Weakness in the Scoring System

from Stardock Forums
I just got GalCiv a couple of weeks ago and have been playing it almost every day. I've been enjoying the game immensely, and (as of this writing) have nearly broken into the top 100 on the Metaverse. With a dozen games under my belt now, however, some issues with the scoring system have already shown up.

1) A player's total Metaverse Score involves a formula that sees the total drop if a lower than average (for that player) score is submitted. Or thereabouts. This point raises a host of problems. The first is that it discourages full disclosure. Nobody interested in competing with others under the scoring system will see it as in their interest to report a game that will detract from their total. Thus we get a skewed picture, which I find unfortunate. The second problem is that this tends to inflate the value of the very highest scoring outcomes and deflate the value of anything else.

2) Larger scores are obtainable on larger maps. That would make sense if scores were cumulative. For example, racking up five 5000 point wins on small and medium maps might be worth approximately the same as one 25000 point win on a gigantic map. If both required about the same time investment, then either way would work. But no, combine the higher scoring on larger maps with the higher value (to your total score) of high scoring games, and we come out with a CLEAR disincentive to play and report on smaller maps.

3) The scoring bonus for victory is overvalued. Or seen the other way, the scoring penalty for losing is overblown. There appears to be no significant factors involved in measuring "strength of schedule", and little effort in the scoring system aimed at sorting out excellence in a losing cause. Combine this with the first point, and the scoring system stops being an accurate way to measure your progress at improving your skills, stops acting as a partner with whom to engage in recording your full journey through the game.

4) The scoring is WAY too easily milked. I just got through playing a tiny map on Crippling, 5xGenius opponents. My intent was to play for conquest, so I had loaded up on military abilities and chose the war party. I played with abundant habitability, so almost all the stars had good planets and the AI's literally had more and better planets than I've seen on a Huge map with rare habitability! So I conquered one weak neighbor quickly, with corvettes, but the others by then had raced on to frigate tech, so I had to settle in for a longer haul. Once I got to battleships and had built up population for transports, I went at them hard and swept through the three remaining enemies, with one ally I decided to allow to live. Alliance victory 3200 points or thereabouts. That was a lower score than I expected for such a rout at the second highest difficulty level, and it DROPPED my Metaverse score and lowered me about ten ranks. I decided to use my "one replay" to test for milking. Sure enough, by reloading from before the final blow to my last enemy, I simply sat on my 2/3rds of the galaxy and focused on growing my population. Nothing else: just raise morale by researching techs and building improvements. I milked all the way to the Terraformer (the milking phase lasted half an hour or so, while the conquest had taken a couple of hours). Lots of clicking next turn and inserting new morale items into the governor's list. Ho hum de dum, and with my planets now at 25 to 40 billion population each, and only increasing by 200 bil apiece each turn, I ran out of patience with morale still at 100% and plenty of more room to grow, and finally delivered the very same deathblow I had earlier. New result? Score 8300. That's almost three times the score, and for what? For sitting parked at the finish line for half an hour, with my heel at the throat of the enemy and just marking time? I'm sorry, but that's broken. It's so broken, it's nearly as bad as Civ3's scoring system and the ways in which it can be milked.

Needless to say, I was quite disappointed with the system's inability to sort out skilled play from the absurd. I know how hard it is to plug loopholes in any rule set and to crunch performance evaluation for a game as complex as GalCiv into one little number. Still, the point of gaming is to have fun, and this scoring system needs some improvement (IMHO) in order to retain the kind of fun (for me) that the rest of this fine game otherwise holds. If the road to fun leads one way and the road to milking/maxing my score leads another... well, clearly some have followed the scoring road, and perhaps they are satisfied with it, but I would hope for more. Ideally, the two roads should follow the same track! :D


I would like to see:

* An end to the penalties tied to submitting losses. Since players can avoid those penalties by simply choosing NOT to submit a loss, there is nothing gained to anybody via these penalties, and much is sacrificed. If you are "stupid" enough to be more honest/open with your actual results, your score will suffer. There ought to be a way to design this better.

* An end to penalties for playing on smaller maps, so that the "real competition" is not limited only to the largest maps. Especially absurd is the fact that this tiny map had nearly as many worlds in play (abundant PQ) as my previous game, a Maso huge map with rare habitability. Perhaps the habitability levels need to be weighted more? I don't know.

* Changing the weightings on the scoring at least to the point of generally discouraging milking of the sort that nearly tripled my first tiny map submission's final score. The ENTIRE fun factor for paying any attention whatsoever to the Metaverse scoring and the game's scoring system will be gone if I can "improve" the score in most games by sitting on a dominant position to milk my economy and social standing. (One wonders if MOO1 didn't have it right after all, by forgoing any effort whatsoever to keep score).

* The overhaul necessary to fix these problems would necessitate incompatibility with the current standings (unless by some miracle, the submissions include enough info to rescore submitted results under a new system? Hmm). If incompatibility were necessary to fixing these problems, I would vote for going forward. That would probably need to be done in a paid X-pack, but that would only work to Stardock's advantage: one more selling point for the expansion, a new and improved scoring system. :)


- Sirian
634 views 18 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
* An end to the penalties tied to submitting losses. Since players can avoid those penalties by simply choosing NOT to submit a loss, there is nothing gained to anybody via these penalties, and much is sacrificed. If you are "stupid" enough to be more honest/open with your actual results, your score will suffer. There ought to be a way to design this better.

* An end to penalties for playing on smaller maps, so that the "real competition" is not limited only to the largest maps. Especially absurd is the fact that this tiny map had nearly as many worlds in play (abundant PQ) as my previous game, a Maso huge map with rare habitability. Perhaps the habitability levels need to be weighted more? I don't know.

* Changing the weightings on the scoring at least to the point of generally discouraging milking of the sort that nearly tripled my first tiny map submission's final score. The ENTIRE fun factor for paying any attention whatsoever to the Metaverse scoring and the game's scoring system will be gone if I can "improve" the score in most games by sitting on a dominant position to milk my economy and social standing. (One wonders if MOO1 didn't have it right after all, by forgoing any effort whatsoever to keep score).

* The overhaul necessary to fix these problems would necessitate incompatibility with the current standings (unless by some miracle, the submissions include enough info to rescore submitted results under a new system? Hmm). If incompatibility were necessary to fixing these problems, I would vote for going forward. That would probably need to be done in a paid X-pack, but that would only work to Stardock's advantage: one more selling point for the expansion, a new and improved scoring system.
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The problem is that by doing this you create a different way to abuse the scoring: subitting an endless stream of Maso games that are never actually played. Just subitting for the score that accruse from the generated Earth and you two starting ships.

We had instances of this already before the scoring was weighted in favor of higher difficulties by way of people submitting large quantities of tiny/cakewalk games, which can be played through to the end in a matter of half an hour at the worst. The penalty for submitting more games is simply too small once you have twenty-five or so games to have a very significant effect.

~SDC~
Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
Wow Sirian,
Try reading a forum for a while before trashing things. There are already way too many threads on metaverse scoring (some of which I started myself), many of which address your concerns.

Keep playing, have fun, and keep posting, but please show some respect for those who came before you.
Ashes of the Singularity II
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
The most importat point to know is that the metaverse budget is exhausted, therefore it is highly unlikely that any change to the scoring system will be done.
I know I personnally would rather have features than a Nth tweak to the scoring system.
Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
Sirian,

I appreciate the effort put into this post. Your points are valid ones and many, if not all, the people on this board would agree with you. However, it's been debated to death already and the devs have said that changing the Metaverse is not a priority for them.

Btw, if you are interested, it's probably not milking pop that led to the score increase. You get a bonus for trade goods/wonders built and for techs researched. There is some small pop score bonus too, but the TG/wonder/tech bonus is a much higher component of your score. (Like it or not.)
Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top
Maxtipherous? You are quick to chide me about showing respect while yourself stepping all over my thread. Where and whom did I disrespect merely by posting an opinion? Who do you think you are, to tell me I don't have the right to voice my opinion without first checking the entire mass of this forum to see if anybody else ever said something similar before? What does it matter what others had to say? This is what I had to say. My saying it is a whole heck of a lot less disrepectful to anybody than what you did here, trying to boss me around to your liking and make me look bad.


Vincible: I appreciate your reply. Unfortunately, at its heart, it still carries the same message as Max's reply: this subject is "old news" and the topic is both emotionally charged and unwelcome. I cannot overstate my disappointment at the body of replies I've gotten. It seems that by waiting half a year to buy this game, I have already missed the parade. Then again, if this is how touchy the community is, I'm not guessing I actually missed all that much. No offense intended.

Discouraging new players from voicing opinions is not good for Stardock's business. That should be so blatantly obvious, that I can only assume most who replied here don't actually care about the game's future, but only about their own personal concerns. I can't count the number of times I've seen players treat new arrivals to a game discourteously. That kind of behavior has killed many a community. A game I loved, Descent 3, saw its growth shattered because of predatory and mean-spirited treatment of newbies. If the new blood dries up, the growth of a game stops, the sales stop, and the clock starts ticking on the countdown to the game's oblivion.

There's an "off limits" sign on major parts of the game in this community? I have seen it before with other games, from all angles, and I understand the dynamics. Yet, for this game, it's all new to me. Now instead of talking about the game, though, I'm defending my right to have my own opinion, to want to talk about a subject others don't want ANYBODY talking about any more, and... *sigh*. My thread has been trampled all over, and I feel as I have been too. Either way, the fun is gone from this thread, eh? I can shut up and go away, or I can stand up for myself, but I can't talk about the game in peace. Thanks.


I heard a lot of hype about GalCiv, about how the game is different, the community is different. The game made a good impression, but the community looks pretty run of the mill to me. That's not an insult. It just means the usual politics, frailties, and petty personal interests prevail, and I had hoped for more. In the final analysis, we will get the games we deserve. If Stardock tries, is trying, or started out to try to elevate the level of discourse and the quality of interaction between designers and fans, and the fans drag them down... we all lose. I sure hope that is not happening here.


As for the milking, Vincible, does it matter what the source of the milk is? Population, wonders, trade goods, tech... The milk still flows. The scoring system still has holes too big to make it useful for its intended purpose: to enhance the game.

LDiCesare says he wants features, not a working scoring system. Why can't we have both? Stardock does not have the budget to supply us with both? Every single reply in this thread is screaming to me that Stardock isn't living up to the hype about doing things differently. If they are, you fans sure don't show it. The budget for the Metaverse is spent? Too bad that it's not really working smoothly yet? That may be software company reality, but it sounds strikingly like game-making business as usual. Business reality first, product second? The possibility of a company with idealistic priorities and a better relationship with fans is a lot of the attraction that brought me here. Reality has collided head on with Stardock's best intentions, if these replies are any indication.


Arturus Magi's reply is the least sensical. It reminds me of the most important patching changes to Descent 3: there was a bug in the game that could be abused to fly the ship faster than it was intended to go. In order to stop the cheaters, the designers had to add a bunch of network traffic to verify data integrity. Result? The game quality went into the toilet, because lag was significantly magnified. So then instead of the occasional cheater to deal with, we didn't have a fun game to play any more, at all. The baby got thrown out with the bathwater. What good did that do anybody?

So... in order to stop one ridiculous little abuse in GalCiv, according to LDiCesare we have to trash the scoring system as it regards to smaller maps and lost games? Ruin the usefulness of scoring as a historical device to tie together all of your games and performances, just to shut down one exploit that only affects a minority of players anyway? The costs of that outweigh the gains. There ought to be another (fairly easy) way to stop that issue.


Anyway, I see the writing on the wall here. Vincible made a valiant effort to put a good foot forward, but everyone else rained on my parade.


- Sirian
Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top
1) A player's total Metaverse Score involves a formula that sees the total drop if a lower than average (for that player) score is submitted. Or thereabouts. This point raises a host of problems. The first is that it discourages full disclosure. Nobody interested in competing with others under the scoring system will see it as in their interest to report a game that will detract from their total. Thus we get a skewed picture, which I find unfortunate. The second problem is that this tends to inflate the value of the very highest scoring outcomes and deflate the value of anything else.
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You don't always drop if you submit a score lower than average only if you submit a score much lower than your average. Yes this leads to people rarely submitting losses but I think this is more a human nature issue than a scoring system issue. Not many people want to report failures. As for the inflation of maso scores vs everything else that is a recent change which as far as I know reflects what the community was requesting


2) Larger scores are obtainable on larger maps. That would make sense if scores were cumulative. For example, racking up five 5000 point wins on small and medium maps might be worth approximately the same as one 25000 point win on a gigantic map. If both required about the same time investment, then either way would work. But no, combine the higher scoring on larger maps with the higher value (to your total score) of high scoring games, and we come out with a CLEAR disincentive to play and report on smaller maps.
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This is not quite true. A gigantic map on maso gets you around 60000 points. A small map on maso gets you around 25000. If the score system was straight additive then 3 small maps would get you far more than 1 gigantic map which I'm almost certain takes you far longer to play than 3 small maps. Certainly takes me far longer to play. As a practical example, I've played only small and medium maps so far and I'm in 26th on the overall metaverse rankings and I've only been playing and reporting for about a month now. Personally I think the problem is that the scoring system doesn't take into account whether or not you choose rare, common, abundant, etc. for your planets. A medium abundant map has nearly as many good planets as a rare gigantic and yet you score much less points. I'd like to see that changed as much as you.


3) The scoring bonus for victory is overvalued. Or seen the other way, the scoring penalty for losing is overblown. There appears to be no significant factors involved in measuring "strength of schedule", and little effort in the scoring system aimed at sorting out excellence in a losing cause. Combine this with the first point, and the scoring system stops being an accurate way to measure your progress at improving your skills, stops acting as a partner with whom to engage in recording your full journey through the game.
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Fair enough, but how would you propose the scoring system evaluate "excellence in losing"? I'm reminded of an old Vince Lombardi quote. Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing. This game has so many variations in how it can be played that one persons "excellence in losing" would be completely different from anothers. You'd have to write a completely new piece of software just to evaluate how people did in the games. I guess what it comes down to is the same thing in all sports, it doesn't matter how you win, it only matters that you do. Winning should be the single most important factor in determining your score just like in sports leagues it is the ONLY factor in determining where you finish in the standings and whether or not you make the playoffs.


4) The scoring is WAY too easily milked.
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Maybe it's because I've played mostly maso but I haven't noticed this problem at the maso level. My lowest score for a military conquest win on medium is 29560 and my highest is 32620 and I've reported both milked games and ones I've stopped as soon as possible.


Finally what you need to remember is that (in theory at least) the REAL purpose of the metaverse is to provide the creators with feedback on how people are playing the game so they can improve the game. The FUN we get from seeing ourselves in the rankings is secondary. Frogboy has said many times that we should play Gal Civ not play the metaverse.

I hope we haven't driven you away. This community does need some new blood as some of the veterans are slowly cutting back and leaving. By the way you aren't Canadian by any chance.... we could use some new players to help boost the CSF :)



Reply #7 from Stardock Forums Top
Sirian,

You've made some excellent points. Sorry if the community seemed to ignore them or attack you personally. Those players most concerned with metaverse scoring as a part of the overall enjoyment of the game (admittedly not it's purpose), have been over this in many threads with many, many suggestions, none of which have been able to solve one problem without generating another. However, maybe a new player will bring fresh ideas to the table. You've detailed what you view as problems (I realize that not everybody would agree with your list); I look forward to reading your suggestions as to how to fix them! Keep on playing. :)

End transmission.

~SDC~
Reply #8 from Stardock Forums Top
I didn't intend to imply that your post was unwelcome. Futile perhaps, but not unwelcome :D

Stick around for a while--I think you'll change your mind about this community. Stardock does indeed listen to the people here, and many of the things which make the game you're playing now (Galciv 1.10) so good is the positive interaction between community and developer throughout the previous versions. Sure Stardock isn't perfect, but they're far better than most.
Reply #9 from Stardock Forums Top
Sirian,
don't feel upset with the replies you received. I considered replying to you originally and decided against it as my thoughts and feelings have been well posted and can easily be found using the search function. Many others probably feel the same way and tend to treat such well discussed topics as taboo. They are NOT off limits though and you are more than welcome to start threads and discuss them. Please remember though that

a) Stardock have little time for people who 'play' the metaverse to maximise score. Suggestions from people to 'fix' scoring that only falls over with people milking the metaverse have never had a high level of importance to them.

b) Stardock have made many tweaks to the scoring as requested and evey tweak just upsets other players. Some people have even stopped playing the game. No solution is likely to keep everyone happy, or even most people happy.

c) Many suggestions have already been made and debated. Use the search function to find them and have a read. You can then post your comments with more knowledge of what others have said.

Keep up the posting,

Paul.

~SDC~
Reply #10 from Stardock Forums Top
Another company that really listens to your concerns is paradox entertainment, over at paradoxplaza.com. They have been patching their game for TWO YEARS post-release thank to the aid of modders and fans.

The polite response to your thread would have been to refer you to the threads that have dealt with this concept already as a way of response.

BTW, I visited your homepage, it's a noble credo, but I fear far to optimistic for a community of this size. As to your opinions of the metaverse, if you think that it's this flawed, why do you care? The biggest problem isn't cheating but rather that the people that care the most about their score try harder using the teqniques that exploits the weaknesses in the AIs performance. It all boils down to philosophy, if you think reloading after momentous decisions i cheating, then yes, most of us cheat. If you on the other hand think that this is acceptable behaviour then your problem with the metaverse is more valid and the imbalances aren't due to human imperfection. :p

I hope you don't think we all hate newbies, but we are also entitled to our opinion, we think the metaverse should award winning and there are more of us than there are of you, simple. Market rules.
Reply #11 from Stardock Forums Top
Hmm...difficult to bring things together here in any sort of resolution. I too checked out (and was impressed by) the Realms Beyond credo. Like others, I have also had my say about the scoring. It is fair to say I am a 'hardcore' Metaverse player (i.e. I try to keep up) but the Metaverse does not, and in some senses never has, measured gaming skill. It measures commitment to keep logging games. At present, to reach the pinnacle, you need to be playing Maso, and frankly, gigantic to land the big scores. Ricbayer manages on Large, and I play Small, but barring a miracle neither of us will catch Cotal doing that. Stardock voiced a philosophy that they want the maso players at the top of the tree (with some justification) and skewed the scoring to make that happen. Since there are a VERY small number of players (say a few hundred) who really get stuck into Metaverse scoring there is no reason for Stardock to invest significant resources in the system.

I think Sirian's observations are valid, and ones I would expect of a seasoned strategy gamer entering a new gaming environment, although I'm not sure I agree with all of them eg point scores for losing games (I'm with Vince Lombardi here). There should not be 'off limits' signs on any aspect of gameplay and I always appreciate a 'breath of fresh air' - this game and community needs to encourage new gamers to take things on. I'm with Captain Bizarre's sentiments. :)
Reply #12 from Stardock Forums Top
I'm another newbie ;-)

The one problem on that list that I see as important is that people don't submit their losses. While we all like to compete (well most of us anyway), the main purpose of the metaverse is to help Stardock improve the AI. A lot of value for this comes from winning strategies (beatable strategies are easy to come up with) but I'm sure there is a lot to learn from lost games too -that's how the winning games come about, but the lesson may be a lot clearer in the losing game.

I would make getting people to submit all their games the top priority and not worry too much if that allowed people to milk it by submitting games that weren't properly played (anyone who does this too blatantly can be penalised individually).

In response to someone's comment about losing present scores: Stardock must have details of the individual games or it wouldn't help them with the AI.
Reply #13 from Stardock Forums Top
I don't think the metaverse was ever much about helping Stardock improve the AI. It's more about giving larger meaning to your games, a reason to play them all the way to completion even after your victory is assured.

Past debates about scoring tended to get rather angry in tone, to the extent of actually driving people away from reading these boards. With almost all other subjects, such as asking for in-game help, we're very friendly. Whatever you say on the subject of metaverse scoring, you're either going to end up either implying (a) that the people at the top of the table are just boring people who spend their lives exploiting flaws in the game AI, or (b) that the people at the bottom of the table are incompetent losers who deserve low scores. Either of these positions will offend a lot of people.
It's really much better not to talk about it at all.

I would also like to state at this point that if anyone disagrees with anything I've said, then I would like to retract it all immediately and apologise.


~SDC~
Reply #14 from Stardock Forums Top
I agree. Scoring discussions always turn into debates on who is "better" or "worse". Sirian brought up some valid questions for a new player. And yes, they've been discussed and debated for a long time. Unfortunately, Stardock has created a game that many people enjoy and are wary of changing the game for a few people's concerns.

Sirian's recommendations for scoring changes could be taken as theoretical solutions for when Stardock releases a sequel. Or they could be taken as a criticism of Stardock and it's game system. I'm sure Sirian did not intend on criticising but there are a great many here who defend Stardock and the game very adamantly. You'll never find a more loyal and devoted group of players in my opinion.

Sirian, take a look at many of the other threads and you'll see that in general we have a lot of fun and are extremely friendly, not just to each other, but to newbies as well. But underlying all of our antics, there is a serious commitment to this company and it's game. Don't take many of the comments made to you as flaming, but as fans defending what they see as a truly different game and online community.

Also take a look at the posts Stardock employees have made. You'll see they are very attentive to helping us and do their best to be patient with our neverending questions and problems. Whatever problems you have with the scoring or some overzealous people here in the forums, don't blame Stardock. They have done nothing but provide an excellent, stable, and fun game with support that many of us have only dreamed of. And they've done it with a smile on their faces.

I hope you haven't been left with the impression that this forum and game is not right for you, because that would truly be a travesty. Enjoy the game and please remember that we all are happy to see you here. In case you didn't know, your empire was selected as the Weekly Spotlight Empire on the Metaverse Review (http://metaversereview.joeuser.com) for this week.
Reply #15 from Stardock Forums Top
Sirian, you have a right to express your concerns. We are a decent bunch, really. Getting defensive and striking back hard to "claim your ground" is not necessary with us, so please keep the flamethrower on low and don't go into "newbie's rights" defense mode so quickly.

Now for my points: This old Galciv hack also tends to get ill for how many threads pop up invovling the word Metaverse. If some of us battle-hardened vets of several months react that way, imagine how the powers-that-be react. They have basically tuned out the topic, I think. I still do from time to time play Don Quixote and charge the Metaverse windmill as if it were a dragon despite my slightly apathetic and disillusioned viewpoint of the Meta. The Meta has such strong potential, but in my seven months of experience, I believe it has turned out to be the Achille's heel of this great game that is otherwise being constantly improved. We can't seem to separate those who want to play the game from those who want to play the Meta, and thus you have inadvertantly touched the third rail of the forum.

Kindly take a look at my record, please, and you will see a roadmap of Metaverse scoring changes. It is a drastic set of scoring leaps due to months of (in my opinion) half-hearted reforms and gimmicks to reward old players for upgrading to new version and to keep newbies "competitive", for lack of a better word. Throughout all these changes, I just kept plugging away pretty much taking the victories as they came and enjoying the game more than the payoff. Sadly, I feel like I am in the minority there.

I still try to hold onto a belief that there is a balanced way to reward players without busting the scale as the latest "Masoverse" trend is doing, but there are just so many issues to address. There is not only the way games are averaged and blocked, there is also such complicating factors as the difficulty level mess and the different victories yielding different awards, so "everyone" wins military victories to get the best possible modifier. There are just so many things thrown into this scoring system and they all end up in a jumble, much like this post seems to be turning out. :)

Because of the jumbled mess, it might be better if the devs just redid the system from scratch and really gave thought to what is important to and why in their opinion based on all the available Meta data instead of adding successive layers of extra complicating factors and messy reforms in an ad hoc manner to patch the beast. Then either recalc all the old scores based on that data or reset the Meta entirely.

Stardock usually goes out of its way to improve the game based upon player input, but in the case of Meta scoring, they need to take the exact opposite approach and take a firm stand on what system they want and build it from scratch without catering to player interests or using scoring gimmicks for getting old players to upgrade and boosting newbie scores so that they are "competitive". So I basically propose that they listen to us on how to improve and patch Galciv, but we need referees to score it as they see fit that are not influenced by player interests. That may sound a little far-fetched to some, but ever since when has Gerakken been conventional?
Reply #16 from Stardock Forums Top
1) A player's total Metaverse Score involves a formula that sees the total drop if a lower than average (for that player) score is submitted. Or thereabouts. This point raises a host of problems. The first is that it discourages full disclosure. Nobody interested in competing with others under the scoring system will see it as in their interest to report a game that will detract from their total. Thus we get a skewed picture, which I find unfortunate. The second problem is that this tends to inflate the value of the very highest scoring outcomes and deflate the value of anything else.2) Larger scores are obtainable on larger maps. That would make sense if scores were cumulative. For example, racking up five 5000 point wins on small and medium maps might be worth approximately the same as one 25000 point win on a gigantic map. If both required about the same time investment, then either way would work. But no, combine the higher scoring on larger maps with the higher value (to your total score) of high scoring games, and we come out with a CLEAR disincentive to play and report on smaller maps.3) The scoring bonus for victory is overvalued. Or seen the other way, the scoring penalty for losing is overblown. There appears to be no significant factors involved in measuring "strength of schedule", and little effort in the scoring system aimed at sorting out excellence in a losing cause. Combine this with the first point, and the scoring system stops being an accurate way to measure your progress at improving your skills, stops acting as a partner with whom to engage in recording your full journey through the game.4) The scoring is WAY too easily milked. I just got through playing a tiny map on Crippling, 5xGenius opponents. My intent was to play for conquest, so I had loaded up on military abilities and chose the war party. I played with abundant habitability, so almost all the stars had good planets and the AI's literally had more and better planets than I've seen on a Huge map with rare habitability! So I conquered one weak neighbor quickly, with corvettes, but the others by then had raced on to frigate tech, so I had to settle in for a longer haul. Once I got to battleships and had built up population for transports, I went at them hard and swept through the three remaining enemies, with one ally I decided to allow to live. Alliance victory 3200 points or thereabouts. That was a lower score than I expected for such a rout at the second highest difficulty level, and it DROPPED my Metaverse score and lowered me about ten ranks. I decided to use my "one replay" to test for milking. Sure enough, by reloading from before the final blow to my last enemy, I simply sat on my 2/3rds of the galaxy and focused on growing my population. Nothing else: just raise morale by researching techs and building improvements. I milked all the way to the Terraformer (the milking phase lasted half an hour or so, while the conquest had taken a couple of hours). Lots of clicking next turn and inserting new morale items into the governor's list. Ho hum de dum, and with my planets now at 25 to 40 billion population each, and only increasing by 200 bil apiece each turn, I ran out of patience with morale still at 100% and plenty of more room to grow, and finally delivered the very same deathblow I had earlier. New result? Score 8300. That's almost three times the score, and for what? For sitting parked at the finish line for half an hour, with my heel at the throat of the enemy and just marking time? I'm sorry, but that's broken. It's so broken, it's nearly as bad as Civ3's scoring system and the ways in which it can be milked.
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1. The formula for scoring is set into monthly blocks. In each monthly block, the total score for that month is divided by the square root of the number of games played that month. After the month passes, scores slowly degrade from previous months (so on november 5th my score is prob gonna be about 5k lower than it is now). Add all monthly blocks together to get total score. (so it is possible to lower your score, but you have to play a lot of games in a month, and recieve low scores on some of those games).

2. The reason for not submitting smaller maps is because of the scoring system above. If i played 5 small maps a day, i would quickly end up recieving no points at all. Over the period of a month, this adds up, and ive found that i get more points if i dont play smaller maps. I managed to get up to #16 at my highest in just over 2 months, im sure you could do the same.

3. There are different multipliers for victory. Military= x10, Culture= x9, Alliance= x8, Tech= x7 or something to that effect. Losing is a huge negative, and it should be brought in check so players still can recieve a good score for losing games. (if you see from the multipliers, if you turn all victory conditions off but military, you will recieve more points).

4. Scoring is easily milked. But you clicking and raising population was not the only factor. You get more points the farther down the tech tree you are, so your playing for another half hour got you a lot more tech. There is not much you can do about score milking, because if people really want to spend the time to do that, theres nothing wrong with that. It's their own time.


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Reply #17 from Stardock Forums Top
Sirian, I just stated a fact, that the budget is exhausted, and that I believe features are more interesting than the score. I think score is pretty useless because no system can't be milked, and people never agree about how much skill must be rewarded wrt dedication (number of games).
But yes, I'd happily trash the whole metaverse for more features.
Reply #18 from Stardock Forums Top
Submit smaller maps! It's not about high scoring but having fun.

I only play tiny games (admittedly on maso level) because I can only afford 2-3 hours at a time to play the game. I'm not a fan or reloading an old game the next day and so I play map sizes I can complete in one sitting. That means tiny, which takes be between 2 and 3 hours usually.

It will mean that eventually my score will slip down the metaverse as I just can't compete against gigantic galaxies due to the scoring systems division by root(N). But so what? I'm not playing to be high up on the metaverse, I'm playing because I enjoy the game.

So for those people who worry about submitting smaller map sizes, I say, 'have fun and submit them'.

Paul.

~SDC~