Mwah ha ha, my plan to make you all hate and despise me is working perfectly :LOL:

NONE OF THESE ARE A SUBMISSION!

But here is what the MVL has had me doing this weekend in my spare time:



And everyone is garbage. My last game was going well for the first year, then the Jagged Knife showed up and grabbed half of my worlds... Those mega events in something like this just slow you down so much.

Money is my big problem, I just can't keep my research up, and my populations don't breed fast enough. I've tried starting out by conquering the universe and leaving one gimped enemy. I've tried sitting on my home planet and just researching. I've tried shooting down everyone else's survey ships to get more anomalies. I've played all factories, all labs, mixed...

To go as fast as I want requires too much money, and if I build no military someone is bound to try and conquer me near the end. If I conquer everyone else it takes too much time. And just when I'm going along well, bam! a mega event throws me waaaaay off my game.

There has to be something I'm missing, but at this point I'm just about ready to go back to DL and do it there where its easier. The current setup leaves no advantages to DA that I can see. Maybe I just don't know what I'm doing. Two of those eight games I even started with a precursor library.

Maybe I've become too dependent on tech whoring.

~ Wyndstar

Hi!

Thank you for confirming my initiall thoughts! Tech victory on fast just needs so much money to achieve.

To share my piece of knowledge: I ran several testbeds with DA 1.8 and cheats on, just to determine the expected number of habitable planets. Secondary planets taken off there should be 16 +/- 4 planets, about a third of them extreme. So you can't expect much money from the pop just from your share of planets. But if you conquer their planets, you "waste" your pop that should make money instead war.

I see two posible solutions to money problem. I just don't know which one will be better. Need to do some more testing...

BR, Iztok

Geez if you guys are having trouble that does not give the rest of us much hope....

Yeah, out of four tries, I completed one game on the weekend. Money is just so unbelievably tight with so few colonies available.

I haven't started a game yet, but tech trading off always makes life difficult regardless of victory type. I would expect it even more so for tech victory.

Also as far as score, tech victory is the lowest multiplier on score so scores will be lower. I actually published a set of multipliers posted by Magnumaniac somewhere around here but I forgot where they are. With search basically non-functional it's tough to find. Anyone remember where I put that?

Hmm, gonna be one interesting round.

I dont remember where you put it originally, but I also posted it in my Kzinti Empire thread:

Tech 1.0
Alliance 1.5
Culture 1.75
Military 2.5

Sentient species taste better...

well my crappy scores Ive got so far don't seem so bad with others having the same problems. Just another reason I like playing the MVL games. Random settings I would never pick myself, makes it interesting )

If everyone is having trouble, I must have got lucky. I took the Altarians and put all my points into research, economy, and morale.

My homeworld had 700% and 300% research bonuses. Very close to my homeworld was a research resource and an economic resource. One minor race was on my doorstep. I took him out in year zero. There was a class 1 planet very close, which I settled after getting Soil Enhancement and Habitat Improvement. It ended up a class 16. Wisp was settled by my initial colony ship and the class 1 was taken by my upgraded Space Miner once it was done with the 3 homeworld asteroids. A total of 4 colonies. My homeworld for research. The 3 others for economy. Got very luck with 1000bc anomalies. Still I had cash flow problems throughout the game. At the end of year 2 (last 6 turns) I had to raise taxes to 89%, running at 17% approval. My population was crashing, and my economy was sinking but I got the Tech Victory researched on exactly Dec. 22. It was very close.

Yeah, seeing Wyndstar barely passing the 10k score mark, even failing to do so in one game definitely was cause for much relief on my part.

so since Mardh 28 is my birthday, team C automatically wins this round, right?

I think you've got to have a good starting position on this one. I had a +700% research square on my homeworld and got 6-7 worlds other than my homeworld (2 of which were toxic and 1 of which was radiated). That gave me the population level I needed to fund the research. Probably just a random thing; whoever gets the best starts, wins. I'm not actually at all sure 0 year is possible. I'll be very impressed if someone can pull that one off.

Well, I've won one game so far (didn't submit it to the metaverse, since the starting setup was pretty good and I plan on replaying it a few times, but I've saved after reaching Tech Victory in case I do end up wanting to use that game) and I just want to echo the sentiments about money. For the final sprint towards tech victory, I had to run for 15 turns or so at 28% moral (what amused me was that one of the planets that was taken from me in that final sprint flipped back to my control) all the while facing invasions from the two remaining major powers (fortunately, they didn't attack any of my undefended homeworlds, otherwise I wouldn't have made it). This is all on painful, so I can't imagine what it's like doing this on suicidal.

i've got it down where I can support my economy just fine, its keeping the AI away that i'm having issues with; I really need a Library and be all by myself in a corner

I'm slowly getting there, tantalizingly close. My last two games ended on Feb. 8 and then on Feb 1 of the second year. If I can find a way to shave off just four turns I'll be happy.

~ Wyndstar

You've used the Korx successfully these last couple of games? That is incredibly cool. I would not have thought them a viable choice. If you don't mind, are you actually using trade for the income? Or just for the diplomatic benefits? Or is it because you can build the economic capital really early?

When I submitted my game, I knew I could get a better score, but getting the first game submitted for the round was too alluring.  :LOL: 

Sentient species taste better...

Yes.

~ Wyndstar

I really thought a ZYW was gonna be possible this round. Just had my butt handed to me by the AI. Maybe i'll build a military next time. :LOL:

I'm having a hard time as well. This is a tough one for me, but it's very interesting. Unfortunately, I'm rather buzy right now and don't have a whole lot of time to play. I hope I can post something decent before the deadline.

Looks like we are all running into the same problems this round. I have money issues followed by holding off a pissed off opponent at the end.

I've just received a PM from a MVL member and he expressed concern about the use of race customization in DA that is achieved via editing of the raceconfig file that cannot be achieved from within the game.

I know that this topic has been discussed in regards to general use for metaverse games and the conclusion that I remember was that there is nothing wrong with this. For reference here is the thread where I remember the topic being discussed.

How do you make custom races Metaverse compatible?

However this has not been explicitly discussed within the context of MVL games. After all we do specify many settings and aspects of the game that people need to abide by over and above simply being legal MV games. In any case I believe that the concerns expressed by any individual member of the MVL are very important and not to be treated lightly whether you agree with them or not. I'm sure Silver and many others in the league will echo this belief.

However, although this hasn't been expressly discussed I believe that games have been played in this manner virtually since the inception of the league and so any change to this would require a new rule to be adopted by the league.

Therefore the current round thread isn't the place to discuss this and so I'll move this to the rules thread for futher discussion. But please reference and quickly read through the above link so that you have at lesat some background on the issue.

Also I would ask that people take a moment and respond to how they feel about this issue either pro or con. After all if you would like others to give your concerns the proper weight they deserve then it behooves you to treat the concerns of others seriously as well. I thank the league for their patience on this issue.

Certainly everyone should understand that this will in no way affect the current round. Any decision made will apply to future rounds only.

Submission for team D:

Attention crusaders, please check our private forums.