Thanks. Thats unreal. I just had my best game and got this :
Society: 29968
Tech: 17205
Econ: 49450
Military: 26504
Overall :82250

I had around 4 trillion people, and it went for 7 years. I wonder how tech works, i had researched everything except last 2. (did steal a lot of techs tho) At the end i was replacing some discovery spheres with vr centers. I could have milked it, but was tired of playing with the long turns.

Do you think advanced farms are worth it ? I tend to have morale problems when i get them. Up till late in the game i was going with 2 intense farms on most of my large planets, and pretty much 1 on the rest. Once you get advanced it seems you need to rethink some planets. (or block the upgrade)

It's probably good to keep track of these to get a better feedback. I think i'll try to keep screenshots.

Yes, once you hit advanced farms it gets difficult to keep morale up. On the gigantic maps I try to rush to discovery spheres (or NLC) so that I can get through the techs. I do space out the colony techs so that I'm not trying to upgrade everything at once. I normally try to get three or four 12+ PQ planets that are close together for my tech. This way I can surround them with econ starbases to boost the research. I try to do this with at least one of the planets a pq 26. On this planet I make my tech capital and put the Omega Research center (I believe that is what its called). I've had this planet pulling in over 5k in research points a turn. The rest of the planets I try to have them pumping out stock markets. Once doing that I can be pulling in over 100k bc a turn. Back to the advanced farms, since the virtual reality takes forever to build I start watching approval and when it drops below 100 I just go to the planet(s) with the lower than 100 approval and flat out buy VRM as needed. On a planet with 2 advanced farms not on bonus tiles need around 6 or 7 VRMs to keep moral at 100%. Of course some of this depends on how luckly you are in the map creation when it comes to mines. Enough moral mines and that number is a little lower. If you have enough bc mines then you can lower taxes to keep your flow of money while moral does not take a hit. It is a lot of micromangement in the end to keep moral up. Population is definately worth it points wise. All my 10+ pq planets have a population cap of 25b. Those that can support more I will. Every planet no matter the size will at least have an advaned farm and a vrm. Now that we can build over star ports, on the pq 4 planets that we capture, i put a farm, a vrm, and 2 stock markets. Towards the end of the game I'm replacing all my starbases with stockmarkets except for maybe a couple of planets that I'm pumping out military ships.

I gotta call it a night. If you want to send me screen caps I'll put them on the website. Just use the email addy above. Oh, it sure is nice seeing that 3rd place empire medal...way to go folks!! Till later.

Good to know. I've done poorly before using a strategy like what you're saying because i didn't get the key set of planets to build that research engine. So i've generally backed off the super focused strategy.

However that's probably been a mistake, as on gigantic/abundant/abundant it should always be there. One game i had, my research cap ended up being in the system next to the dregin tech capitol. When i realized this, i quickly took them out. They were both PQ20+, and i had 8 starbases boosting them.

It's funny, for the longest time i felt i was mis-using my resources as i found that i always over-built my economy and really couldn't spend the money fast enough. So i changed to building more factories, less stock markets, and generally use industrialists grind the money up.

It's also funny you mention resources. My last game i nabbed 5 military resources very early. By the end of the game i had 6 or 7. The torians had a huge tec lead on me, but they had no chance against my boosted ships. It really took the steam out of the game when i stole black-hole guns off them, when i had only gone up to disruptors. What was amazing is the torian strategy, every planet had tons of invention matrix, no farms, few stock markets. I still don't know how they were funding it, but it's the 1st time i've really seen the AI take a successfull research strategy. (never seen the AI outpace me me so significantly)

Night.

Norad and gallagher118 Thanks for the tips. I hope all the newer players in the empire read these posts. You have reminded me of things I used to do before I started playing at the suicidal level. Lately I have been Tech trading the AI to death which kills my research score. Even though I complete the tech tree in about 3 years (way ahead of the AI), I research far fewer techs than the AI which gives me a low research score. The tips you gave reminded me that economy starbases also boost research. This will greatly help my average score for my games. I dont like tech trading and your strategy seems to be the only way to beat the AI in research without it. Thank-you both so very very much. You have given me a new perspective that will renew my enjoyment for the game. By for now. TBAY

I still play with tech trading off. The only way I get their techs is from combat. Also, after I complete the tech tree, I still keep the research slider to at least 30% as it seems you get points for research after you complete everything.

gallagher118, as you mentioned, my maps are set up with everything abundant, scattered planets, and fast tech. All victory condidtions turned off except conquest. Tech trading is disabled as is the minor races as I feel they are just a pain that get in the way. I play Yor and have anywhere from 1-9 opponents depending on how I'm feeling when I set the game up. ***warning on a gigantic map, the less opponents the more the boredom factor kicks in*** This is just a personal setting as it doesn't matter score wise how many opponets you beat (another flaw in scoring as far as I am concerned).

If you can get lucky enough to get a high pq planet (15+) that is located in a corner of a sector, this is a great place to make your research capital as well since you can have 16 starbases giving it a boost. I forgot to mention that I normally keep my research slider set to around 60% until I finish the tech tree unless I just have to lower it for military building. Try to plan your freighters so that they go through this build up of econ starbases after you've upgraded them to as much as possible with econ modules. I do not put weapon or defence modules on these, I just place a few fleets around them for protection. Talk to you all after work.

Hey there everyone. I'm not sure what happen but something did. Vigilante jumped up nearly 300k today and is still at 10 games. Major Tom was moved down to 4th by someone with 40 games who was no where near the top before hand. Norad on the other hand did not move. Anyway, just want to point this out in case no one else noticed it.

Nice hint that one can have up to 16 starbases to boost research. I only used them for more income untill I get the "mindcontroll center" [?]. I will try this in the next game, but first I need some days without playing. I have just submitted my last game - it took me about 2 weeks to finish it. Maximum of planets with 9 opponents IS really challenging, but "eats" a lot of time ... also does to conquer them all. I think I will never do this again. How do you manage higher numbers (>200) of planets? There were almost 500.

@Norad: yes saw this too. (still up - or what time is it for you?) They didn't play since weeks but they were ranked up ... confusing. My first explanation is that someone changed the recalc thing which affects their old games. But why?

I'm at GMT -6 so it is nearly 19:00 here. I normally have anywhere from 400-500 planets a game. It is just a matter of working on the population although there comes a time when you will max out the majority of your planets. 4 opponents are a nice game for me on a gigantic map. Gives me time for the "colony rush" and still provides enough combat to keep me going.

Yes, there is something up with the top players score. Most of them have not posted in over a month. Guess we will have to wait and see. I'm going to head out on vacation for a week tomorrow so it will be a while before I get to post another game since they normally take me about 3 days to complete in my free time.

It looks like they used another totally different method of recalculating. The old Beta scores are still massive and some games were actually increased. I hope they are reseting the recalc that was done a couple af months ago so they can do an overall recalc. Mayito888 has not played in months and all the Beta games that were played months ago were increased in value by about 50%. M888's score jumped from 254,000 to about 360,000 with this new recalc. The no. 1 players score jumped from about 650,000 to about 975,000, again about 50 %. Only the olayers that had huge 1.1 beta 1 and 2 games had their totals increase. The rest of us had a small decrease. I hope they are not finished as the empires ahead of us got a huge bonus from this recalc. We dropped to fourth because of this. Only a small setback though. Nothing will stop us from reaching no. 1. Oh because Norad is puting up scores that I do not have the time to match, I am keeping my promise. I have changed my original characters name from Thebestaintyou to Ivebeenhumbled. Bye for now. Maybe I should have changed it to ignorant conspiracy freak as I was labelled in anothere thread. TBAY

Hey TBAY...No, you are better than I am. I cannot beat a suicide game and you have it down. I'm just putting up the numbers because I'm starting to figure out all the exploits that can be used which most have been mentioned above. On anything above crippling I get my ass handed to me because I cannot keep up with them buying everything. You did say 6 months and it hasn't been that long yet although I think Jarru might give you a run for that top spot. If I dont get a chance to log on tomorrow before I head out, those of you that are American, have a safe and happy 4th! I'll talk to you all when I get back from my week of camping. Later!

Thanks for your support Norad. But you are right, Jarru can rattle off suicidal victories on Gigantic maps much more often than I can. My 3 year old computer gets slow as death after about 3 years on a gigantic map. It sometimes takes me 20 minutes just to play 1 week. Thanks again and hail the new king JARRU. "Load Applause". Bye for now. Tbay.

morning everybody (well for me it is 11 am). we just reclaimed 3rd place, but they are still close. As TBAY said, the top 2 empires really benefit of this stupid new calculation. We almost need to double our scores. Obviously someone doesn't want us to reach the top ...

me again - anyone already checked out the pic of "willzyx" (unranked)?

Syrrus, how did you get 240k on a game? You gotta share the secret to that one!! I thought I had all the numbers down...I bow to the master!! Great job!

That is a cool pick willzyx has. Later all

#445 by Vulcan2
Friday, June 30, 2006 9:03 PM


Trolling
Insightful


Seems to me that the only Empire where the members are still submitting games is the Space Orcas.

Is there any activity with your mob?
I notice the top scorers have not been active for a long time.

My own Empire is mostly dead.
[Captain] [Top 25] [5 Game Winner] [Human] [Over 10 Battles] [Tough]
This was posted in the galctic diplomat's empire thread. It seems people are taking notice of us. Even another crappy recalc. won't keep us down. Bye for now. TBAY

Unfortunately, TBAY, I think the reverse is true.Concerning interest, that is.

I have a horrible feeling that the Metaverse is dying, since very few people are submitting games.

I was trying to find out if the Diplomats were still interested.
Their top players have not contributed for a long time.

Vulcan2 I am glad you dropped by our neck of the woods. You are right. The metaverse is dying. It is sad. I was blasted a few times in threads I posted warning of the lack of effort in maintaining the metaverse. I posted almost 200 games to the GC1 Metaverse because it was run very well. It created a much more level playing field for all players and kept everyone's interest for a long time. I don't know why they changed the system so drastically for GC2. I could see making a few tweaks here and there, but this total rebuild is obviously not working. I hope they do something soon to improve it, but with the talk of dropping the forums, I seriously doubt it. If you want to join an empire that is still active, you are still welcome to join us. Bye for now and drop by again. TBAY

I think this system is far better than GC1.

GC1 degenerated into a Cranco Masoverse.
If you were not churning out Maso games then don't bother with the Masoverse.

With this system, Tough and Crippling are worth submitting.
If you want a personal challenge, then the higher difficulties are available, but the scores are not such that you HAVE to play them.

Vulcan2 We will have to agree to disagree on that point. The game difficulty takes a much larger leap in GalCiv2 from crippling to the top 3 levels, yet because of how the game scores points you quite often end up with a lower score at the higher levels. This is because it takes a lot longer to achieve domination at the higher levels, so you do not accumulate many early game points. The difficulty multiplier does not make up for the loss of points from the beginning to mid game. Also it takes a lot longer to play a suicidal game as the computer slows down to a crawl. Crippling is definitely the level to play to amass large metaverse scores. Shouldn't the most competant players be rewarded for their skill? That is what competition is all about. Do single A ball players make as much as Barry Bonds? I think Not. In GalCiv2 they make more. Bye for now. TBAY

Hey, Norad.
Did you ever get my E-mail?

Hey guys!

Since I last posted I looked up the two empires we still have to surpass... And I am a little worried. They may not be posting as many games as we are, but they have a lot of people on their side. We're realy going to have a time of it getting to the top.

So any ideas what unfun something or other is doing to win suicidal with such high scoress ? (and in short time ~ 2 years)

Hi. I study computer science, and part of that involves algorithms. I am putting a few into play (some I figured out, some I learned) for the game. I am still researching the exact scoring system, but I have been told some about it and calculated some of it. With this information I am able to calculate optimum game times and paths in order to churn out reasonable numbers. I am still working on optimizing my system more. I expect to be able to hit 400k on v1.2 sooner or later.

Unfun has edited the save game file. He told it in other thread.

I'm afraid that this is the end of metaverse.

Jarru