Another issue I hope is being taken into account with all this map balancing hoopla is planet density. It's wrong in my opinion to just flat out say that a Large is worth more than a Tiny map. You've got as many inhabited planets to deal with on a Tiny/Abundant as you do on a Large/Rare. If we skew map size score differentials without accounting for density, people will be able to make significantly higher scores for much less work by playing rare planets on larger maps compared to somebody slogging their way through a smaller map with abundant planets.
[Message Edited]

population isnt being discounted entirely, abundancy
will still be favored.

Staffa, that much is true, and ironically by virtue of the pop "smoothing" that's been added, the same pop on a tiny-abundant is going to net you significantly more points than it would on a large-rare even though I don't think there's any measurable difference in achieving them.

I'm referring to the sample scores that Brad tossed out as approximate goals that seem to indicate a much sharper division in size scoring than we've had recently. While I don't want to question things I know so little about too much, I just want to see that things don't go too far the other direction.

Hehe, CM. I know Brad knows to take the comments of us hardcore players with a pinch of salt.

I have now played 3 games using the latest update, and I must say that I am disappointed. I am glad to see that buying trade goods/wonders and selling them is no longer a good way to make money, even though I now have to change strategies. The thing that has me going is this whole scoring thing. I know that the programmers are just trying to work out the bugs, but I think something was overlooked or missed here. By no means do I think this was intentional, but I do believe that it needs to be looked into. Code Monkey stated in an earlier post that he played a gigantic cakewalk to get a scoring line. It was said that this game should be worth in the new system somewhere around 2500 points. I would first like to say thank you Code Monkey for doing this. I'm sure the most challenging part of that game was staying awake long enough to hit the turn buttom again. Now, on to my point. In my 3 tiny painful games I got scores from 460 to 560 points. I remember seeing someone else listing tiny maso scores from 800 to 1000. Could someone PLEASE explain to me how a cakewalk game can be worth 5-6 times a painful game or 2-3 times a maso game? Well, I know how, so I guess the question is how can this be right, or better yet fair, or even better yet balanced? Some players, like myself, enjoy the tiny games. I do not want to speak for anyone else, but I do not have all the time in the world to play the gigantic games. Also, my system does not handle them well. I am not saying that a tiny should be worth as much as a gigantic, on the same or near difficult levels. But a tiny painful being scored 5-6 times lower than a gigantic cakewalk? If this is what is intended then someone needs to state that they are again promoting the hit the turn button to get a good score. I know this sounds harsh, but there needs to be more of a distinction between the difficulty levels. I know the programmers are honestly doing their best, and that they are not intentionally trying to mess with the scores of the players on tiny, but this needs to be looked in to. If I am off my rocker, PLEASE explain to me how and I will apologize and take back this whole post. Thank you.

CM, in my last small game, I could most certanly have left the last Yor system and then stop to research and get the Terraformer, while building up pop. I don't think giving them another 100 turns to build up their infra and defenses is going to help them much against an empire that is 10-20 times stronger than them (bar a game changing event). About 1/2 of the way through that game, critical mass was obtained and I was certain of victory.

I can empathise with you Okuven since I too have a bunch of smaller map, higher difficulty scores but since we are going to have a new scoring algo tomorrow, why not we wait till tomorrow before we have further discussions on this.

Okuven, I believe you have misunderstood some of the
posts. The example of the cakewalk game being worth
so much is a function of population exploding. This
is being corrected and should hopefully no longer
be much of an issue.

The relative scores of different map sizes is currently
being looked into, but I am happy to report that it
would appear my belief that the ratio should be
about 2-1 is being more heavily considered and that
should result in smaller games being viable on the
metaverse without dominating it entirely.

And yea, Ray has a good point, tomorrow everything
will probably change and all our comments on it today
will have no meaning

After reading this discussion and seeing comparisons in amount of effort required to win on different map, I'm starting to wonder why not to make score dependent on these efforts directly. Something like number of mouseclisks will probably work fine and it will be much simpler formula to calculate the score. Mouse moves and key presses could also be included into scoring.

As pathetically as this may reflect on us strategy gamers, the best thing that Stardock could do is simply release the entire scoring system publicly. Those of who simply care about trying to see things better balanced could then analyze it in its actuality, and the score mongers would at least know where to aim.

No strat gamer worth their salt is satisfied with playing with black boxes for much of anything that has a quantitative result in a game

Actually, Staffa, it was my score he was referring to and that is a new algorithm, population adjusted score. So, even with all their latest sets of corrections, if these tiny-maso games are doing so poorly, we're still far from the scoring nirvana we seek. Maybe Brad's been burning the midnight oil this weekend and will release a completely new scoring algorithm tomorrow, but what I understood from these posts is that the 1.0406 games are exactly what everything will be updated to tomorrow just with the pop adjustment he mentioned in this thread.

I am willing to wait until Monday to see how this new scoring thing works. I just hope that there is more of a difference between difficulty levels than there is now. I do agree that iw would be nice if we could see how the scores are actually calculated. I think it would end much of the speculation and actually generate some good sugestions on how to change it in the future, if it needs to be changed.

I am willing to wait until Monday to see how this new scoring thing works. I just hope that there is more of a difference between difficulty levels than there is now. I do agree that it would be nice if we could see how the scores are actually calculated. I think it would end much of the speculation and actually generate some good sugestions on how to change it in the future, if it needs to be changed.

Sorry fot the double post. I was trying to correct a typo and did it incorrectly.

Students of the Metaverse Score (TM), I present to you an experiment on my small maso game.

Previously, I have won under the following stats:
8 year military victory, 80B pop, 702 score under 1.044

Using the save game at the last move of the above, I proceeded to invade Yor's last planet. Prior to that, I have prepared a nice exile planet for the Yors. I took one of my colonised PQ14 planet, scorched it save Soil and Habitat and shipped out all pop save 46M.

I proceeded to invade the Yor's last planet and exchanged peace in return for the Yor moving to the exile planet. This is to prevent them from mounting a comeback while I went about to achieve my objective of building all TGs/wonders and researching Beyond Human.

Fast forward...

Stardate Aug 2219 (41 years)
Pop 670B

Mission Accomplished (sort of). I got all TGs/wonders save one and stopped research at Galactic Creation. For some reason, researching Beyond Human would take me another 85 turns. Completed military victory by culture flipping Yor's exile planet (which now had 70B pop).

Metaverse score - 3,223 (460% of my previous score of 702)

I personally did not enjoy any part of the empire building past the stage where I knew I could have won.

Note that the above experiment is done under the current 1.044 scoring system which would be obsolete by tomorrow.

I think Ray's experiment may be shedding a lot of light on the situation. Frogboy's scoring goals may be reasonable, though as Staffa pointed out, the 5-1 size ratio may be too big, but if those goals (i.e 4000 for tiny masochist) are predicated on a fully developed society, I doubt they ever occur on tiny or small maps within normal game play (and only rarely on medium). Heck, the biggest reason that tiny games are so much faster is that it is rare to go deep into the tech tree. I, for one, like meeting my rivals very quickly, and winning or getting mangled in fairly short order.

As another data point, last night playing a medium / crippling game, in 2195 the galaxy is under control. Only the Altarians are left, with 4 planets while I have 35, pop. 455 B. I of course have a massive technological lead, which would only get bigger over time. Certainly, they will never threaten my global hegemony. In any case, they are close to me, so I tried to take the alliance victory: 1322 points. I can't carry out the experiment as far as Ray, since I neglected to turn culture victory off. I may try to take it further by building and giving the Altairians some influence starbases, but I'll probably get too bored by the prospect.

Anyway, I built all of the wonders and trade goods up to (not through) Evolution Control except Eyes, Aphrodisiac, and Ultra Spices, which I was beaten to. The only civ I declared war on (without them attacking me first) was the two planet Arceans in the last couple months. In other words, in no way was I rushing through this game.

Of course the real blame goes to the person who made me look at the metaverse. I went more than a month blissfully unconcerned, posting only to give the developers info, ending the game when it was over.

Key point which I forgot to mention is that my Small game was on rare. That is also a major contributor to the amount of time it took to fully develop my society and tech.

My best result is 117 mouseclicks (not targeted of course) in 10 seconds. So i think it's a good suggestion for me.

~SDC~

Re: RayChua

Um, pop exploiting on 1.044 is very effective, thats a
known issue with 1.044.

Its been demonstrated by both sergey and myself in this
thread several times. As you say, tomorrow it will
hopefully be obsolete
[Message Edited]

I'm not sure a tiny/small-rare should be worth all that much no matter what the difficulty. My 2-2.5K tiny games were all on abundant. I never went past Dreadnought tech (and they often end before that), but there's still a lot of actual development on the way to victory due to the number of planets involved.

Anyhoo, if poeple are always playing tiny/small on rare for the 1 hour metaverse submission, it may not be so off that they're maxing out at 1K. Has anyone in this thread completed a tiny/small-abundant yet to see what it looks like they'll be getting with the new algorithms?

I'm not certain why population really needs to be factored in, as it opens up the possibility for exploitation. Aren't there other ways to get at the same thing, such as PQ (or better ratio of PQ held to total PQ in galaxy)?

Better still, why not base the score on map size, rather than use population as an indicator of map size? More importantly it sounds as if persons who chose to play with rare planets under the current system will be penalized because population is smaller than if habitable planets are abundant.

I think you could develop a formula that would be fair, but population independent. I'd start with a base score determined by difficulty level and galaxy size. As an aside, I think I understand that Brad is trying for an elegant solution (which is commendable, and not surprising given this game) and wnats to be able to determien a reasonable score simply from the game stats directly, without resorting to some kind of kludge as I'm suggesting. But sometimes, brute force works.

So you're playing a Huge/masochistic game, which has a certain base value, let's say for the sake of argument, 10,000 points. Now I'd multiply that score by the percentage of sectors controlled culturally, the percentage of total galaxy PQ controlled, percentage of military might controlled, some combination of the percentage of researched technologies known and whether they were traded for or researched and probably a few other things I'm forgetting. These factors I've suggested multiplying by could be transformed in some way if need be (exponentiated).

Now, note that all of these factors *reduce* the base value of 10,000. Now we have to make an adjustment based on time. This, to me, would be the trickiest part, but someone with a lot of experience with the game could do this. There needs to be a time adjustment that balances with the gains made by dragging out the game for X years to conquer straggling planets just to get their PQ or other exploits like this. And all other factors being equal, a shorter game that accomplishes the same thigns should have a higher score. The easiest thing might be to pick an end date based on galaxy size and assign it a factor of 1, then each month sooner or later modifies this (need not be a linear relation) and the final result is modified by whatever this value turns out to be.

This factor would be important in calculating the score for an alliance victory. With an alliance victory, you will cover less of the galaxy, control less of the military etc. but the game should be completed faster than if the entire galaxy had been conquered, which in theory would balance things.

gee...sorry to go on so long folks. This was probably pointless, and note I certainly mean no offense by making an alternate suggestion. I know I have grossly oversimplified matters here and there are likely several good reasons why this approach would be problematic. Still, sometimes it is helpful to approach a problem from a new direction.

PQ instead of pop has been suggested many times by folks on this board and I wholeheartedly support it. It has a lot of elegance:

Potential population is more or less directly tied to PQ so it approximates using pop as a scoring factor anyhow.

Unlike using actual population, this does not penalize the militaristic player who usually has a much lower population than a cultural or tech focused player since he's grinding his troops into mush, particularly in a tough game.

It still rewards the builder without encouraging milking. Your score will be significantly boosted for things like Terraforming and the Terraformer, but unlike now, you don't have to stretch the game out a 100 turns after building them to reap their full score effect.

Pop milking is completely eliminated. Whether you end the game in 2208 when it's first possible, or wait until 2218 to make that final alliance, your PQ/pop are identical.

And so on, but Brad does not appear to want to go this route so it's largely academic discussing it.

As for your alliance comments, here's my suggestion: let your allies' score count towards yours as percentage contribution.

The current problem with alliance victories is it's almost never worth it to take until the very late game because your score grows so much by culturally eating up most of your potential ally's territory and/or taking out one or more of your potential allies before finally opting for the diplomatic victory.

But, if you get some significant percentage of your score from your allies, then it becomes more attractive to go for early alliance victories when possible.

Hopefully, they'll be able to come up with some new ideas after they've put all the submitted games through the wringer. For example, people winning fast should get a bonus, but how much? Ideally, someone winning early and someone almost winning early, but keeping an enemy as a pet for decades while building, then finishing him off should get a similar score. The hardest thing they did was the conquest, not the zookeeping, and they both did the same conquests. Imagine a score system trying to point out the toughest things you did in a game... I have no idea how much stuff they can learn from the saves, but the fact that they're collecting them gives me hope.

Re: Alliances, I thought about that CM, but there has to be some weight given to your strength in the alliance. that is, if you're 10% of the strength versus 90% there should be a difference in the score. Also, it seems to me that an Alliance victory is easier than a military victory, but maybe I'm wrong about that.

Alliances can be easier, this is true, but I'm not fond of them trying to engineer scoring formulas around what is "easier". The game I'm in now would serve as a good example. I'm about 50% of the galactic power, the Altarians are about 30%, and the Torians around 20% (the Drengin have some share, but they're on their way out and fast).
At some point because of my allignment and the way I've been playing the game a 3-way alliance will be possible between the 3 of us - I won't take the opportunity. Why? well, I know I can absorb the Torians and most of the Altarians, then take the 2-way Alliance and get about 3X the score just by "milking" the system. If I knew there wasn't going to be a significant difference between the scores I'd jump on the 3-way alliance as soon as it was available to get the game finished.

I could also allow the guaranteed peace time to let me do the absorbtion and then just attack everyone and get the military victory with little effort for even more points.

I hate to admit to playing the metaverse, but the scoring system as it exists makes it mandatory if you want to do well.

As for your 10/90 argument, I keep seeing people say this, and it may be that this comes up on higher than Painful diffs, but I have never seen an alliance victory possible where I wasn't equally sharing the power or the dominant power. It's still relatively trivial to implement a balanced way of balancing the score you receive from allies (e.g. an inverse relation between your power to theirs - if you dominate a partner, you get closer to 100% contribution, if you are subservient to a partner, you get closer to 0% contribution).