GCCG WARNING!!!

I am very disappointed that the game developer chooses to single out a given tactic for special 'treatment'. I am obviously a fan of the GCCG - but say what you like about it, it still involves playing a perfectly legal game from start to finish, according to the rules; there is no modification or cheating going on. Points are accumulated through determination.

I paid for the game - I should be allowed to play my way within the rules. I do not expect the developer to suddenly decide that they need to make extra rules or deny me customer support to FORCE me to play a certain way. Not all of us have the time to play maso/gigantic. This looks like the developer penalising, or refusing to extend proper customer support, to a player on the basis of their playing style - which I find completely outrageous. eg: "I'll fix your anomalous score if you're a good boy trying to play maso/gigantic like I think you should, but if you're one of those no hopers playing at beginner level then you can go jump."

It would be important to hear from the developers on this issue.

Also people can visit my site to check out the chat log on this if they want to...

http://ebzeromatrix.tripod.com/warning.html

I'll post up more info. on it later...

EB,

You are leaving out a few points.

Even after finding out that your strategy was triggering the anomalous scores, you continued to submit games using this strategy before using the modifications that I suggested (which worked), and so you asked people multiple times to delete anomalous scores.  And multiple people deleted your anomalous scores.  Do you call that not getting support?

I asked you to put the warning and modification to your strategy on your site to reduce the number of e-mails to support, which I end up getting.

You have not made any enemies.  If that were the case, we would have already asked you to take down the site.  I, on the other hand, have been trying to help you, and made suggestions which you said worked in your last e-mail to me. 

If you e-mailed Brad and Brad has not responded, it's because Brad is a busy person. Gal Civ is not his only concern.  Far from it.

You're not causing a lot of problems.  You caused one problem, which is the additional support mail, and I have already told you how you can rectify that. 

If you had continued our conversation in the chat room, you may not have felt the need to post this, but you made it in the heat of the moment.

Ahem, EBZ.



After you had asked me to do so, I was on my burned-out mode. I didn't play GalCiv for a while. Once I got back, I did implement what you had advised. Yes, it did work, however, I slipped once after I had implemented it and I forgot to dump my treasury boefre the game ended, hence my current (and seemingly permanent) anomalous score.



Yes that WAs support, and I was appreciative of it, but I am talking about NOW and what's going to become of all of this. Are all anomalous scores going to be permanent now, or is it just the ones due to the GCCG? Understand, I do feel a little singled out here on this.



Ok, I'll say I was a little dramatic with that, and you know that I have taken your suggestions and been appreciative of all the help.



I haven't e-mailed him about anything recently. I would only guess that he would've confronted me with this rather than having me to find out some other, painful way.



Yes, I will be posting further info. on my site unless I decide to tear it down.



I did feel the need to post this. Talking in the chat would've possibly made things worse. I can only ask that how would you have felt, spending days and weeks on a site/guide, hours of playing, and even more on getting the thing publised and advertised? I feel liek all of my hard work into it has just gotten flushed, dont pass go, don't collect 200 BC's, I'm feeling punished for what I tried to do to help out with the GC community.

The GCCG was intended to provide new, old, and inactive (due to burn-outs), a new ray of hope on getting higher scores, faster. All in hopes to keep up with the top scorers. Also, I wanted it to provide a array of new perspectives for people that are already vets to the game, and a guide to even help those that are new to all of this, so they cant excel, if they wish, in being competitive.

Like I stated earlier, none of this was supposed to be offensive to anyone (especially the devs). I need a source to vent, and to tell others about what's going on (taking your suggestions of disseminating the warning accordingly).

Have a good day!

I'm not getting that support - my anomalous scores have remained. I've been more concerned with trying to find what causes them and why, with a view to solving the problem - particularly before the expansion pack is released (As someone said elsewhere, the XP is still a beta!). If my scores were fixed, I'd be about 8000 points higher up the board, and nudging into the top 25! It's worth noting that the anomalous scores don't seem to be generated in 1.05, so it's happening because of changes in the 1.09 beta.

Whether or not the GCCG is "cheese" is debatable - certainly it's a technique that takes advantage of the way the system works (the balance between difficulty levels is perhaps "understated", but the cure is to fix the problem, not the blame. Part of the problem is that the AI's - certainly at lower levels - will take on huge debts that they'll never clear.

Please don't take it personally - I and many others would miss your comments hereabouts, and, regardless of whether or not the GCCG is "obsoleted", you've made your mark on the game.

Alex


~SDC~

Having a high treasury by the end of the game triggers the anomalous score.

The only rememdy I have found is to dump all the money (I usually distribute it) amongst the other civs (or the civ) right before the last few turns or so.

It's only one of the things.

For example, there is also a flag that gets tripped if the cash is too high at certain points in the game, (and there may also be other flags as well as causes related to the tech tree from what frogboy has said elsewhere) that keeps tripping me up - my technique is usually to fairly quickly cash-rape the AIs and minors to build up a good sized stash (and to keep them in their place!), which I can then use to support me during my research phases.

IMHO what's really needed is a warning before submission if a score looks like it may be anomalous - that would save everyone some grief and give individual players the choice of sending or not sending - and some sort of method of tracking why it occurred (and when) which might help the developers in resolving problems and in adjusting AI play styles.

Alex

[Message Edited]

EBZ I can fully understand your emotional state, nevertheless even the best intentions despite the large ammount of work you've put into this can make things go skewif sometimes. Revolutionary concepts tend to always cause a few shockwaves . . . thats the way it is.

Its a safe bet that most players who read your guide benifit from it to some degree. I get the feeling Carielf's not concerned so much about 'how' people want to play the game but rather what the 'outcomes' are . . . 'Annomylous' scores are a head-ache for everyone because they simply cause an un-necessary increase in workload and complaints for SD staff.

I hope you wouldn't really leave our community over this . . . its just a problem that I believe can be solved and is worth solving.

Whats wrong with a bit of cheese? Its good for the digestion! For mine, finding the exploits in a game is part of the fun! And you EBZ I'd have to say have found most of them . . . offcourse thats going to unsettle some people players and developers alike.

Incidentaly like I said I've played GC games and sold all my tech to the computers to drive them broke so they can't counter attack at the end of the research ladder and finished with +200 000 bc without any repercussions in 1.05 ever since it came out. Seemed like a viable tactic to me if the AI is dumb enough to buy all your tech and leave themselves broke on those difficulty level then so be it.

The issue is the weighting of scoring for different levels of play . . . but we already new that I suppose . . .

And I've looked at EBZ's chat log. Unless it's forged, Which I doubt, It indicated that EBZ's tactics were cheese. Now as it is already at least third hand in that log, (and thus fourth hand in my post), I cannot verify the origins of the statement. But this is very unfair singling out those that play this strategy for a cheese allegation.

Why is exploiting every point per game a-la Ray a while back ok whereas exploiting every ounce of speed one can get per game not ok? Bottom line: EBZ's tactics are no cheesier than the rest of us (playing any strategy)


Now I agree that the zero scores are an issue that needs to be rectified. I've no issue with that.
Nor have I an issue in the devs saying to post a warning to rectify that.

However, I also get the impression that there are some whining and crying to the devs about this tactic going on above and beyond the complaints about the zero scores. We certainly have gotten the same on our thread.

Oh and for those of you that know me know the above is a rather weak response to whining and crying. My real response is unfit to print at the moment. Rest assured I don't think well of it.

Personal opinion to follow, take it as you will:


Getting upset with a developed tactic and calling it cheese is just a method of denial and blame shifting.

Instead, Brad and Co. should be looking at the underlying problem and quietly kicking themselves for causing it. I'm not talking about a bug in the code, that happens in all software, I'm talking about the Metaverse scoring system.

I'll be the first to tell you that there is *NO* way I should be pulling 13k from tiny/beginner, should be more like 3k when compared to the 25k gigantic/maso scores. The GCCG tactic would never have even been developed, let alone written up and shared if this scoring system wasn't so poorly concieved.

The best way (IMO) to fix the whole issue is to spend the time to fix the Metaverse. Please don't tell me that you can't fund this, the Metaverse is an advertised feature of the game I purchased and a large part of the reason I bought it. Besides which, I honestly don't think it would take all that long to change the code to accurately reflect difficulty level of the game played. Bear in mind however, that when you do do this, it would be completely out of line to make it retroactive. Those of us that have played this system did so believing we were working within the rules to get the best score we could for ourselves and our empires, thus taking that from us would be an unjust punishment.

This may have something to do with this, but I have no idea. Earlier today I started to crank a game on my laptop. I turned on my desktop to use EBZ's website for the early tech and governer stuff. This was before the chat log was posted on the website. I cranked the game to the end, getting a substantialy lower score than normal, probably because I had upgraded to drengin and got 1.09 earlier today (before I started this game). I submitted the game to the metaverse and got something like this error (I forgot exactly what it said):

Game Submission Test: 1
Metaverse Test: 0
Metaverse submission failure

Also, I dont believe that cranking is a cheese tactic and I support your views EBZ.

~SDC~

See I would have to disagree there. Should a maso score more? Yes. How much more? That is opinion. Should every single solitary maso game score more than every single other type game? I'd say no. In fact, For me, Tiny and small maso seem easier than crippling Gigantic. And certainly it is less work than any Gigantic.
A meta where beginners wouldn't score hardly anything would get few new members.



Ironically this is about how it was when the meta started. Guess what the result was. WAAAAAAH WHY SHOULD GIGANTICS GET ALL THOSE POINTS....I CAN'T PLAY TINY.

The way I see it (and this could be wrong for some people - if so, I apologize to them), people don't use the cranking guide cause they enjoy bankrupting AIs, or they only have 20 minutes a day to play. They use it to get a better score, period. So I'd call it cheese. But you know what? My definition of cheese is pretty harsh. "Anything you do to maximize your metaverse score." So if I'm playing a maso game and see fifty frigates and transports approaching my last defenceless planet, I don't bother playing the game out to the end and submitting to reduce my metaverse score. I don't see many losses submitted around here, so I guess we're all a bit cheesy. Admit it. (Well, nearly all - I'm sure some people submit every loss and play every game through to the end - kudos to them.)

This isn't a problem with the difficulty - beginner is supposed to be easy to win, that's the point, and this way is just as easy as the "by the book" methods. If the the devs want to change anything, it should be the scoring, but that'll just open Pandora's box again...
whatever happens, any recalc shouldn't be retrospective IMHO.

On a side note, about the scoring system: I won't get into the actual algorithms used for working out game score and player score. But how about simply not counting losses in the score? How about an option to have them show up on the record or be hidden? If the devs really want all the saved games they can get their hands on, this would let them see all the games where the AI kicked major butt.

There are some "Facts" that need to be put into this thread:

Anomolous scores have to be removed by hand. I don't mean to offend anyone but at the end of the day, I am the CEO of a multi-million dollar corporation. I'm a pretty busy guy.   Cari is pretty busy as well. 

So as you can imagine, people who keep getting anomolous scores after being told what causes them don't get a lot of sympathy.  The first few times, sure. But eventually it shoudl sink in "STOP DOING THAT."

We don't consider anyone an "enemy". We just don't have time to keep bailing people out who's latest get highscores quick scheme turns out to backfire on them.

You've been told what causes the anomolous score. It wasn't put in because of you, it was already there to prevent strategies such as yours from being carried out in the first place and has been in since day 1. We knew that someone would probably find a way at some super easy level to rip off the AI. That's what the easy levels are for. And we're all in favor of people being able to play that way. And the system has a pretty huge leniency on this. But it can tell when it's gone beyond all reason too and flags it.

Now in 1.1, we'll probably add in more checks that, instead of doing anomolous will simply penalize the score. 

I don't consider this strategy to be cheating. Just kind of cheesy. It should be allowed and count as a score, but it should be penalized as well since the rights of the community as a whole outweigh the rights of individuals.

But shouldn't drawing out games for longer than needed be cheese too?

~SDC~

FOOD FIGHT!! BYOC (bring your own cheeze)

Am a bit unclear about something. Does one anomolous score hose your entire Metaverse ranking? Or is it just one game that don't get counted?

Because if your able to use any given tactic to submit a game a day, and only 20 out of 30 get reported for the month, then your still better off with your 20 counters than the poor sap who is lucky to get in one a week. I don't understand why all the concern with an anomolous game (or 10 of them).

****ALERT****ALERT****ALERT****

Incoming Group Hug

***ALERT****ALERT****ALERT****

"Am a bit unclear about something. Does one anomolous score hose your entire Metaverse ranking? Or is it just one game that don't get counted?"

Well, the metaverse score is worked out from all the game scores you've submitted, and a zero score is worse than no score submitted at all.

I agree. I played one anomalous game and didn't really bothered me that much. Well, come to think of it, I think I got 1000+ metaveres points or so for anomalous score(what could been 14000+ score which is about 2000+ metaverse score).
By the way have you thought about what I said before? Joining our empire? It's just a click away... LOL
http://www.galciv.com/metaverse/empires.asp?id=413

I think loses should generate a decent score and be worth sumbission perhaps 50 to 75% of a win?

Aggg run for cover . . . .

Beserk! Recruiting from other empires is bad, bad, BAD! You never know what diseases these other empires could have!

Multi-million dollar corporation?! And you guys say you don't have the money for the meta?



Hmmm, funny how I did follow the rule, yet I accidentaly tripped on the flag once sine I was aware of it.



Hmmmm, bad support. If you don't consider anyone a enemy, then why do I and a lot of other ppl I have talked to, feel crucified because of the strategy we play?

So you take a 2k hit on each of your scores to be able to submit many times more games. (one of the things I noticed about the GCCG is minimal micro management).

I understand that a zero is worse than none, but in light of the benefits it don't seem like much. Odd POV considering I am a perfectionist. lol

Nand, we need more people in our empire. Heh, so help me with recruiting.

I am beggining to really enjoy this forum. I have never seen such a forum this active before.