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.”
478,397 views 2,185 replies
Reply #1051 from Stardock Forums Top
It sounds like you could do a Cakewalk tiny/rare in however much time it takes to research Impulse Drive and get those transports out, along with maybe a token star fighter or two. A couple minutes at most.

Or maybe start with Pacifists/+40 influence% and you'd have to do nothing but colonize the whole galaxy and let the enemy fall to you. That might even work on Gigantic/abundant--can you imagine winning without ever researching any techs or building anything but colony ships?
[Message Edited]
Reply #1052 from Stardock Forums Top
That difficulty disparity is disturbing. Wasn't the original score multiplier target for v1.05 (and presumably for the Xpack betas as well) between cakewalk and maso around 3? From Cotal's experiment, the difference between cakewalk and crippling is about 1.15 times. From Ray's cakewalk game compared to his usual crippling/maso, the multiplier is about 1.65.

I am going off into uncharted waters here because I have no proof to back this up, but maybe the multipliers were only added to some of the pre-existing score categories of the old versions. When the extra bonus points for trade goods/wonders and alignment shifts were added into the later versions, maybe the shifts were not put there and that explains the low ball differences because people are getting a lot of points from those newly modified categories.

Or it could simply be that the powers-that-be could not find it in their hearts to both ding low difficulty players and truly make maso mean maso scores. They wouldn't want to discourage the noobs or give the maso players any more Mt. Everest scores, would they? Afterall, we all know that maso players are a bunch of whiners that wrecked the Metaverse in the first place. :p

Seriously, though, my impression is the score imbalance seems more like a lack of will to make a firm stand on difficulty rather than only a flawed model or bugs. Just my 2 BC there.
Galactic Civilizations IV
Reply #1053 from Stardock Forums Top
Wasn't the original score multiplier target for v1.05 (and presumably for the Xpack betas as well) between cakewalk and maso around 3?
End of quote


Don't think a score multiplier target between Calkwalk and Maso was mentioned explicitly. You probably recalled the 3x multiplier for the difference between Tiny and Gigantic. The size multiplier is working properly.

Seriously, though, my impression is the score imbalance seems more like a lack of will to make a firm stand on difficulty rather than only a flawed model or bugs.
End of quote


I doubt it. If lack of will was the issue, there wouldn't be any need for Frogboy to tweak the difficulty scoring in Beta3. There wasn't any pressing reason for him to do that. Nobody was trying to wreck the Metaverse by submitting a stream of Calkwalk Gigantics. ;)
Reply #1054 from Stardock Forums Top
It sounds like you could do a Cakewalk tiny/rare in however much time it takes to research Impulse Drive and get those transports out, along with maybe a token star fighter or two. A couple minutes at most.
End of quote


When I played my first two Galciv games (simple and beginner), I was rather shocked to find the AI planets defenseless when my invading fleets arrived. I think I was too used to Civ and Moo games where the cities/planets get defended quickly even at lower difficulties (IIRC).
Reply #1055 from Stardock Forums Top
Cotal, thanks for posting your experiment in post #1045. Ray, thanks for the comments in #1046. I was wondering the same thing. Some top metaverse scorers do not play at the very high levels. There is a related thread in the strategies part of the forum. I also prefer the painful level at my skill level. But, at a skill level like Ray has, then maybe crippling or maso would be more fun. LOL

Rick
Reply #1056 from Stardock Forums Top
But, at a skill level like Ray has, then maybe crippling or maso would be more fun.
End of quote


Actually Rick, I don't find either levels to be very fun. Crippling is too easy and Maso is too hard. That's the reason why I requested for an intermediate level some time back.

I oscillate between Crippling and Maso nowadays, switching levels when I get sick of one. I think once I finish my next Maso game, I will switch back to Crippling and maybe try to play it differently.

BTW, anyone like to share their favourite starting picks? I'm very boring in terms of picks and would like recommendations from you.

I usually take speed, diplomacy, morale and PQ.

Tried research recently but it doesn't seem to be worthwhile.
Reply #1057 from Stardock Forums Top
Dug out this old post.

#21 by Avatar Frogboy - 6/6/2003 10:38:43 PM

Well here's where things went very very wrong...

In 1.04, the scoring worked nicely except for a couple minor issues we wanted to tweak:

1) There wasn't quite enough difference between someone playing at say masochistic and someone playing at normal.

2) The difference between a tiny galaxy and a gigantic galaxy was turning out to be only around 2 to 1. We were trying to make it be more like 5 to 1. So we made population count a bit more. The problem is that there was a typo in there.

We did test the scoring system over a couple of days. But the problem really only shows up in long games played on very very large galaxies which we hadn't tested.

The goal was to have something like this:

Win: Gigantic / Masochistic: ~15,000

Win: Tiny / Masochistic: ~4,000

Win: Gigantic / Normal AI: ~3,000

WIn: Tiny / Normal: ~800

The good news is that the scores on the metaverse contain the root data that was used to calculate them. So we can re-adjust them later on.
End of quote


Frogboy's first point does seem to indicate that he wanted a bigger difference in scoring between difficulties.

He indicated a desire for a 5x difference between Maso and Normal. I would guess that the difference between Maso and Calkwalk should be around 25x if difference between Normal and Calkwalk is about 5x as well. So Calkwalk Gigantic should score ~ 600 points if Maso Gigantic is ~ 15,000.

If I get 25k for Maso Gigantic now, I should get 1k for Calkwalk Gigantic just like I thought it should be.

I'm not certain if we will ever see this scoring nirvana but I'm still hoping. :)
[Message Edited]
Reply #1058 from Stardock Forums Top
You probably recalled the 3x multiplier for the difference between Tiny and Gigantic.
End of quote


Now I do recall that was indeed the case. Thanks for the correction.

But difficulty is still quite out of whack, though. The difference between cakewalk and normal might be justified at 1.65 times (well, I would consider 1.5 fair myself), but not cakewalk and maso. That should be rating higher than it is. How much higher exactly? I do not know. I cannot finish a game at maso. But the people who do play maso can say how many easier games a new maso win should be worth in time and brainpower invested and pass that up the chain to the powers-that-be.

Edit: I was in mid post when you dug up that reply, Ray. Ow. Things are farther out of whack than they should be. Thanks for looking that old post up.
[Message Edited]
Reply #1059 from Stardock Forums Top
Actually the multiplier is fine. The problem with scoring is in the multiplicand. You cannot do certain things in maso that you can at other levels resulting in a smaller multiplicand and thus, smaller scores at those levels than expected.

How did this come about?

1. The original pop nerf
2. The secondary pop nerf
3. The rearrangement of victory conditions.

All 3 things lobied for hard by the maso players, Be careful what you wish for.

Reply #1060 from Stardock Forums Top
There was only one Maso player who lobbied hard for scoring changes and that was Staffa. KseAli also spoke out strongly for better scoring but he played Crippling predominately.

Both of them made valuable contributions to scoring IMO. With the pop nerfs, players are no longer able to get big increases in score just by pressing the enter key for more pop. I thought that was a great change which did not merely benefit Maso players.

The rearrangement of victory conditions was not a result of lobbying. Frogboy himself felt that tech victories scored too well relative to the ease in achieving that victory. Personally, I feel there shouldn't be any discrimination between conditions (except that the cultural victory trigger should be increased) as once critical mass is achieved in the mid-game, the way to victory is simply the player's choice.
Reply #1061 from Stardock Forums Top
We welcome Spuzmax to the Fellowship. :)

Do drop by and say hi.
Reply #1062 from Stardock Forums Top
Just thought you'd all like to hear this sad tale:

Theoden was leading the Fellowship of the Ring Empire (formerly the Terran Alliance) and had become the most powerful empire in the galaxy. But the Altarians had gained the artifact which made them more and more powerful, which caused alarm in the Fellowship halls. Quick as a whistle, Theoden summoned the leaders of the other empires to his keep. After a bit of diplomacy, every empire declared war on the treacherous Altarians! Theoden then sat back to watch the AI empires slug it out. As he hit the "Turn" button and chuckled an evil little laugh, the horror of horrors happened. The electricity went out!! Theoden cried "NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" but it was too late. Theoden's wife laughed evilly as she knew the tragedy that hit him. >:(

Theoden vowed that tonight, the Altarians would burn...
[Message Edited]
Reply #1063 from Stardock Forums Top
Seems like the monsoon is doing some real damage over there, Theoden. :D

I have a sad tale to report too. Gave up on my Maso/Gigantic/Abundant game. My speedy frigates could overfly the Torian Dreads but each of their super strong battle axes defending their planets could take out 2-3 of my precious frigates! :sniff!:

Well too bad for me. I'll be starting up another game.
Reply #1064 from Stardock Forums Top
Sorry to hear about the game, Ray. That's gotta be a lot of work down the drain!

Yes, the weather pattern above Western Virginia seems to be straight out of the Amazon! We've gotten unbelievable amounts of rainfall in the past several days and there have been some flash flooding problems. My driveway has almost completely washed away! >:(

Never fear, though...the Altarians won't get away that easily! ;)
Reply #1065 from Stardock Forums Top
Yeah, spent quite a bit of time on that but it's a good experience for me. Wouldn't be playing that setting again in a hurry. :)

The Europeans under their heatwave might appreciate some of that rain. Seems like crazy weather all round.

Well, Cotal seems to be charging up the ladder. Tremendous workrate. Have you given up on Maso, Cotal?
[Message Edited]
Reply #1066 from Stardock Forums Top
Does it make me a bad person that I like keeping around the "Challenging" level? I tried playing a Painful and got my arse handed to me. It just isn't fun when you watch every battleship you build get reduced to subatomic particles before it even gets a couple of parsecs away from base. >:(

I've also found a new found fondness for dismantling the Yor and rebuilding them as Coke machines. Those hateful...$%&!*@...censored for mature content...#&^@#!**@! Sorry...I just find it disturbing that every three turns they demanded 5000bc tribute and then went to war with me. >:( >:(

It's unreal how warlike the AI is at Painful...I can't even imagine how Maso is...it must be a constant war! :SURPRISED:
Reply #1067 from Stardock Forums Top
Don't worry about it, Theoden. Most players on the Metaverse play between Normal and Crippling. There are a couple who enjoy playing at levels below Normal and there are a handful demented ones like myself who tortue ourselves at Maso.

Find a level where you have the most fun and play that. :)
Reply #1068 from Stardock Forums Top
Not what you might expect
End of quote


I got the same sort of result on a couple of smalls - about 30 points difference between levels...

Alex


~SDC~
Reply #1069 from Stardock Forums Top
Just read through the last few pages - kudos to everyone who's studying the scoring system! Especially Cotal for that experiment - way to show 'em how smart Aussie ex-pats can be :-)
Reply #1070 from Stardock Forums Top
Theoden: I think half the active maso players (me, Ray, Gengsta) are in this empire, and we talk about it a lot here because no one else can relate to us. Don't feel pressured.

Gerakken: I put at least twice as much time into a maso game as I do into a similar crippling game. Also, the maso game obviously requires far more skill, and I fail much more often at maso (this is really arrogant, but I can't conceive of losing a Crippling game with any kind of reasonable starting position, whereas I restart my maso games regularly after the first year since if I have a poor start I'll just get buried).
Reply #1071 from Stardock Forums Top
Does it make me a bad person that I like keeping around the "Challenging" level?
End of quote


Not at all. I started on simple and worked my way up to winning tough, and my playing level is challenging/tough. Do I want to win at higher levels? I might want to try a real attempt at maso one day, and I almost certainly going to put in a painful game one day, but I will probably keep tough as my median level.

Now, there would be no problem at all with people who wanted to make a career on cakewalk if the scores actually meant something meaningful when it came to difficulty. Right now, larger maps mean many more points, but risk does not equal meaningful rewards. A more satisfactory result would be degrees of risk (in terms of difficulty) indeed equals real obvious degrees of reward as well as larger maps earning more.
[Message Edited]
Reply #1072 from Stardock Forums Top
Thanks, guys...I was starting to feel like the weakling around here because of my difficulty level! I just want to have fun playing the game, but if I get creamed every time I play, I think it would get old fast. I'm pretty satisfied with Challenging now, but I can see moving up to Tough soon. Don't think I'll be doing any Cakewalk or Beginner games anymore, though. That's just mass genocide for the other empires. :D

I think if they don't make a scoring change they should at least implement another medal to give to players with 5 or more Maso wins (and maybe one for Crippling as well). I mean there needs to be some recognition for the guys who are completely insane! ;)

Still, my hatred for the Yor will continue on. I don't know if that's normal or not, but they were just complete asses in that Painful game... >:(

Maybe I'll make them into bowling lanes...that way I can roll bowling balls at their faces all day long! Or maybe mechanized toilets so I can crap on the all the time. Perhaps I could even transform them into Rotor Rooter trucks (the septic tank vacuums). ;p

Oh, well...enough of the Yor. Gonna go home and put several large holes in a couple of Yor planets tonight. :HOT:
Reply #1073 from Stardock Forums Top

Theoden of Rohan ditto! I hate the Yor as much as anybody! Even when they are falling at my feet in worship or defeat they remain so very snide . . . LOL I like the Coke machine idea!

Ray yes I've given up on adding a Maso to the score study (for the moment) . . . sry to hear about your Gigantic/Abundant game that would be a huge!!! scoring one if you could pull it off, just imagine the population? Wow . . .

My main problem (getting back to maso) is a lack of co-oporation from the Minors. On crippling they finance all my early expansion (8bc per mth for 35 mths etc for each tech I sell them). On Maso they offer me a fraction of this even though I get Diplomatic Translators (DT) first up.

Interestingly enough even though I have DT when I speak to any other race they are more skilled than I am! Now that hurts! ;p

Thanks TheQuack! Your too kind . . . (blushing) . .

Well I finally finished a Gigantic Game. OMG! I've been plugging away at it on and off for over three days (built 23 Terror Stars . . . sweet) . . .

I have a new found respect for anyone who plays Gigantic! Thats for sure!

Regarding level of difficulty I think whatever your comfortable with. I mean honestly who cares it's just a game and so long as it's fun whatever level you enjoy doesn't matter. I personaly like it Painfull . . . hehe. Can't wait for Nightmare (if it ever happens) hopefully they'll make that about equivalent to Maso as it is now and make Maso a little bit easier for us all.

Reply #1075 from Stardock Forums Top
Interestingly enough even though I have DT when I speak to any other race they are more skilled than I am! Now that hurts!
End of quote


I've found that to have a chance at beating Maso, I must take speed and diplomacy picks. Else I get trashed.

Can't wait for Nightmare (if it ever happens) hopefully they'll make that about equivalent to Maso as it is now and make Maso a little bit easier for us all.
End of quote


That's what I'm hoping for too. The best level for anyone to play is one which you are challenged but not frustrated. I get frustrated with Maso occassionally so I drop back to Crippling to recharge.