CM (and the others), thanks for enlightening me! I realise that I am about 10 billion years behind your skills, but nontheless it is still rewarding to read your ideas. Thank you for being as considered as you are! You guys rock!

~SDC~

It looks to me that the only change in the scoring was the map size - population correction that frogboy mentioned. It doesn't look like scores other than 1.044 scores are affected, nor does it look like tiny game scores were in any way affected. I'm quite confident that the current fastest way to score big is to use a large or bigger / abundent map, probably on a difficulty level of challenging (so you don't get beaten to too much stuff), dominate the galaxy at your normal pace, leaving a planet or two alive giving them a culture base to make sure they don't flip, then shut down all but research, hit turn until you have beyond human (stop before final frontier), building wonders and trade goods along the way as necessary, then take out the straglers for a military victory. On a large map, the post-win mop up should take 150-250 turns. What fun. I'll be away from GalCiv for a while soon. Hopefully by the time I get back, the scoring system will look very different.

Staffa
I wrote why I desagree with your proposal from general consideration. But I have quite simple explanation why it will not work at least for me. I have described my strategy on large crippling with many details. But really I was not in a hurry when playing that style and even in this case I had global dominance somewhere in 2190-2192 and to 2210 I have score about 5000. I can achieve global domination 5-6 years before just to be more aggressive. I can colonize 14, 13 and even 12 PQ planets before this global domination. In this case I will have about 25 years to grow population and I believe that I'll get about 6000 with 1.04. As you mention with 1.044 this seem to be 50% greater - about 9000.

Thats not a problem sergey, thats the intent. There
are several issues here.

The faster you finish the game(ie the more skill you
show) the fewer points you achieve. I want to reward
people for playing faster, you achieve universal
domination quicker, you get a higher end score as a
result of having more time fill the universe with
your people.

The point of 2210 is that it puts everyone on a level
playing field, rather then me finishing in 2205 and
you finishing in 2245. Im not willing to play it out
to 2245, and I sure hope you found that boring and
would hate to continue doing that yourself, as well
as keep off the hoardes of people who could follow
in your footsteps.

I choose 2210 because it should be plenty of time for
most good players to achieve global domination on
a gigantic map, research all techs and colonize all the
planets. Some people are slower and need more time
to 'finish' the game they would get an inferior score
simply because they have less time to grow their pop in
and that is as it should be.

I dont want to stop the milking, because the current
system does not reward speed in any signifigant way,
thus for me putting an upper limit on how long you
can milk a score essentially creates a method to
reward speed of conquest, while limiting the amount of
tedium that results from hitting turn endlessly.

Also, on a gigantic map, 2210 is about when I run out
things to do, all my planets have all their morale/pq
boosting items, and there is nothing to do but hit turn. So I
choose that as the point where the player
ceases to do anything constructive.


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whoa....-500 for my last game after it got re-calculated LOL

Laugh Shakaar, that really is making me laugh out loud.

I think you should highlight the fact that it is
NEGATIVE 500

I didnt quite get that until i looked at your profile.

I removed your -500  for you.

Ugh. I wish I could just get a new update up but it's very problematic with the expansion pack stuff so tightly integrated now.

The expansion pack scores are going to be significantly higher than the current ones anyway.

Here are tips on how to maximize your score with 1.044:

1) Population really doesn't count for THAT much.

2) Trade goods matter. The more of them you own, the higher your score. In fact, I suspect this makes a disproproportional difference.

3) HOw much of the tech tree you've researched matters and how fast you do it.

4) How much money you're making matters a little bit but not much.

5) Difficulty matter obviously matters a lot.

Hey Frogboy

About the research.

Is that what you research yourself, or what you have
from trade and conquest as well?

Thanks, im not really bothered at the moment, considering it was only -500. Beside, i sucks anyway


Lets hope that it is all fixed and improved when the expansion pack is released

OK Staffa I take your point. I promised that if I'll play for scoring reason I will not step over 2210 (may be few turns more, becuase usually I finished my game by the following way - I have terror star just on the border of sector with last planet and when I desided to finish game I move terror star to those planet, usually they rebel before I move to the planet, if not just puff and game over)

The other story, if I invent for myself, as you say, some new absurd puzzle. Now I finally won one planet challenge (see my thread "Power of diplomacy")
and really dont know how to play.

May be I try what score I can get on crippling medium, does 2210 valid for medium ? Because of I cant play gigantic (too slow with my PC) and already play a lot of large.

One other question do you idea how estimate now metaverse score from in game score in 1.044 ?

What the metaverse did to scores i dont understand.

id say they just cut all the scores in half again
except some people ended up with a negative score
and pontius had a score drop from 11000 to 1700.

Other then that, it looks like pop is still the biggest
factor with wonders built being the 2nd.

Difficulty does have an impact, but the capacity to
build all the wonders on crippling more then makes
up for any bonus for difficulty, putting them on
essentially even ground. The remaining difference
between our scores seem to be a result of your
much higher pop.

Btw, I do build about 75% of the wonders on a large,
so its not like im building none. On smaller maps
I can build a higher percentage as I can dominate
quicker, but appearntly on larger and larger maps
masochistic players will get severely punished by
their inability to build all the wonders.

See, that's what I don't get. Even on games when I get all but one or two trade goods, research all techs, making good money, on painful difficulty, I now get scores around 300-500! To me, that doesn't sound like the scoring is rewarding these things. Is there some sort of super penalty applied to games due to some factor that we are unaware of? I am not criticizing, but just trying to understand why my scores have recently been so poor...and it looks like I am not the only one! Negative scores...see, that's gotta be wrong!
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Well, a research vistory is worth about 25% of a military victory, all else being equal, so that comes close to an uber-penalty.

I think the reason must be galaxy size. I know that all the larger score I have seen have been on at least Large. I just really like the smaller galaxy and will settle for a small score. It's more fun for me to be able to complete a game in a couple of hours versus a couple of days. Personal preference.

~SDC~

I'm not complaining. I'll adjust to any scoring pattern to maximize score. But here are the issues I see with the new system.

There is a population adjustment you put in. You had stated previously it was going to be different based on map size. What I am seeing here is that the change you made is now punishing Gigantic map size.


Given this change, I'm seeing Large Normals outscoring Gigantic toughs. And my Gigantic tough I got all the tech's save final frontier, controled the entire galaxy and did so in a reasonable time. 2205 or so I believe for 1700 points or so. Shoot. I'm seeing large normals outscore that.

That isn't close to right. I can see the argument that Difficulty should outscore size to a point. I can see the aregument that size should outscore difficulty to a point. I cannot, for the life of me see any argument for smaller size and lower difficulty outscoring a larger size and higher difficulty when I owned the entire Galaxy And that appears to be happening.

And I had a modest population. of 9 tril Yet I got nerfed from 11k down to 1700? That's friggin 80%. whereas, someone else got nerfed only 50% 22-11k in score after totally running up pop. Given those numbers, I see the change actually encouraging more running up pop not less. I suspect it's not a time based adjustment. It should be.

My 9 trill at 2205 where the game ended is much superier to say a game where they reached 7 trill at 2205 and ran it up to 20 trill by 2250 (that's twice as long!!!!!!) And again, I had all techs but one and tons of wonders built first (though not all), a very positive cash flow, and 99% morale. I just plain don't see it.


The other problem is that if trade goods/Wonders are important in the score, that encourages less difficulty. Why? It's tons easier to buy, sell, pay for the next one with it the less difficulty you have. You simply do not have the option of getting as many on the more difficult levels. You get no credit for buying them, only producing them first.


Again I'm not whining and I'll keep playing anyway and submitting. I don't take the metaverse seriously. I really enjoy this game. But I really think all these changes aren't accomplishing what they are set out to do.


Also, have the maps gone back to the 1.035 type? Mine seem to have much tighter clusters and much bigger gaps between the stars on the 4a version vs the 4 same settings. Not that I mind. It plays right into my play style

Also I'd like to humbly request a bloodlust option. This option would turn off not only the tech, alliance, and culture victory options, but would also turn off all culture flipping of planets to the human player (Puter players could still culture flip yours) You'd have to take em all by force or by threat. I think that would really be alot more difficult and fun

Bloodlust? Boss, you are truly a pirate. I bet this is your answer to getting rid of the goody-goody conspiracy (as you put it) entirely. But, you are not taking the concept far enough. For it to be truly bloodlust, there can be no alliances or trade routes allowed. In fact, the major AIs would have to be at a permanent state of war with the Terrans from the minute they meet, with no peace deals possible. Basically, no diplomacy at all. In other words, what a lot of 1950-ish sci-fi alien invader film predicted: total xenophobia. Not exactly my style of play, if it could be coded in at all in a reasonable manner. Ouch. This would be brutal. I think I will stick with my diplo cheeseburger and culture fries method, and don't forget the Techno Pop, either.

Frogboy, it would REALLY be a good idea to take out those negative scores. I fell from 100th to 206th and thought: hmmm?
Then I checked: -360 for Large Crippling, -1666 for Gigantic Painful.
Considering the Gig painful was won quite fast, I really hate it. I still have a score of 1500 for a tiny crippling in 1.040 and only 500 for the same in 1.044. I've yet to understand why the scores are so different.
Please, if you can't make sure the scores are positive, revert to the previous algorithm rather than the current thing. Please think of people who won't milk their games.
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