Livonya Livonya

Notes from a 1 million point game

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Notes from a 1 million point game

from GalCiv2 Forums
I have been trying to break 1 million for some time.

Last year I got discouraged when I got a cheat flag for a 800,000+ point game, and then while doing some tests I accidentally posted a 0 point loss to the Metaverse.  I could live with the cheat flag, but the 0 point game loss just annoyed me.  So I stopped playing Metaverse games.

In May I decided to once again go for that 1 million point game.  So I started again, but first I wiped my old scores.

With my next attempt I accidentally started an Obscene game, which certainly didn't help.  I didn't realize this until I posted the game.  Duh.

With my second next attempt I made sure it was Suicidal, but I accidentally left the Tech Victory option open.  Duh, again.

That lead to some interesting findings.

These are the stats from my first next attempt.  You will note that these stats/scores are from December 22nd of the year 2233.  I actually post the games in December 22nd of the year 2234 but the gain in that final year is very, very tiny and so I don't document it.

Torian game - final score 829,500

Society - 130,319
Tech - 184,002
Econ - 254, 387
Military - 341,520

Number of planets - 730
Number of ships - 16,848
Population - 11.346 T
Military Ranking - 4,408,233
Final Approval - 58%
Number of Military bases - 16
Final Tech Spending - 65,884
Final Bonus Spending - 227,730
Economics - 394%
Morale - 336%
Trade Income - 1,077
Tourism Income - 22,494 (1 bonus tourism event)
Taxes - 621,030

These are the stats from my second next attempt.  You will note that these stats/scores are from December 22nd of the year 2233.  I actually post the games in December 22nd of the year 2234 but the gain in that final year is very, very tiny and so I don't document it.

Thalan game - final score 1,031,100

Society - 148,814
Tech - 20,331
Econ - 325,907
Military - 636,290

Number of planets - 739
Number of ships - 50,653
Population - 14.779
Military Ranking - 10,380,308
Final Approval - 37%
Number of Military bases - 20
Final Tech Spending - 0
Final Bonus Spending - 11,435
Economics - 368%
Morale - 422%
Trade Income - 591
Tourism Income - 73,925 (2 bonus tourism events)
Taxes - 871,326

Things of interest:

1)  There is some sort of hard cap with Beyond Mortality (tech victory).  With my million point game I could end it with either a Military Conquest or with Beyond Mortality.  With the Military Conquest I would get 1,000,000+ points.  With the Beyond Mortality the score was about 350,000.  The interesting thing was I could get the same 350,000 Beyond Mortality victory score in September of 2228.  So it capped and never went up again.

2)  The Society Score can't really get too high.  With the Torian game I had Super Breeder so I reached the max pop level much, much, much faster.  With the Thalan game I built 2 to 5 Fertility Clinics on each and every planet, and I took The 8 point Planet Quality (20% bonus) with my bonus points.  So while the Torian's could get to a higher population much faster, the Thalan empire got a higher score due to better planets.  I doubt if this score could ever top 175,000 to 200,000 as there is simply no way to get much more than 15 trillion life forms.  I had 739 planets and every single planet had 20 to 21 billion life forms.  There is almost nothing I could have done to increase that effectively.

3)  The Econ score difference is largely due to the Planet Quality.  The 20% Planet Quality bonus offers 1 to 5 extra Stock Markets on every single planet.  That translates to 150,000 to 200,000 extra BC per turn once everything is built.

4)  With my Thalan game I completely conquered the universe in August of 2228, and I finished every single Tech except for Beyond Mortality in September of 2228.  This meant that I had to compltey turn off all tech spending.  So my Tech score never grew past the 20,331 that it was at in 2228.  Thus proving that it is possible to just ignore tech completely with these sorts of games.

5) Even though I got the higher score with the Thalan super ability, I actually think the Torian super ability is better.  My economy tanked at one point with the Thalans.  There were at least 2 or 3 turns where I had to reduce spending.  This would never have happened with the Torians.  So I prefer the Torian super ability, though they are both quite good.


Keys to a high score:

1) Spin Control Center.  You need this ASAP and you need 7 of the largest most powerful ships in this center ASAP.  When I completed this item my military might went to 3x the next largest empire.  This is huge.  It makes a massive difference with dealing with the other empires.  Once you have the largest military then everyone pretty much does what you want.  Peace deals can be extremely profitable once it becomes clear that your military is vastly superior.

2)  Conquer the universe very, very, very fast.  I completely vanquished all enemy empires in August of 2228.  If I would have done this faster then I would have gotten a much higher score.  Speed, speed, speed.

3)  Economy.  You need economy more than you need anything else.  Econ resources are priceless.  Research, and Influence resources are pretty much pointless.  Econ and Morale are the ones you want first.  Population growth!!!  I built a LOT of Fertility Clinics.  Even though the Society score is not massive, the population is the key to Economc growth.


Anyway, I just thought this would be interesting to post.  Hopefully someone finds it interesting.

I am going to switch to a new race with every game, so I think my next game will be with the Drengin.

I suspect there will be someone breaking 1,200,000 sooner or later.  Maybe even 1,500,000 with a very fast strategy and a more balanced tech/military plan.

I probably could have gotten another 100,000 out of this game if I had had more patience.  The game will slow to a painful crawl with this many ships.  So at some point my patience gave out and I was just trying to finish rather than push up my score even higher.

- Livonya



metaverse
191,725 views 64 replies
Reply #51 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Mumblefratz -

I think the 2 million point game will be in TA.

Looking at how Magnumaniac did with his million point game it seems that a much higher score should be possible there.

I mean he got a million point game with these scores...

Society - 141K
Tech - 204K
Econ - 382K
Military - 435K

There is clearly room for improvement in his military score, though I haven't actually done a TA game so maybe I am incorrect about that.

Maybe I will switch to TA for my next game.

I need at least a week of off time before I start another game. The last 3 years of my game took 12+ hours and all I was doing was hitting a few buttons each turn, and waiting... it was taking something like 5 minutes per turn. I watched 4 or 5 movies, but it was hellishly boring.

- Livonya
Reply #52 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Well, TA will be tougher at the start due to the restricted economy and slower tech tree (e.g. several techs to research before you get to Tech Capital, only a few races having access to SCC), but then again I think so far no one has explored the new possibilities unlocked by TA.

PS Congratulations on your enormous score!
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Reply #53 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Again, I can never say never, but part of the reason he got as high as 204K on his Tech was because he focused effort away from his military rating to Tech. That's not to say there aren't major elements to improve but that they don't necessarily come without a cost of their own.

Another point is you need to be careful about predicting your total score based on the sum of your four components of score because they can vary widely as well.

Note that Mags and your sum of four components of score is about the same as your total score. But compare that to my score which is skewed very strongly towards econ and military. Note in my game my military component was 937K and my econ was 500K yet my total score was only 924K.

I attribute some of this to a lack of balance between the four components. So yes, you can get a much higher military score but can you get a much higher military score without giving up score somewhere else?

One point about being so dependent on the full military thing is that is intrinsically the last thing that you can get moving and so this works counter to the whole front-end weighted thing.

In any case there are many factors and trade-offs and the only sure way to tell which is best is to actually try them.
Reply #54 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Mumblefratz -

In truth I think the limiting factor is actually human patience.

I personally believe that I could have gotten 2 million points with this game.

However, the drudgery that would have been required was beyond the limits of my personal patience.

There was a point in this game that I made a conscious decision about my score based on the limits of my patience. At that point I gave up on boosting my military score and instead focused on just finishing the game.

This decision prevented me from getting a higher score.

Thus I think much, much higher scores are possible.

As you say, I can't prove that until I actually do it. That is true, but that doesn't mean it can't be done, which of course you also note.

Someone with a higher degree of patience could, in my opinion, score over 3 million points provided that there is not some sort of hard cap.

In every single game I have played I have eventually had to choose between boosting for a higher score and just finishing the game.

For example in this game I spent 3 to 4 years direct buying ships in order to spend my 700,000+ budget surplus. I could have direct bought 600+ tiny ships with 1/1 weapon/defense and moved them to my starbase array but the time involved would have crushed my soul. So instead I bought the most expensive possible ships I could so I would only have to direct buy 6 or 7 of them per turn. This saved a LOT of time but it also reduced my score.

And this is just one example. There are countless things I could do that would boost my score faster but would require hundreds if not hundreds-of-thousands of extra clicks per game.

Your technique of upgrading ships saves a lot of time, but clearly it also hurts your score. I think you could do better not using that technique but the time involved wouldn't be worth the effort.

In any event, I am not trying to argue with you as I don't disagree with anything you said.

All I am trying to say is that in my opinion if someone was willing and had the patience they could score over 2 million point, perhaps even higher.

- Livonya
Reply #55 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I'm not really disagreeing with you either but for example I built 17K ships with a final upgrade and then played the same game out taking an extra year to build 34K ships with a similar final upgrade and the result was that the 17K ship game actually scored higher than the 34K ship game.

Certainly patience is a limiting factor. Also the choice to build fewer more powerful ships as opposed to more 1/1 fighters to upgrade later can make a difference. So can deciding to spend less on military and more on Tech. Or whatever. There are obviously many tradeoffs that can be made and some will be better than others.

However there is a limit that's essentially intrinsic to the game that you can't simply exceed by being more patient. That's all I'm really saying.

But I still think the jury is out about upgrade versus build. One thing to take a look at is my military timeline graph that I published in reply #4 of the Military Might And Metaverse Score. There's some verbage in that thread that's possibly useful that you might want to look at but I'll repost the graph here.



If you post a similar graph then I could scale them appropriately and we can pretty much tell directly from the graph which method is more effective.

This won't correctly show the effect of how much tech score I give up versus yours, but as far as a straight military to military score it should be a reasonable comparison.
Reply #56 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

I finally finished the game I had going for Toshiro and I'm proud to announce the first 1 million point DL game. Looking back on my save games I started this game on 8/17 and finished this morning on 11/11 almost three months in the making.

The final score was 1,093,250 in 7 reported years with the following breakdown.

Soc - 122K
Tech - 29K
Econ  - 555K
Mil - 971K

I had a total of 470 planets and a total of 29 resources with the following distribution.

8 economic
7 military
5 morale
5 influence
4 research

Some key final stats.

Pop - 7.6T
Income - 1.7M
Mil Rating - 15M

I had my usual 17K huge hull ships all upgraded to 1 BHE and as many ZPA's as I could fit however I was able to get three more Hyperion Shrinkers than I usually do for a total of 5 captured shrinkers and a final huge hull size of 232. This allowed a 25 attack/550 defense ship which along with my 340% defense bonus (7 mil resources plus Drath 50% bonus) made each ship worth about 2500 points plus another 1500 points per ship for being under my array.

Added to the above was the fact that I gained most of the galaxies resources far earlier than previously as well as conquered most of the galaxy about 9 months earlier than usual allowed me to build out all my planets, build 17K ships and upgrade them by the end of year 2 when usually I finish the upgrade middle to late year 3.

The 8 economic resources plus 470 planets, which is about 20 more planets than I usually get, certainly helped build out the 17K ships at a faster rate and resulted in a record 1.7M per turn income. My previous best was 1.6M and that was with DL v1.2 where the stock market had a higher income bonus (I think it was 30% versus the 25% it is now plus of course the 5% morale bonus, boy those were the days).

The only real downside to the entire game was the fact that I only had 5 morale resources which required that I have 3 VRC's per 20B planet instead of the normal 2.

Reply #57 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

You are the Man Mumble! If anyone could do it I would of put my money on you  :thumbsup: Now i wonder if a little DA might be in your future ;) . Oh the things you would be able to do with that :)

Reply #58 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

Grats Mumble!  I know you've been searching for that for a long time, and I admit I was doubting whether you could.

The only real downside to the entire game was the fact that I only had 5 morale resources which required that I have 3 VRC's per 20B planet instead of the normal 2.

That kinda surprised me, I thought you normally played without morale structures.

edit: can't get the quote to show up properly... I don't think I'll ever get the hang of which tags to use in these forums

Reply #59 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

Congratulations!  A beautiful game :).

Reply #60 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

Thanks guys.

That kinda surprised me, I thought you normally played without morale structures.
I had a big long response to this detailing what criteria I use to decide what planets to take to 20B and therefore require VRC's versus which planets I leave at 13B which require no morale buildings (assuming a gigantic galaxy with 5-7 morale resources). Then for some reason the site thought I wasn't logged on and wouldn't let me reply and I lost the post.

But the short version compares the planets income at 13B versus 20B based on how many tiles that can be stockmarkets on the 13B planet need to get converted to farms/VRC's at 20B. For 3 tiles (one extra farm and 2 VRC's the magic number is 9 (or 8). Basically

SQRT(20B)*9*25% is almost equal to SQRT(13B)*12*25%

This means that a 20B planet with 9 stockmarkets gives almost the same income as a planet of13B with 12 stockmarkets. Given that income is a score criteria I don't want to give up a lot of income for pop but since pop is a score criteria as well if income is about equal (or higher) I'll go for the higher pop. So if I have to give up 3 tiles to have 20B versus 13B then I'll put 20B on any planet where I can have 9 or more stockmarkets.

Note that if there's a food or approval bonus tile then I only need to give up 2 tiles and that means the 20B planet only needs 5 stockmarkets to be income effective versus 13B. But if for some reason I need to give up 4 tiles for 20B then I would need 13 stockmarkets at 20B before it's economically advantageous to have 20B.

Make sense?

Reply #61 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

Congrats Mumble!  :congrat:   And thanks for the details. :D

Kzinti empire2.JPG Sentient species taste better...

Reply #62 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

Well done Mumble!  :congrat:  

Reply #64 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

Adding this to the list of importance 5*