There is a reduction of the tech premium (additional cost added to unresearched techs based on the number of techs you have already researched) from 3% to 2%. I personally don't think it makes any noticeable difference because techs are already so expensive at the end.

~SDC~

I bring you greeting on behave on the European Alliance!

I noticed on your site that you said you had no contact with us, so I decided we should change that.

To wich ambassador should I direct my further efforts or should I just keep bugging you guys here?

G-Force

Theoden's responsible for our media and foreign affairs. He'll undoubtably get in touch with you when he gets back from his vacation.

~SDC~

I'm sure we can arrenge something when he gets back.

G-Force

Just posted the second instalment of my Galciv blog on joeuser.
http://ray.joeuser.com/index.asp?AID=205

~SDC~

Great Article Ray

Interesting.


On a side note has anyone else been following the development blog?

Yes, I have, bakka.

Mudflap, Cari keep mentioning GC2 and this demo that they are working on. I suspect they are doing up an early GC2 demo for Brad when he goes on his road trip to interest publishers on GC2.

~SDC~

(We rejoin our heroes as they return from Mordor in an appropriated Fellow-ship, after a pointless quest to destroy a fake Ring. The film rights for this story are still available!)


Ancient History

‘“...and five syllables in the last line,” he said.
“Like this?” I said.

Upon a time, I
met a maid. Her hair looked good
but it was man-made.

“Yes, I suppose...” said the elf-lord, “But a true haiku is of its time. It should at least hint at a season. Like this:”

shadows fall softly
upon frosted winter grass
a good time to dream

“Sure, I can do that,” I said.

Snow falls upon my
head. It’s cold. Any chance of
another cuppa?

I could tell that they were impressed. Not long after, they said that I had learned everything Rómendor had to offer, and it was time I returned to the Western lands to pass on my wisdom. They seemed very insistent...’

“Please!” cried Theoden. “Enough!”
“Enough?” said Downie. “I’m not even up to my 150th birthday yet. There’s plenty more good stuff to come.”
“I said I'd put a _brief_ biography in the Fellowship records.”
“This _is_ the brief version. The long version is an epic comprising 28 massive volumes, not including the commentaries and appendices.”
“How long are you going to keep me tied up like this?”
“Just until we’ve reached safety.”
“Safety? With Ray hunting you down? Nowhere will be safe!”
“Hmm. Milady? What’s the range of this thing?”
“It says here it can go for thirty light years without refuelling. Is that a lot?” she said.
“Thirty years?” mused Downie. “The blink of an eye. And yet an hour can seem like an eternity...”
“So I’ve noticed,” said Theoden.
“Where are we now?”
“At an altitude of 15,000 feet, approaching the Misty Mountains,” said Milady.
“Why there?”
“To pick up my pony, of course.”
“Erm... He’s probably in a better place now.”
“Hey! No animals aboard!” said Theoden. “Ray makes me clean this thing.”

“Waark!” said Gwainhar, flapping his wings to get out the way of the approaching ship, which landed on the sharp mountain peak and span a few times before settling down, like a prize-winning ring-toss at a travelling fair.
Milady got out first. “Hey! Where was our rescue?” she said.
“Haw! I was waiting until you’d destroyed The Ring.”
“We nearly got killed!”
“Didn’t, though, did you? We eagles don’t like to come unless we’re needed.”
“I’ll forgive you if Snowball’s OK,” she said.
“Hmm... let's see... I gave it to the kids to play with. Thorondir! Have you still got that little horsey?” he called.
There was a pause. Another eagle, with a wingspan of just eighteen feet, came up the slope, beating its wings forcefully. It bore something in its claws, a small and traumatised looking white pony.
“Snowball!” cried Milady.
“You kept him?” said Downie, popping his head out.
“Course we did,” said Gwainhar. “I promised we’d take good care of him, didn’t I?”
His son, Thorondir, chipped in. “We’ll miss him. I had so much fun, taking him down to the nearest paddock. I used to practise swooping down at him from behind and plucking him up off the ground.”
“How about my pony?” said Downie.
“Well... I never made any promises about him, did I?” said Gwainhar. “But if it makes you feel any better, he was delicious. Haw!”

“So, what now?” said Downie.
“Let’s go back to the Fellowship,” said Milady.
“Are you insane? Ray will kill us.”
“Ray needs us.”
“The Ray you knew is gone! Lost forever!”
“No all those who Wander are lost,” said Milady, quietly.
“...That was rather well put. OK, but only for the sake of poetry.”

They touched down at the spaceport, and released Theoden.
“Thanks for the ride,” said Milady.
“Yes,” said Downie. “I hope you’ve got all you need for my bio?”
“I may have to trim it down a bit,” said Theoden. “To about three paragraphs.”
“Really? Then let me leave you with a traditional Elvish blessing. May your thaurmeler be blessed by copious showers of rochwing!”
“...I’m going to look those words up.”

“Ah, here comes Ray,” said Milady, “Let me do the talking.”
“Suit yourself,” said Downie.
“Hi, Ray. We’re back. Mission accomplished.”
“’We’?” said Ray. She looked around. Downie had disappeared.
“He’s... around here somewhere. Anyway, I hear that no-one knows about the loss of The Ring. I suppose you covered up its theft to keep morale high? Because of its great symbolic value?”
“Ah... Yes. No-one can ever know that the ring that stands on the appointed pedestal is just a fake. After all, if we didn’t have a Ring, we could hardly call ourselves The Fellowship of the Ring, could we? We’d have to be simply ‘The Fellowship’. And that would sound just feeble.”
“So, we can go on as if nothing happened?”
“I don’t see why not. You did anger me at the time... But that’s all ancient history now. Lucky for you I’m in a Good mood today.”


~SDC~

Thank you Ray for the notification of your blog and the link otherwise I would miss it. You always write great stuff.

For the record . . . my average large tough game on 1.05 over nine games was about 17657 and in three games of 1.10 it is 17176 or about 3% lower if I did the math correctly. The high game on 1.05 was 17810 and the high game on 1.10 is 17580. Those are pretty close but the scoring does seem to be nerfed a little bit for tough level on 1.10 compared to 1.05.

GCX 1.1 has certainly created more interest in masochistic level games because of the score bump in 1.1 maso metaverse scores. 40k large, 50k huge, and 60k (super)gigantic are now appearing (Congrats on the 60k Ray). It will be interesting to see how this scoring change impacts the health of the metaverse. Will more excellent players (folks who win at maso) play more games or will more non-maso players give up and drop out with decreased activity in the metaverse? As another post stated, I am not quite sure why Stardock had to both mega-bump maso *AND* nerf the sub-maso (even a little). One *or* the other might have sufficed. On the other hand, one's opinion may depend on whether one is skilled enough or really enjoys maso. Hopefully the GCX will stimulate all to play more at any level. Stay tuned.

There is a nice post by Killa Koala and PontiusBruinPilate (PBP) in the GROSS threadzilla trying to help folks play at a higher level and there is a new thread in the forum discussing the desire for a maso strategy guide and there is more activity in the strategy part of the forum in the maso thread - which some already consider the maso strategy guide LOL.

Have fun everyone.

Rick
[Message Edited]

and isn't that going well :notsure:

Matthew,

Got a suggestion for you. If you have an old save of the 1.1 anomalous crippling game you played (not endgamesave), do a retire and see if the score is zero. If that's the case, you could try retiring your Maso Gig game to see if the game is anomalous.

Rick,

I don't think the slight nerfing of non-Maso scores were intended but it is tough to tweak scores due to the rather complex scoring system that Frogboy has chosen.

If you recall an old thread, Frogboy said that the intention is to reward higher difficulties and not penalise lower difficulties. I've loaded an old calkwalk game under 1.092 and the score is unchanged.

Frogboy also said that he expects the top tier of the metaverse to be made up mostly of Maso players. That's what is going to happen looking at things.

Personally, I think 2x Maso scores over Crippling is fine. However, SD needs to fix some exploits in the game to make Maso the challenge it used to be. Remember that Maso was meant to be the un-winnable level. I would be dealing with some of these issues in my Galciv blog.

vincible,

People are going to whine about scoring systems until this game is dead and buried. The Metaverse survived very well with the old system where difficulty is not really rewarded, it would survive with this new system where the challenge levels (crippling + maso) are. What we really need are the exploit fixes.

~SDC~

And vincible, you should know better than to discuss scoring with Pontius.

~SDC~

Welcome to the Fellowship, duncanthemad!

I see we are going to reach the 12000 series in player numbers soon.

~SDC~

ric - I caught your post in the GROSS thread. I've noticed your progress with the Large games and my experience on small maps would echo that. I would, if really concentrating , tend to score 10,000 small tough, 12,000 painful, 14,000 crippling - and am now watching 28,000 point maso small games being logged in. I can see no real choice between tough/painful/crippling in the longer term for scoring; you may as well play at the level you enjoy the most. I agree that maso should score highest but cannot support the notion that it should be a flat line until a spike at maso doubles the score. Crippling is certainly NOT being rewarded. I would think a graded increase is fairer for all, especially for new players arriving. Frogboy will indeed have the Masoverse he desires.

vincible: not wishing to get in the middle of that other thread but feel it is unfortunate things take that turn. :notsure: I suspect many of us will be reflecting on how we participate here; check the ANZAC thread too for an example. Cheers!

Wombat, since you have played both Crippling and Maso, how hard do you rate Maso over Crippling?
10% harder, twice as hard, or others?

~SDC~

I just want to state again that even though many of us enjoying competing on the Metaverse both individually and as an empire, it is not the sole purpose of empiring and this forum. Our purpose is also to be active contributors both to the game and forum and also role-play/story writing for those who enjoy it.

If anyone here feels unbelonged just because you aren't able to submit any Maso games - don't. We value your participation in this empire not because of your scores. If so, I would have kicked out all the zero-pointers long ago (sorry Blue, can't resist ;p).

It's great to see that many of us are regular posters and also active participants in the main and strat forum.

~SDC~

Hey.. I don't mind at all... after all it was what my Overlords stated what would be best for the empire.. and I have to keep them happy or i wouldn't have an empire

I was facing a big delemour when i signed up.. I'm into The Lord of the rings,Star Wars, swashbuckling,Star Trek(varous empires), Babalon 5, in fact most sci-fi and fantasy and rpg.. so i thought it would only be fair to all if i joined (at the time the only) Australian based empire.. doesn't mean that I can't join in the fun on the other groups with my role playing/GM(DM)'ing experience.. I love being a troublesome go getter, explorer, and in any RPG i enter I always play a very mischevous thief/Assason.. Brash pilot, rebelous character who always ends up getting his party into trouble.. much to the delight of the GM .. and horror of the party.. LOL

Ray, I admit that's a tough call. Since I win well at Crippling and not at all yet as maso, it's obviously much harder! I guess it's the exponential rise that seems staggering, as opposed to the intuitive grading that would suggest if a player has worked their way up to the second highest difficulty rating (8th out of 9), they probably deserve a bit more than half the score of the next level up (9th out of 9). You and I are having this talk over two threads, and I realise there is no real answer - only the answer that Frogboy programs into the Metaverse. I'm not 'upset' and I'm not leaving, just expressing a point of view.

I know you are not emotional about this issue, that's why I'm having the discussion with you.
I appreciate your opinion.

However, to bring everything into perspective, it's exactly what you said - Frogboy ultimately decides the rules of the game. We can give our opinions and suggestions but ultimately we decide whether we want to play.

~SDC~

Good idea.
I went back to my earlier save games for the anomalous - I kept a few backups. In August 2183, I could retire and get 714 metaverse points. In Feb 2185, retiring gave me 0 metaverse points. So whatever went wrong must have happened some time before the end of the game.

That means it is possible to monitor your games for anomalousness if you save and retire on a regular basis.
Might even be a good thing. Encourages you to take regular breaks.


~SDC~

Good news. Now we can be more confident of playing without finding our efforts wasted at the end.

~SDC~

I'm just started another Maso Huge game. This time I'm taking all the neutral choices for events to end up with a neutral alignment. My previous neutrals were all based on reverting back to neutral at the end of the game.

Really tough not choosing evil as I had 2-3 +30%PQ events.

~SDC~

1899

~SDC~

Thought it was about time I got an interesting number message!

Alex


~SDC~