would need to implement CRC checking on saved games themselves so that someone couldn't take a hex editor or something to their data.

3) You would need to have an encrypted submission system so that someone with a packet sniffer couldn't modify the data as it was being transmitted.

4) You would need to recreate the game such that anyone who wants to submit scores to the metaverse without being heavily penalized plays under very specific conditions (i.e. everything above plus certain map sizes, no Ctrl-N, limited saved games, more emphasis on making sure starting positions were somewhat consistent).

These 4 things don't represent the full requirements to have a truly robust Metaverse. They represent the beginning of what would need to be done.

What would the result be?

a) The casual users, the people who make up 90% of the metaverse players, would demand that there be a localized high score system. And rightly so.

It would ruin the casual player's experience for just wanting to be ranked, somewhere, on the system, getting new ranks, medals, etc. because they would have to play the more restricted settings to get their score to count.

c) Players would have to make the false choice between playing the GAME itself for fun or playing the metaverse (i.e. having to choose the restricted options to get their metaverse score to count).

And on top of all that I've mentioned, you would have the never ending battle of someone finding some loophole in the AI that no normal player would do but would give them some sort of scoring advantage on the Metaverse.

Now, some of this stuff we can budget into a Galactic Civilizations II someday in the future. But the effort required here is as much development time as we have budgeted for the Expansion pack. Which would you prefer? Which do you think most users would prefer?

I've been part of ladders on the net since there have been ladders. I can tell you that no matter what you do, there will always be a percentage of very vocal people ticked off at the system.

The current system isn't terrible. It's not broken. Like most ladders, the top 1% or so of players are probably prone to really focusing on their scores with the other 99% just casually interested. Such is the case on all ladders. A heavily modded game and a non modde dgame might make the difference of a couple thousand points. Some cheese tactic or whatever might make a couple thousand points too.

But ultimately, the system, as a whole, works pretty well. If you're a good player and spend enough time playing, you can get to the top of the scoring system. And many of them are no longer playing GalCiv anyway, they're playing progress quest with the Metaverse being the object of the game ratehr than the game itself. 

Such players are doing no harm to anyone. The 99% casual player group could care less. And that 1% player group will include people who will be testing the boundaries of how much they can get away with.

I don't remove games from the metaverse. No offense to anyone but I am, after all, the CEO of the company. We have IT people that go over it with a list of parameters to look for.

Fifth, you are correct though, you are losing a lost cause. Any time you begin demanding (and rather rudely at that) features that satisfy only a miniscule percentage of the player base you're fighting a losing battle, Especially when implementing said features comes at the cost of the major players.

Did you even read some of your requests before you submitted them? Besides wanting fleets and saying how boring th game is and saying how it should be more like MOO 2, the whole tone was just nasty.

That said, some of the IN GAME things can be addressed (like some of the AI loopholes).

Staffa, I decided to go ahead and look at your games in a bit more detail to answer this and to see if the AI could be updated. In short, most of your scores look like you've modified your tech tree. You see, the game records the ORDER in which you research technologies too.

Here's your path: Communication Theory, Univ Trans, Diploamcy, Trade Basic Env, Controled Gravity, Interstellar Business, Advanced Gravity Channeling. So far so good. Then... Drones (without researching sensors but now you get major starbsae upgrades) Terra Computers (how did you manage to get this without the pre-requisites?) Dreadnoughts (I won't even touch how you got to this without the dozens of prerequisites).

Now, in comparison, there's Fifth's data (which I used to double check to make sure that the system wasn't broken -- and I checked several others including mine and it was perfect):

Comm Theory, Univ Trans, Diplomacy, Nano Elec, Sensors, Medical Theory, Basic Env, Industiral Theory, Propulsion Theory, Art Gravity, Contr Graivty, Grade, Interstellar Biz, Interstellar Marketing, Zero Gravity, etc.

Note that by the time he's gotten Zero Gravity Research you have Dreadnoughts.

I also checked out your older scores and it seems that you didn't used to have this anomlous issue with your tech tree. That is, before when your scores were fairly normal, you actually were going through the tech tree normally. But then when you started getting 13,000 type scores, it seems that is when you managed to get drones and dreadnoughts (skipped battleships and phasers and space militarization for instance) your scores went way up.

Now, for a project we're working on, we will soon be comparing the tech trees to the master list automatically. I had to run a program to do this manually to find out these issues. So I suspect quite a few people will discover, as you no doubt are as you read this, to their horror that yes, not only did we include the game data, we include the ORDER in which you got that data.

Now, the AI, on the other hand, is, to a degree, hard coded with the tech paths of top players. But they are tech paths of LEGITIMATE strategies. As a result, while you're blowing them up with your dreadnoughts, they are actually having to research things like photons and interstellar tactics and defense theory (no defenders in your games eh?).

Now, barring some amazingly weird glitch in the system that only affects you, Staffa, it would seem your rise to the top is due to modifying your technology tree such that you skip all the early stages of the game and jump right into the high level stuff leaving the AI players to still have to deal with the early tech researching.

These scores will be going away in the next few hours.

Now, one possible way would have been to trade for these techs. But since you didn't research any military techs, one would have to wonder how you would be able to get such technologies in the first place.

At best case, there's a huge loophole, but the AI is exceptionally tough to trade dreadnought tech from in 1.35 for instance.

But this is still very unlikely because in your last game you played on a small galaxy and conquered them with your early dreadnoughts in which case one would have to wonder how you possibly were able to trade enough for that, at the hardest level.

But that's why I haven't deleted the scores yet, I am curious to hear an explanation. It doesn't look good though.

Not according to your tech tree. That's the thing, even with trade goods, what you say there doesn't match what was in your tiny galaxy conquest.

The Trade Goods just aren't worth enough to get battleships. And in your other game, you not only didn't research defense theory, youdidn't research shields, warp drive, anti matter, or any other techs like that.

Trade goods are worth, in 1.035 1500 points. Dreadnought technology is worth something like 50,000 points. In other words, a trade good isn't going to get you dreadnoughts.

I'll look through this further and ask the IT people what they think.

Other players, including others in your empire, who have won via the same methods, also trading massively and such (and even Fifth who was complaining about these issues) have normal tech trees. I.e. they all fit together.

At best then, the trade goods are really the over powering thing.

Let's consider this discussion in its entirety:

People are worried about modding. But in your case, there are two possibilities. Either 1) Trade goods are allowing players to massively exploit the AI to the point where they can win a research victory while only actually researching around 60 techs in which case the trade goods are far more imbalancing than any mod currently available or 2) You modified the tech tree such that you could get higher level stuff earlier.

I tend to take the word of people so let's assume it's #1 (can anyone else replicate this strategy btw?).

In 1.04 we'll have to change trade good values so that at higher levels the AI doesn't pay nearly so much for them.