15k score in large galaxy, wtf?

My guess is you're either letting your games take too long, in terms of turns, or that you're not building a very large military-probably the former and the latter may have some impact as well.

Something you should understand, though, is that virtually all scores over ~100k-150k are done almost entirely for scoremongering purposes-they don't play out quite like a normal game does.  (The ZYW is an exception in a sense, but as it's done for most points per real time investment, it doesn't really count as one.)

If someone wants to correct me on the lower threshold where scoremongering makes itself apparent, feel free.  I'm also not the best guy to give you tips on increasing your score, but if you provide more information (for instance how long your games take), I'm certain others can point you in the right direction.

Not that there's anything wrong with playing for score.  But, for what it's worth, if you're winning, why does score matter?

Sounds like your just playing it straight, colonizing, teching up, and winning. Exactly as the game was meant to be played .

But for scoremonger, it works quite different. In most cases you have the game won within the first year or year and a half. Meaning you have one opponent left with one planet. From there you just spend the next few years building score. There is a few various ways to buiild score but it almost always involves having a massive military rating(in the millions). The other components kind of have their ceiling(poulation, income), and tech is harder to pumpup to help score a lot(though it can be done). It's not everyone's cup of tea though so your mileage may vary with your patience .

I noticed a lot of your games were won by peaceful means. They way you win also determines your scores greatly. Because you had political and cultural wins i'm guessing you didn't have a very large military or had many battles. War is one of the most efficient ways of raising your points. A military victory gives you the most points because it is meant to be the hardest to achieve. the more you fight the more you get, Thats why evil races have all the fun  .

try playing a game for a military victory and see what happens.

Your victory condition gets a multiplier. Military is X2, Diplomatic and Influence are around X1.5 and Tech victory is like X1.  I forget the actual numbers, and I think that influence was a bit higher than diplomatic. I'm hoping someone more learned will correct me.

It doesn't seem that your games are long. 6 years and under is quite fine.  If you are that concerned, try doing som things to boost your score. When you know  that you are going to win anyway, keep building ships and build a higher population. You can just have tiny hulls with lots of weapons in orbit.

You score is based on the area under the graphs for population, research, military and economy. Get these high and your score will go up some. Remember too that the earlier you get them going the higher your score will be too. That is, buidling a huge military only during the last few turns will not do too much for you.

There are other things you can do to get those 6 figure (an sometimes 7 figure !!) scores but those are too time consuming for me and score is not THAT important. Play for personal best.

The most important key to a higher score is to do everything faster.  Get your mil rating, population, economy, and tech output up as high and fast as you can.  Take advantage of points-grinding techniques if you have the stomach for boredom and monotony.  Never end a turn with your treasury above 20k even if you are just grinding, because your econ score will take a huge hit.

Sentient species taste better...

ignore

Re-education Center.

Sentient species taste better...

Or just reloading at need, which is how they hold an econ event for years at a time.

Excellent thread.

Either the Re-Education Center or just let the enemy have 2 planets. One of them being some worthless PQ 4 piece of rock. As soon as one flips, give it back.

Once I completely relocated "the other race", too. Gave them 2 planets at the edge of the map along with the 4 influence starbases I prebuilt in that sector.

They totally owned that space and I didn't have to worry about them any longer. Their original colonies eventually flipped, of course. As they should.

Sometimes I build eco starbases for them, too. To boost their research so I can steal more useful tech from them. A handful of constructors means nothing at that stage.

I do somewhat more. I build the reeducation center on an obcenely high research planet (current game this planet has a 700% bonus and my tech capital), then sell it to an AI to further the tech stealing potential. That, and whenever possible I sell or outright gift whatever tech the AIs are researching, until they start researching something I can't. This is the only practical way I've found to encourage the AI to research stuff that is normally low on their priority list, such as Killzone, morale techs, ethics techs (Thalan tree can't get reeducation center on its own), etc.