17000 score gigantic, suicidle, max everything.

Very strange. I'm definitely not having that issue. 17000 seems like an awfully low score for a gigantic suicidal. How many AI's did you have in the game? How many planets did you end up colonizing?

You know, I had the same problem in one of my games. The AI did expand, just much slower then usual and they built almost nothing militarily.

It was a larger map, high difficulty level, stars were uncommon but everything else was abundant.

I quit the game just after year one. There just wasn't any challenge. It was a cakewalk.

I don't know what's up with this sort of thing. Just seems to happen now and then. But extremely rare.

Yup, I have seen that in several games as well. Two AI, neither expanded more than 8-10 planets and then quit.

I had 9 AI on suicide, gigantic map, loose clusters, all abundant, very fast research.

I cononized 130 planets before I got bored of the lack of challange.

17000 is extrermly low for a suicide win.

perhaps the scoring takes into account what the AI get up to and all.

I had 9 AI on suicide, gigantic map, loose clusters, all abundant, very fast research. I cononized 130 planets before I got bored of the lack of challange. 17000 is extrermly low for a suicide win.

This is very strange. Yr score should have been much higher.

What was yr population/income/tech research/military like?

17000 score gigantic, suicidle, max everything. it was like cakewalk.... the AI did not expand. so I played with it...on year 4 after colonizing loads, kicked the hell out of the Ai in one move.

I cononized 130 planets before I got bored of the lack of challange.

Well 130 planets in year 4 for that map is quite low from what I've read and seen.
You probably did not have all that much population and hence not much economy and/or research and production.
You did not need much of a military so that was also prob pretty low.
Maybe you were taking it easy because you saw the AI being lame?

I remember in my first games I would just end them with a tech victory in year 3 or 4 after taking out 3 or 4 of the AIs; and I got around 25K - 30K points for a suicidal, gigantic, scattered, all normal, 9 opponents, normal research rate, approx 170 habitable planets( I think ), year 3 or 4 victory.

BTW, what you describe is definitely a bug by my standards ( but the score is probably right ) .

Also,


When going into debt, I could only go 2000 into debt.

guess it some how triggered cakewalk even though i set it to suicide.

When going into debt, I could only go 2000 into debt.

This is the game that you posted under Impy? Everything you've said points to a difficulty level of cakewalk but the game clearly posted as suicidal. I think the points part of it makes sense but selecting suicidal and getting cakewalk is definitely a bug from my perspective. If it was me I'd post this to the bug reports forum along with the debug.err and any savegames that I might still have.

With all the time and effort you invest in a game this is certainly disappointing. I sure hope it doesn't happen to me.

With all the time and effort you invest in a game this is certainly disappointing. I sure hope it doesn't happen to me.

Mumblefratz, well we r talking scores. What score did u get for that game u had 500,000 BC income? R u still playing the game out? The last game u posted was 189,500 pts 22/09/06, surely this is not it?

Also has everyone noticed the top players scores going down recently? It looks like that rule about old scores going down by 5% is kicking in. It will effect all us old hacks, who have been playing for 6 months or so.  

The last game u posted was 189,500 pts 22/09/06, surely this is not it?

Yep. That's the one. Did you think it should have been higher or lower? I could have dragged it out a few more years for a higher score, but there's no fun in that. Actually, I maxed out the income at 900K per week as long as I spent all the money each turn. Once I got tired of that the income dropped from 900K to 550K because of the treasury over 20K bug. I don't think Stardock is too interested in fixing this one though.

I could have developed my pop better in the game and although I did buy a lot of ships that helped my military score, I ended the game with over 50,000,000 bc in cash so I could've bought a lot more. Anyway, I was happy with the 189K.

Back to the OP's post. I think 17K for 130 planets and 4 years is in the ballpark. This could have been an opportunity to pump up a big score against inferior competition that posted as a suicidal victory. I applaud Taziker for not taking advantage of it. In my opinion this is a serious bug that has the potential of cheapening the scores we've all worked hard to achieve. Whether someone got 17K, 35K or whatever for an obviously flawed game doesn't concern me as much as someone taking advantage of whatever caused this to post a 300K+ suicidal victory that played like a cakewalk. I'd hope that would concern you as much as it concern's me.

Also has everyone noticed the top players scores going down recently?

Yes. I've noticed mainly in Syrrus K and Magnumaniac's scores (hard not to notice scores in the millions). It catches up with everyone sooner or later but as long as you keep posting you seem to make forward progress. You can always start a new character if you want (Magnumaniac's two previous characters are both former number 1's).

Yep. That's the one. Did you think it should have been higher or lower?

Higher, near the 300,000 pt total, in a position like that. Oh well perhaps next time?

I do not think extending the game would have improved yr score, when u go over 9 yrs the score seems to drop sharply.

Back to the OP's post. I think 17K for 130 planets and 4 years is in the ballpark. This could have been an opportunity to pump up a big score against inferior competition that posted as a suicidal victory. I applaud Taziker for not taking advantage of it. In my opinion this is a serious bug that has the potential of cheapening the scores we've all worked hard to achieve.

yeah thanks.


I thought about going mad and taking the galaxy....and developing an uber score, just to see if i could, but slashing my wrists with boredom seemed to be entering my head.

I thought about going mad and taking the galaxy....and developing an uber score, just to see if i could, but slashing my wrists with boredom seemed to be entering my head.

It's sort of like the few times that I've played Trivial Pursuit. By the time you get to the end of the game you're so sick of it you want anyone to win just to end it.

I think boredom has a tendency to curb some of the excesses of milking scores. In that sense I think it's a good thing.

But I do recommend reporting this as a bug along with whatever savegame data you may have.

OP, did you ctrl n? I have seen after starting my huge masos that the difficulty will reset *rarely* but it has happened when using ctrl n.

As a result of the ctrl "n" issues of older versions, I got in the habit of just going to the main menu and hitting "metaverse" all over again. It kicks you quickly through the start screens and creates a new galaxy. Haven't had a problem with this yet.

OP, did you ctrl n? I have seen after starting my huge masos that the difficulty will reset *rarely* but it has happened when using ctrl n.

I've heard about this and may even had one myself. In my case it was a game I was *sure* I selected suicidal but it posted as maso. In that case I really couldn't tell the difference in play and anyway the game posted at the lower difficulty level in question.

In this case the game was selected to be suicidal, played as if it was a much easier level but submitted as suicidal. This is similar in some respects, but the difference is that if someone discovers a way of making this happen reliably it would be a major exploit to say the least. Even if this happens only occasionally, I don't think that everyone would be as scrupulous about it as Taz has been.

I always press ctrl n if I dont like the starting position, as I recall, aye I did use ctrl n. I think I overwrote the quicksave it was on

I always press ctrl n if I dont like the starting position, as I recall, aye I did use ctrl n. I think I overwrote the quicksave it was on

I never use ctrl n, never had this problem.

Read other posts about this happening, strongly think its a ctrl n issue.

In metaverse when u press ctrl n, u after go through the entire customise process, so may as well start new metaverse game, rather than using ctrl n.

I have had this same thing happen to me also. It was not a metaverse game, so I had used cntrl-n heavily before starting it. If I remember right, it was 9 races, gigantic map, abundant everything. The ai just stopped building after colonizing half a dozen planets or so each, even planetary developments. I just scrapped the game and started another one, but I always wondered what caused it and if a game like that could be exploited for huge points. I guess now I know.

It could just be that they hit an economic difficulty, or that they've shifted focus to something else. Just because a human player is an obsessive colonizer doesn't imply the computer is. One game I dropped had the Torians start off doing nothing for a few turns, no expansion, no colonization. They were in very close proximity to me. When they finally did go boom, they were all over the place. Their colonies so interlaced my own territories, I cut the game because they were already slamming me on Influence, and I would not have been able to recover because the random placement boxed me in too quickly.

It could just be that they hit an economic difficulty

He had 9 AI's in the game. I could believe one or two could have over extended themselves into bankruptcy but not 9. Also the fact that he couldn't go more than 2000 into debt, says that this was really taken as a low level dificulty game but posted as suicidal.

I've also seen where the Thalan in particular tend to stop colonizing and start building a whole bunch of starbases if they get boxed into a corner, but again for 9 AI this is pretty unlikely.

In metaverse when u press ctrl n, u after go through the entire customise process, so may as well start new metaverse game, rather than using ctrl n.

This is not true in 1.31. When you Ctrl-N you wait a while and get a new map and new positions. You don't have to type in anything else.