Tips for Maximizing Your Game Score

I just posted my 2nd Metaverse game with a score of 99500, so the above tips work good. The game ended with my empire having 2.6T people on Dec. 15, 2227, so it got rounded down to 2 yrs. I wonder if I extended my game to Dec. 2228 and grew my population more if my score would have been higher or lower.

wow, that's a great strategy, I'll try to fit it in with mine and I'll see what's comin of of it...

Edited my original post to reflect that Gigantic maps with everything abundant and tight clusters generally give ~300 planets; whereas, loose clusters or scattered clusters gives ~500.

You said to play with 9 opponents, it was my understanding that playing with more opponents does not raise the score. Is that incorrect?

You said to play with 9 opponents, it was my understanding that playing with more opponents does not raise the score. Is that incorrect?

I have no evidence of that; I guessed my military score would increase with every race I conquered.
Playing against the maximum # of opponents also ensures that when you switch from the colonization phase to the conquest phase there will be someone weak nearby to choose for your first target. In the past that was always one of the Terran based AIs but I have read they have been improved in v1.31.

You said to play with 9 opponents, it was my understanding that playing with more opponents does not raise the score.

I think that's correct: More opponents don't necessarily increase your score.

I select the maximum 9 opponents to get the most from tech trading and when I switch from the colonization phase to the conquest phase I have more choices for my first conquest target (I pick a weak nearby AI).

I just posted my 4th game. I was ranked at 1404 and my total score was 17790. I noticed the people in my general area of my ranking have a score of only about 8685. What kind of wierdness in the Metaverse would cause this?

Your ranking will change when the metaverse updates itself. That happens teice a day. By tomorrow you will have moved up. When you first post, you will always look out of wack with your score relative to your position prior to the additional points.

I've just found out the hard way that military victory is by far the highest scoring possible. I won my first influence victory, when I could have easily won a military victory. My average score (with military victories) was 45,000, and with this influence win my score was about 4000!

It was fun to see the influence victory ending, but that's about all the satisfaction I got from that.

Thanks for the advice, Mascrinthus.

I just posted my 2nd Metaverse game with a score of 99500, so the above tips work well. The game ended with my empire having 2.6T people on Dec. 15, 2227, so it got rounded down to 2 yrs. I wonder if I extended my game to Dec. 2228 and grew my population more if my score would have been higher or lower.

In October I played out this game out another year and posted with a new score of 155500! So growing my population and economy (and to a lesser extend my military and completing the tech tree) mattered more to my final score than finishing quickly.

I've seen people post games over ten years with 200k plus scores, so I think the longer time to develop your civilization more than makes up for the decrease from more years. I have heard there is a point(maybe 20 years) where the score will start to drop more dramatically, but have yet to see proof or any solid confirmation on it. I haven't played over 8 years or so myself. Maybe someone knows, because I'd like to find out what the optimum point to stop development and finish up is.

I'm currently playing my first Suicidal game; the only thing I notice different compared to my Masochistic game is the AI demands more and offers less in deals when tech trading. Also, in this game I selected scattered rather than tight clusters so the map ended up with 475 vs. 286 planets causing a much longer colonization phase (and likely longer conquest phase) to the game! I expect the higher difficulty (Suicidal vs. Masochistic) and many more planets (475 vs. 286) will result in a much higher score than my previous game's 155500!

I have heard there is a point(maybe 20 years) where the score will start to drop more dramatically

There is supposed to be such a point. I read a post months ago saying the drop-off point was somewhere under ten game years, but I never found any corroborating evidence or statements from the devs.

I kind of like the fact that they don't come out and tell us what that point is. A little mystery in a game is a good thing.

I kind of like the fact that they don't come out and tell us what that point is. A little mystery in a game is a good thing.

I agree, the devs shouldn't divulge to much about the scoring. You would end up with people using a set formula and not diversifying. Also would lose all the fun discussions about scoring theories, which at times produces some good strats to try.

There is supposed to be such a point. I read a post months ago saying the drop-off point was somewhere under ten game years, but I never found any corroborating evidence or statements from the devs.

If you look at some players, like Fuels Chief, his scores get higher all the way up to 18 years. That's why I think the dropoff must be higher than that. I had also originally heard 12 years, but knew that wasn't right after seeing scores posted on games in the 15-18 year range.

From what I ahve seen it looks like there are two different scoring points. Some where around 5 years it appears to be a drop off. If you finish a game before this point you get higher scores than if you finish it between 6-10 yrs. I think the second point is after the 20 yr mark.

With the style I play it take forever to get the win. I want all my planets fully built, populized, and tweaked to max efficiency. I also build tons of SBs to support mining, econ, and production. This drive the Meta score up but it does reach a point that it stagnates to only an added 3-4K per additional year (about yr 18).

I have a post some where that shows some of this. Gotta go dig it up...

Here it is.

game ended 12/2234 136 K
game ended 12/2235 155 K
game ended 12/2236 169 K S=73472 T=98742 E=134802 M=82505
game ended 12/2237 181 K S=83850 T=117714 E=152971 M=96918
game ended 12/2238 190 K S=93833 T=135968 E=170360 M=110773
game ended 12/2239 196 K S=103273 T=153219 E=186846 M=123920
game ended 12/2240 202 K S=112034 T=170553 E=202149 M=202500
game ended 12/2241 207 K S=120898 T=189086 E=217611 M=148448
game ended 12/2242 211 K S=129505 T=207098 E=232682 M=211500
game ended 12/2243 214 K S=137873 T=224615 E=247307 M=172071

I actually could have won this at about year 10 but our Empire was looking to test the limits of the above mentioned scoring points. For those of you that play quicker games any info you could add may help solve this mystery. I beleive this was a gigantic obscene.

Hi FC.

How come your military score reduced, twice during this progression ?

Or is that a typo ?

The increase is from UP issue for putting weps on transports.

This epic game rocketed me into the top 25!



This was a gigantic, everything abundant, very fast research, suicide game against 9 opponents. By May 2228 I had 474 out of 475 planets but I left the Altarians with one planet to extend the game. This allowed me to complete my queued up projects, build up my economy (e.g., max out my population), and build up my military. On Aug. 8, 2228 they succumbed to my influence so I reloaded the game to extend it further. An alien influence backlash event kept them from flipping again until I finally ended the game on Aug. 1, 2229. At game end I had 10.560 trillion tax payers and a fleet of 3963 dreadnoughts(huge hull) plus 36 destroyers(medium hull), costing me 135354 BC to maintain but still leaving me with a surplus of 107266 BC! If I was only interested in my maximizing my final score, upon completion of the tech tree, I would have built Industrial Sectors or Stock Exchanges over my NLCs but instead I continued to build NLCs on research bonus tiles, planets with rings, and my Tech Capital because my aim was to max out my empire's potential output. If I set research spending to 100%, my Tech Capital was outputting 6496, without any economic starbases!

Here are some game statistic:
Date Society Technology Economy Military Overall Ships
2228/08/08 27806 12433 43166 12648 138000 ~700 Huge + 36 Medium
2228/12/15 34416 12433 56012 21719 163000 1808 Huge + 36 Medium
2228/12/22 34824 12433 56789 22340 164500 1884 Huge + 36 Medium
2229/01/01 35233 12433 57567 22969 166000 1968 Huge + 36 Medium
2229/08/01 47025 12433 78933 22969 205000 3963 Huge + 36 Medium





I'm tried of these epic games taking months to complete and I'm tired of extending games to raise my metaverse score, plus near game end this game was using ~1000MB of RAM and my system only has 512MB! I see DA 1.6 Beta 2 is out. For now on, I'm going to just play non-metaverse games on small/medium maps. This way I will be able to complete games much faster and try out the various DA super abilities, plus I'll be free to try out the many mods as well.

Check out the new AltMeta. Many people agree that having to play gigantic abundant all games is not what they're interested in. This is very understandable, however with the introduction of AltMeta Classes people can play the type of game they prefer but still compete in a class that restricted to the types of games they prefer to play. Please check out the AltMeta Class Beta thread for a description of this new functionality.

The most important thing is to play the kind of game that's fun for you. The point of AltMeta Classes is to allow folks to play the game they prefer and still have an opportunity to compete. I hope you check it out.

Also, we're not yet sure how it will work out but Kryo and the Metaverse Council are working on being able to include mods in games listed in the AltMeta. Stay tuned for future announcements.

In any game once you are stronger than the remaining players combined it is no longer interesting. Once I had 474 of the 475 planets and was just spending each turn spending my huge cash surplus to buy planetary improvements and later when my planets were all developed, ships, the game was a pain especially since my computer was swapping virtual memory like crazy!


These epic games take very long to play (I started the above game in in late Nov. 2006!) and should score much higher. If I had ended this game in May 2228 instead of August 2229, my score would have been around 125000 instead of 205000. I don't see how AltMeta resolves the issue of milking a game for a higher score.


Right! On the weekend I started a new non-metaverse DA 1.6 Beta 2 suicide game, with a medium map, common stars, occasional planets, abundant anomalies and asteroids, and since I don't care about my score I have all victory conditions set. I'm playing a custom super warrior race against the 6 AI players all set to Ultimate! I chose what I believe to be the 2 strongest from each ethical group: good (Altarian Resistance and Drath Legion), neutral (Thalan Empire and Torian Confederation), and evil (Drengin and Korath). In past games I won at suicide by growing my population faster than the AI (more tax payers and troops) by keeping morale 100%, better planet development, and lighting attacks. So in this game I chose the super warrior ability (for first strike) and 40% population growth. By Apr 1st I'm 2nd for population (behind the Torian Super Breeders) and 2nd for Social Production (behind the Thalan Hive) but far behind in everything else especial my economy (because my taxes are low). In this game I have tech trading disabled which helped me keep up with the AI in research in the early game and fund my deficit economy. I don't know what bonuses the AI gets at the new Ultimate setting but it appears to be large bonuses in all the key areas: military, social, research, economy, influence, etc. With the improvements to the AI in DA 1.6 (e.g., better planetary development) and the new bonuses at Ultimate, I don't know if I'm be able to win this game, especially given all the changes since DL 1.2 and playing on a map with far fewer planets. I may have to adapt my strategies. A challenge is always fun!

I never said it did. What I said was that it provides different classes for different types of games. I thought that your point was that the gigantic abundant all epic game was too long to be interesting and you expressed interest in playing smaller sized maps. All I did was to point out that there are now specific classes dedicated to small/tiny and large/medium galaxies.

On the topic of milking or to put it another way, ending the game at it's earliest possible point, I think influence wins specifically and civil victories (i.e. non military victories) in general pretty much *do* preclude milking.

There's no doubt that the AltMeta provides the opportunity for folks to compete in categories that were previously unavailable. I maintain that this represents an improvement over the official metaverse, but I never claimed that the AltMeta was perfect.

For fairness you should only allow games using mods that have only cosmetic changes and don't affect the game play. However, mods that affect the game play are likely the most fun.


My point was playing for a high score (no matter what system) was contrary to playing for fun. I find the fun part of the game to be the part where the overcome is unclear. Once you are so powerful that victory is certain (even if all the remaining players unite against you), the game is over and you are just going through the motions. By the time you can win an influence victory, you are likely at this point. Extending a game past where you could win a military victory just to complete the tech tree, social development, and/or build-up a massive naval fleet you will never use is not fun, especially if your system is straining under the load! If I'm not playing the Metaverse (or some other system) then I can quit a game when it ceases to be fun and start another with another setup that I want to try out.

In one post Brad complained that the Metaverse was ruining the game because of the focus on scoring rather than fun. Someone replied that he like having a history of all his games which Brad agreed was useful. This is likely why DA 1.6 Beta 2 includes the following change, "NEW: Added code to save score data for non-metaverse games locally in the My Documents\My Games\GC2DarkAvatar folder".

In another post, you had mentioned that you had purchased DA but would probably stick with DL because of the changes to morale and speed. The morale changes mean it will be much harder to have planets with >21B (under DL 1.2 with just a stock exchange and virtual reality center or several stock exchanges, my planets did not drop below 100% morale until they got up to 21B due to morale resources and neutral bonuses). I only grew my population to these levels to grow a massive economy for a higher score which is no longer my concern. Speed was nerfed in DA because the AI can't cope with fast combat ships and troop transports. Since I'm now playing medium maps, I don't feel the need for dreadnoughts with speed 34 and troop transports 46. I think the following DA changes (just started my first game) will make for a more fun game:
(1) AI improvements (e.g., Brad rewrote the AI code for planet development)
(2) need to research colonizing techs (makes the colonizing rush more interesting)
(3) super abilities (look like fun but probably not balanced)
(4) you now may build older planetary improvements (e.g., build a Factory on a new colony rather than an Industry Sector or you could place a level 1 farm on a 300% bonus farm title for a population cap of 6B + 3B*4 = 18B which might be okay under the new morale limits; otherwise, these tiles should still be avoided)
(5) mining asteroids
(6) UI and graphic improvements
(7) more ship jewelry
(8) more support for modding

I look forward to experimenting with these changes and the many cool looking mods!

Correction: Torian Confederation is still aligned with good so for my first DA game I should have chosen good (Altarian Resistance and Torian Confederation), neutral (Krynn and Thalan Empire), and evil (Drengin and Korath) as my 6 AI opponents.

how much would i earn from:
Insaine difficulty
everything on abundant or highest level
9 players + Dread Lords
Alliance victory on
large map
a rough estimate would o if you know.