Thanks for joining Quixen, I'm glad you decided to join our community. It's a fairly good sized community that is very active, and willing to lend support to all. Again thanks for joining Quixen.

Well, we managed to pull up to within 62,000 points of The Overmind! Great job, lets see if we can close the gap a little more.

Hi everyone, it's finally the weekend! We are so close to the 3rd place medal, only 12,000 points away. We just need one final little push and we pass The Overmind, and take third place.

Keep up the good work everyone, and have a great weekend.

AlexAtticus

Quixen,

Its funny how hard it is to decide on an emprire to join and interesting how the time alex spent in inviting folks really appears to have tipped the scale in a number of cases, myself included.

Unfortunately, I believe the pressures of ruling a vast empire such as ours has made it hard for him to continue writing invitations...

I am glad to hear that my forum presence was not a negative factor, after all my daughter's war paint has been known to freak a few folks out.

ShuShu, thanks for clarifying. It IS a bit freaky without the context!

I'll try to get back into GC2 this weekend. SR2 has been taking up all my gaming time recently. If you haven't tried it, I highly recommend it. And I have no stake in it's distribution, besides the desire to see people playing the best games around!

Hi agian.

Yeah my invitations have slowed abit, but only because it has been increasingly more difficult to find players willing to join. I try to send out a few invitations everyday, by looking to see if there are any active or new players not joined to an empire. I try to reach out to everyone, and so far it has been received fairly well.

ShuShu, you are a great asset to this community, and have been a great help with your great ideas.   

Thank you for the kind words Alex and ShuShu.

With my life taking a pretty wild turn and my computer being on the fritz, I have had little time to play. I work for a large power company and am on call 24 hours a day 365 days a year. It is pretty hard to get enough time to post games. However, my computer is back, and when work allows I will begin posting games once again.

Also I love to dabble in creative writing and I have begun a story based on one of my games. Hopefully sometime in the near future I will complete the story and post it.

I really only get to the forums, or have time to write my story, when I am at work. I will do the best that I can, and try to post a game to the metaverse sometime within the next week or so.

Till then all....

Hey everyone! We just passed The Overmind and took 3rd place. Everyone like their new 3rd place medals? Congratulations to everyone, and have a great weekend.

AlexAtticus

I have tried buying research labs early rather than factory early. That seems to be a wise choice, gets you speed 1 to 2 turns quicker. This in turn allows you to get to those planets quicker. Do you really nede the extra surveyors, or would upgrading your starting surveyor suffice. I ask, because I never have enough cash/time to do all the things you mentioned AND race for planets.

Yup, everything read from forums. Ive never thought of research lab first too.
By own default, always factories.

Need the game setting to be abundant in anomalies, so when buying surveyor with 5-7 speed when sensor researched, the 1.2 - 1.4k survey ships can easily earn back their cost through anomalies. I have 1 point in luck on cutom racial abilities for it. Dunno if the luck helps on getting $ from anomalies, but forum players agreed in a way.

I buy 2 custom survey ship, 3 if have enough $. Besides, these survey ships can help scout the map too, and more importantly, upgrade to constructor if found an economic resource on their surveys ; ) .... I really skip influence resource ; /

However, my game difficulty is only Challenging. It's good on 'Tough' too, but i find 'painful' not worth to get survey ship because AI is quite fast on colonizing.

Hail Atticus!

I've finished my first game - didn't too well (not well at all). I have some ideas on how to improve in my second game. Thanks for the tips - I will work on developing some military stuff. My ships were fodder to the evil race in my first game. Looking forward to bringing glory to the empire.

Berzalius

Congratulations on finishing your first game Berzalius, you'll eventually get the hang of it.

Looks like our empire is solidly in third place now, and will probably be here for awhile. We are kind of in an area void of other empires. We're pulling ahead of all the empires behind us, but far behind the empires ahead of us. It may take awhile for the empire to rise to the top, but we will eventually do so.

We will have to be creative and innovative to come up with ways to increase the influence of our empire. The top of the metaverse is not out of our reach, but right in front of us, we just need to grasp it. We have already overcome the odds, raising our empire from 100th place to third place in just about a month, and can do it again. So lets get out there and show everyone the greatness of our community, and the fun we have playing the game.

May our logic dominate the Metaverse!

AlexAtticus

Tried to think of something witty to justify the bump... but I've tooo busy trying to reconstruct the Who wins this battle fleet composition, well that and trying to post an image, sothis will just have to do.

Hi! I thought I should give an update.

We are still in third place, and have pushed our score over 2,800,000. We have gained quite a few members over the last couple of days, and I would like to give them thanks for joining.

If anyone is still looking for an empire to join, and want to join a very active empire, then the High Command Hegemony is for you. Come check us out!

AlexAtticus

Hi everyone,

Just completed my first game as an H.C.H member. The highest score I have ever posted I might add. I know 11000 points is chicken feed to all of you hard-core gamers but it made me feel good. My first Metaverse posting in about 2 months and my first on challenging.

Think I am going to bump it up a notch with my next game, not sure yet.

Starting my next game in the morning 0800 hours sharp. After work of course..
  

Hi, Great job Quixen! Every little bit helps.

We are now just a little over 100,000 points from hitting the three million mark.

It looks like we might be finally getting some competition. The Overmind has put on some points and got a little closer to us, but right now we are a comfortable distance from them. Let's keep up the good work, and continue to show strength of our community.

Hi everyone, haven't been very active in the last weeks.
As Alex said, we have achieved so much in this month, we can reach the number one spot and we will.
I regret to inform my fellow players at the HCH that i have submitted 0 games in the last month. Why? Blame it on college, i have exams in less than a month and have to study everyday the whole day. I'll try to play a couple of hours later, i have a game with the Iconians that is looking good.
BTW, i was thinking about our motto "Through Logic We Will Dominate" i like the idea, but i thought someone could think of a more sticky one, i think i have read in the forum "Our logic is undeniable". Some ideas about this?
Long live the HCH!

Can someone tell me how the military rank that precedes our medals works? Based on score, number of victories, what? Just curious... Also, any tips for maximizing a game score? Do certain types of victories earn more points?

Hi, the ranks are based on the games you have won:

Ensign (1)
2nd Lieutenant (2)
Lieutanant (3 to 6)
Commander (7 to 9)
Captain (10 to 24)
Fleet Captain (25 to 34)
Commodore (35 to 39)
Rear Admiral (40 to 49)
Vice Admiral (50 to a lot)

About tips for maxing your score. I think the most important thing is to have fun playing, but if you must know, just search the forums. Here is a post about that:

WWW Link

Not a bad idea Kudelv, "Our Logic is Undeniable" does sound a little better than what we have right now. I'll think about changing it, what does everyone else think?

AlexAtticus

Thanks Kudelv!

Kudelv
I agree that change would be less "in your face" but still get a message across, we dont want to be seen as some kind of preditor etc down the latter road lay a whole world of hurt

Cumberberg
The game has such depth and breadth that you will find many swear on their mother's grave that "X" is the way to go. All different ways:) Their view being tainted by the way they play. As in all things there exceptions to every generalisation, but by in large the following broad brush principles tend to hold true as a strategic direction, the detail you have to develop to suit your own style.

- Play Military domination with all options turned off, you have one aim - Crush 'Em
- The game is very military orientated at the top level of scoring, and you need to develop strong fleets to rack up the points
- The Evil route by in large is the route to most points at the top levels, for most people - there are exceptions of course, surprise surprise - but for the most part that hold's true
- Dont slack off in the last 50 or so turns, it may be obvious your about to wipe the floor with all, but keep it up full tilt to the last turn. A small 5% percentage increase in score based on - say - 100,000 points current score near game end means 5,000 more points, compared to a 5% increase in early game based on - say current score of 10,000 points - the latter "only" being 500 point increase. Score is not based purely on the win (you still get metaverse score even if you lose), but on the nature of the win and how well you performed in the various catagories. So with the latter in mind make a mental note of the catagories and play to them.
- Watch you Game date. The end score you see on screen is divided by the number of game years you played rounded DOWN - eg 4year and 364 days counts as 4 years, so therefore your game-end score is divided by 4 for metaverse. Therefore try to time game end for Dec 30 to maximise metaverse score.

Having said all that - I agree with Kudelv, play to enjoy, you'll find in the long run that playing purely for metaverse wares thin after a few months and you gravitate to your natural style anyway. Follow your instinct not others dictates and you'll enjoy it much much more.

To All: Not had a game in there recently as I have got involved in the Beta for Dark Avatar, but will get one in soon I hope.

Regards
Zy

Hi Zydor --
Thanks for the thoughful response. I agree wholeheartedly with you and Kudelv that we should play because we enjoy it, not because we're maximizing scores or enjoying the pretty medals that pop up everytime we write a post!

Nevertheless, campaigns (unless you get smeared) almost inevitably reach a "tipping point" -- that moment when you know without a doubt that you're going to win and it's only a matter of time before your adversaries bow to the inevitable. Before I started playing Metaverse games, I'd pretty much call it quits at that point because what was left was a rather tedious mop up: deploying countless cultural starbases, organizing dozens of troop ships, building an obscene number of discovery spheres, and sucking up to unallied races. But with the Metaverse, there’s a real incentive to clean up the galaxy at the end of the game. And to the extent that you have a choice as to which victory to pursue -- cultural, military, technological, diplomatic -- I’m happy to help my empire and my ranking by choosing the higher-point option.

I’m really enjoying the Metaverse because I had been getting a bit bored with GC2 and my style of play. Interacting with folks on the boards, trying out different strategies, etc., is getting me to try different combinations that make GC2 interesting all over again. I never thought I'd find a space 4X game I loved as much as MOO2 (especially after MOO3 broke my heart), but GC2 had knocked MOO2 off of its pedestal.

Now if only the minor races had a bit more backbone...

I’m going to be fiddling with DA Beta a bit too (really love the ability to customize opponents and the idea of having different planet environments), but will try to start another Metaverse game this weekend...

V/R, Cumberberg

I agree with you Cumberberg, it can get boring when you know you are going to win. It's of course great to help the Empire get a couple of extra points.
Did you all noticed we are about to brake the 3 Million points mark?
Anybody has some thoughts about the motto? I'd like to hearwhat you all think.

Hey! Sorry I haven't posted lately, classes just got off for Thanksgiving break, and I have a really unreliable internet connection here back at home.

I was wondering how everyone liked our empire logo. Do you think we should design a new one? Also like Kudelv though, what does everyone think of the empire moto, does anyone have any ideas?

Everone playing the DA Beta, I'm curious to know what everyone thinks of it. Maybe you could post some screenshots of some of the new ship designs and other interesting stuff, so that some of us not participating in the beta can see some of the cool stuff.

Cumberberg: I also wish the minors had more of a backbone.

We're real close to the 3 million mark, lets keep up our good work and have fun!

AlexAtticus