Ray the Wanderer Ray the Wanderer

Fellowship of the Ring Empire Thread

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Fellowship of the Ring Empire Thread

from Stardock Forums
The Prancing Pony

The welcome sight of a tavern greeted the weary traveler as he moved within distance of the town. Having traveled for many days, he longed for a cool mug of ale to slake his road-thirst.

As he approached the inn, he could see a sign of a fat pony rearing up on its hindlegs. The letters, THE PRANCING PONY, was painted in white.

The common room was large and rowdy. A bald and overweight innkeeper stood bent over the counter, whispering the latest gossip into the ears of a patron. On the benches were various folks, the local drunks for most part, but in corners of the taverns, he noticed there were groups drinking by themselves.

Setting himself down, the traveler handed a couple of coppers over to one of the bar wrenches for ale.

“Welcome to the Pony.” The traveler was mildly surprised to find a sprightly old man next to him, holding his gaze with keen eyes that belittled his obvious antiquity.

“Thank you, and whom do I have the pleasure of addressing?”

“Folks around here call me Ray and I do enjoy meeting up with newcomers to see if there is any assistance I could render.”

“That would be great, Ray. I would love to learn about the people who reside in these parts.”

“Ah, that’s a frequently asked question and one I’m well qualified to answer. There are a couple of factions here in Meta that you will want to watch out for.

The Pirates are currently dominant. Not the most refined of speakers but they are a jovial bunch, with a particular weakness for good drinks.

The Diplomats hold power in the Courts. Their courtiers are many but they don’t really mix with us common folks.

The Farmers are our working class. Hardworking and honest, they are however on occasion given over to overly elaborate festivals and celebrations.

The Galahs are a group of seafarers. They are also good trainers of livestock.

The Warlords are our warrior class. Their love for long campaigns leaves them frequently out of town.

The Spiders monopolise our merchant guilds. They are by far the most invertebrate bunch of traders you will ever see.

Far to the north, the Undead holds a death grip over the wastelands. I would caution you against traveling down that road.

There are many other smaller factions around, but I leave the details of those to Barley our bartender.

One of our tavern regulars, Gerakken the Spymaster, is also in the know with regards to many of the factions. So do buy him a drink if you want to find out more.”

“Thanks for the insights, Ray. But how about yourself, which faction do you belong to?”

Smiling to himself, the old man stood.

“Come round the Fellowship Halls tomorrow morning and I’ll show you around.”
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Reply #376 from Stardock Forums Top
If you want some examples of the scoring system at work. I'm in the chat room. Maybe you can explain the tech cost increasing bit to me, too. Do costs get more expensive as you do more research??

I like the quick rush better than the cultural assimilation and usually forgo quite a few trade goods to continue my attack. I don't particularly do infrastucture construction very well and leave it to my governors. I also like tactical battles and my games to on the short end. When I do get into a postion where I am going to win (the conditions for cultural victory probably satisfied) I'll wait it out, but never drag the game on past the cultural assimilation of the last system.

I'd rather contribute to the community rather than try to get the most out of my score. Mostly I try out new strategies, moving from easier to harder maps depending on how I feel. Right now, strategies are much more successful than before on the lower intelligences, but much less so on intelligent or genius and not really applicable to masochistic (I lost quite a few games).
Reply #377 from Stardock Forums Top
Ah, time to talk about scoring again. I'm not asking you guys to follow what I do. Do what's best for yourself.

For the games I play for the Metaverse, I play it slow (ie. v limited rushes except Maso which is another story). I focus a lot on research so that I can get through the tech tree quickly. I would also build up my economy / manufacturing so that I could get all the TGs/wonders etc. Then I go for the culture bomb. The game usually ends at around 2200.

In my last highscoring game, I also played Pure Good will Pure Evil AIs.

I find that doing your own research yields much more than just trading for them. So I don't trade for techs unless I really need to. It's more fun as well because it makes the game harder.

All the above is for Crippling. It's obvious that you can't do the same for Maso. For my Masos, I rushed to conquer about 1/2 to 2/3s of the map, then I sit back and empire build instead of going for the jugular because the game does not reward speed. Trading for techs is a near necessity for Maso so Maso players lose points there. You also lose points for losing all those early TGs/Wonders.
Offworld Trading Company
Reply #378 from Stardock Forums Top
Ok, so if I understand this correctly;

1) at some point your earlier games start dropping off your score.

And 2) longer games score better than shorter games, presumably due to having built a better civilization.

Does the number of inhabited planets have anything to do with it besides the obvious speed difference? (i.e. sparse vs. abundant)
Reply #379 from Stardock Forums Top
I think planet abundance doesn't affect score except in how it affects other variables (such as population). Don't quote me on that though.
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Reply #380 from Stardock Forums Top
From Frogboy's very own words, games of a medium length would score best.

He wants players to experience the full scope of the game, meaning going through the tech tree, building up your economy, etc. Basically, experiencing the parts of the game where the developers have spent a lot of effort coding, rather than just win through quick rushes. The scoring reinforces this.

In Beta2 of GCX, the tech costs have been reduced. This is done for the same purpose of getting players deeper into the tech tree and having the bigger ships come online before the game ends.
Reply #381 from Stardock Forums Top
Personally I don't understand how PBP consistently scores 19k on gigantics
End of quote


My full play style.

1. AI' s set to
Yor and Drengin Crippling level
Rest to Painful level (this produces a balanced game). comes out painful. 2. I always play through the game in front of me. An occasional cntrl-n if there's a simply unplayable map but otherwise no.
3. I always play a no safety game that is I do not save and reload. Well actually I do alot as My game seems to crash alot. But I do not save and reload around a bad event. Nor do I quit. I will always play a game through to the end.
4. I go for all the wonders I can. Sometimes I get em, sometimes not.
5. Gigantic maps offer the best chance to experience the whole game without milking. They are also the most tedius in controlling planets but I'd rather do that than turn turn turn turn turn oh joy its just like moo3!!! turn turn turn turn turn.
7. I'm usually finished in the early 2200's.
8. I don't milk pop. In fact, I have to keep it lower than I'd like to or the game crashes.
9. Midgame I have to sneak attack aliens to get units off the board so the game will run or it crashes. So I guess war is an integral part of my game strategy by necessity. It doesn't seem to get me more points though.
10. for me, researching a whole tree of tech's doesn't seem to get me many more points than trading for them.
Reply #382 from Stardock Forums Top
Can one of you continue the story that Yoda left for the Fellowship in the War of the Worlds thread?

I have my hands full with our own Fellowship MMORPG. Didn't expect the number of characters that I have to add in. It's not a problem but I would like to give each one a decent amount of air-time.
Reply #384 from Stardock Forums Top
I'd rather contribute to the community rather than try to get the most out of my score. Mostly I try out new strategies, moving from easier to harder maps depending on how I feel.
End of quote


It's tricky, isn't it? I started by going up the difficulty levels, spending about five games at each level to familiarise myself with various tactics. Challenging was good for me, and I managed to squeak out a win at painful, though only just. I'm going back through others' strategy posts now, trying to breathe life and fun into the play. The writing has really saved me from boredom and quitting the game, though, and even now I'm getting a little tired of playing - though don't want to let my empire down.

I also share the confusion about big scores - can someone enlarge on the value of alignment in game? That is, do you score more if your alignment is directly opposite ALL others? (just noted this inference from a post of Ray's above)
Reply #385 from Stardock Forums Top
Yes, you do score more, Wombat. The game checks each turn up to a certain year (not revealed) to see how different the player's alignment is from the AIs. There is a small scoring bonus for playing opposite alignments, which is thought by Brad as being more difficult and thus require more skill.

He challenged players to play all good while being evil and so on.

Yeah, we all need breaks from the game. Even if you are not playing, there lots of stuff you could still do in the forum :)
Reply #386 from Stardock Forums Top
Just tipped the Fellowship over the 600k mark with my latest game. A Crippling Gigantic just shy of 25k.

I had the Dregs declare war on me early in the game. Our closest planets were on adjoining sectors. Didn't build any defenders but parked a scout between the planets to see if they would attack. After a few years (i think), the Dregs managed to send a transport 2 parsecs away from my undefended planet. And yes you guessed it, they sued for peace which I accepted. LOL.

Shortly after, I creamed the Arceans (which had about 20 systems) with frigates. No one else dared to touch me ever after. Empire build, culture bomb, game over 2196.
Reply #387 from Stardock Forums Top
Congrats on unseating Staffa again for that gold medal. Keep up the games. I have a few that I'm finishing up, but they maybe a couple days away. I'm trying to write something for WotW, but I haven't gotten anything typed up yet.
Reply #388 from Stardock Forums Top
Thanks Gengsta but we all know Staffa has a number of games stored away to smack me down again :)

I've got enough gas this time round to put in a couple more games to hit 100,000 pts.
Reply #389 from Stardock Forums Top
Good job Ray. I'm not sure I've ever had the patience to finish a gigantic map--so many stars, it drives me nuts.

I've got a huge maso that's coming along nicely though. For my diplomatic style I've tried setting all AIs to demonic, and I'm finding it easier--when they're not fighting each other for alignment reasons it's easier to manipulate them all into fighting whoever is currently the leader.
Reply #392 from Stardock Forums Top
The game I've just played was Gigantic Abundant.
I believe it took me between 10-12hrs.

I had to refrain from doing some of the things I usually do, such as building a production SB in each good sector to cut down on the micromanagement. Up to a point where I knew I was winning, I stopped upgrading resource SBs as well. The constructor micromanagement is the most time consuming.

It can actually go quite fast if you are not fighting many wars. I had one major war with the Arceans where I had to move a fleet of about 60-80 ships. After that was done, it's went quite fast (other than the constructor mania part).
Reply #393 from Stardock Forums Top
Count me in Ray, your story telling abilities are excellent.

Name: plephart
Race: Human
Class: Ranger
Reason for joining: Defend the peoples of the Midwest and to fight the battles they cannot.
Reply #394 from Stardock Forums Top
Welcome to our MMORPG, plephart.

You came just in the nick of time to help out against the impending Undead attack. I was hoping for an archer too. :)
Reply #395 from Stardock Forums Top
Wow, my last game was worth almost full value!

This must be what was mentioned earlier, that games are grouped for the square root calculation.

That's going to work in my favor, as I pretty much finish one game a week.

The stories being posted a great too! Keep up the good work. Now that I've finished this game, I'm going to download Beta 2 and analyze it.

~SDC~
Reply #397 from Stardock Forums Top
I guess I was wrong. Welcome, Miles.
Welcome to the Fellowship! Please drop by.

Errr. He's not going to read that if he doesn't drop by. Speaking of which Ray can you make the empire homepage link here?
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Reply #398 from Stardock Forums Top
H5O's latest game and our newest member, Miles helped us to the Top spot again. :CONGRAT:

The MWC is however doing extremely well themselves with new members and many submissions.

Welcome to the Fellowship, Miles!

I'm really interested in the new tweaks in Beta 2, H5O. Do share with us your findings.
Reply #399 from Stardock Forums Top
Good idea, Gengsta! Why didn't I think of that? LOL
Reply #400 from Stardock Forums Top
Well, I'm the newest member of the Fellowship, and it's good to belong to such a fine empire such as this.
I will play as much as I can to keep the ratings up while still having some semblance of a life outside of the game. Ah the real world conflicts with my entertainment... my nephew visits and plays the game too, so I have to compete for my own computer sometimes. (:(

For those of you who don't recognize my name, it's from a Lois McMaster Bujold military scifi book series about Miles Vorkosigan who has a side job as Miles Naismith in a mercenary fleet. (shameless plug for Bujold, but her books are that good).

I thought the name apt because Miles Naismith is Vorkosigan's alter ego, one bent one aspirations of serving his empire while furthering his own alter-ego.
In GalCiv I play my alter ego, always trying to be the most powerful I can be in my games, and above all to remain loyal to my empire. :HOT:

Long Live the Fellowship of the Ring! :D
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