250K on a tiny!

Amazing.

Would you be willing to say whether that was with rare or abundant settings?

I'm still trying to close out my current game. I had forgotten how long a single turn can take. I'm at August 1st with 300 planets and 150 colony ships but the speed issue is a major PITA. I'm thinking of going back and delaying a bit so that I both get more planets as well as have a faster colony ship. In fact I'm pretty certain that's the right thing to do.

Thank you.

Basically the strategy was to maximize research in an all-abundant setup via lots of Econ-SB's. I don't know if the planets/systems are somehow nearer to one another as in a gigantic galaxy, but a very nice side-effect is that the general pop (which is brought into the game through the StockAI's and the Minors) can be ferried around (post-swindle), and by leveling them a fairly well growth-rate, and in turn, EconScore can be achieved.

That's basically the difference between to a gigantic one, where, esp. in the outer-rim planets, further colonizations comes to halt to not reduce a planets' pop to a value where no real growth can sustained anymore.

Yep, speed vs. cost is basically the big question in an economic approach. I don't really know how you (and others) go through this, but you may also want to level pop across your own empire. I'm confident you have some post-swindle-planets/ core-worlds with a high pop, and you could design fast and big cargo-based ColonyShips to infiltrate alien systems, from which subsequently cheap Tiny Colonizers can take over the rest of the intra-system-planets, and hereby again level pop.

At least, that's what I did in my last game, although it was far from being perfect, and the inner CoreWorlds mostly had a higher pop throughout y0. Which then causes a moral-/tax-adjustment problem, which will result in a sub-optimal popgrowth rate. Well, it's not easy always....

Another record-shattering score Maiden!  We stand suitably awed and humbled!

Sentient species taste better...

Here's my first ZYW, my first completed DA game and my first game in over 14 months (correction 18 months).

Don't bother counting it because it's really nothing more than a test. I basically played for real up to Aug 1st and then clicked end turn thereafter just to see where I ended up. I'm also not all that happy with all of the choices I made prior to Aug 1st. I only ended up with 342 planets and a pop little more than 2T but then I didn't bother building farms or VRC's or even stock markets. I also built no military other than 6 paper tigers and my research was pretty anemic when compared to the standard ZYW. Basically this was just to get an idea of where I was and make sure there were no cheat flags.

I'll just delete this game as it's not worth continuing but I do want to give the all breeder approach at least one more try with hopefully better performance in the early stages of the game and then perhaps we'll see the true potential of this method.

BTW people don't still have to deal with pirates, do they?

First of all my apologies for not knowing how to actually post a screenshot on here...but I swear I just joined the ZYW club as of my posting today. I only have one character so it should be easy enough to confirm my statements. I'd be happy to post a screenshot with a little guidance from you guys...

Either way, Tiny Galaxy, Crippling, Korath...cant remember the score, 15000ish- I tried for a ZYW on a whim, wanting to take a break from my other game. Probably just beginner's luck but I managed to do this on my first try without having to even hit crt-n. Sent flagship to find the other race and pretty much just lease-bought labs on every square avaliable. Hit enough to get a 1 weapon ship and lease-bought it. Got to planetary invasion and lease bought two transports (one on each planet I had) By this time my economy was just on the verge of tanking...I had about 238 and was draining something near 180 at full tax...Quick switched tech research to communications/translator and snagged them in one turn, then sold anything non-military to my opponent, the Yor. Got me to around a surplus of 1900. Rush bought two transports and game ended with economy completely trashed but my ship count was perfect...only 1 fighter and flagship remained at the end (actually, big mistake thinking back on it...the miner remained...should have just uprgraded instead of automate and forget...)

So, as I said, most likely beginner's luck, but I must say it was incredibly enjoyable to be on the verge of tanking teh economy at every second. The only thing that was odd is that I never managed more than one anomoly for 500bc, could have drastically changed my game with a few more. At the same time though...creativity bumped me 3 times on the soldiering techs...taking the homeworld could have needed another transport without that luck and I just wouldn't have had it in me. Just a bit further...are most of your games also against only one opponent (and probably not the Yor, I chose random, that slowdown nearly killed me)?

Sorry if I somehow gave away some secrets...just blind luck on my part.

--Scanian8

Make sure the display you want is the active window and then hold down the Alt key while pressing the PrintScr key (usually above the Insert key). This will copy the contents of your active widow to your clipboard.

Then open up MS Paint and you can paste (ctrl-v) the contents of your clipboard and then crop and edit the screenshot and save it as either a .jpg or a .png.

The hardest part is probably the croping of the screenshot if your not familiar with how paint works. The easiest way is to select and copy (or cut) a rectangular portion of the screen that you want and then go into Attributes under the Image tab and change the image size to something small like 10x10 and then paste in the selected portion of the image and the picture will automatically size itself to the size of the pasted region.

Then go to http://imageshack.us/ where you can upload the image and then you can use the direct link to insert into a reply here. Like this. You actually had three games fitting the criteria so I posted them all.

 

Well, actually I wanted to ask you why you used Korath AND still researched Planetary Invasion, but when I took a look @ Mumble's pics I think you're going for your racial medal, isn't it?

BTW, your secrets are kept confidential in our realm   and here's one for you:

ZYW's are *most* easy on Suicidal, plus they net more score then.

Mumble nice score - you are now second on first try in an expansion that is new to you.... the real outplay would have surely crossed 300k by far. I have no doubts you'll cross 400k in your new game. Did you start out with a PreCursLib? 

@Mumblefratz- Sincerest thanks for all the useful information as well as just going ahead and posting my games! So...you might have made a liar out of me...I had claimed to be happy to post my screenshots, but I had also assumed it was a bit simpler than that. So...double thanks, those probably would have never gotten posted without you.

@Maiden666- Actually, its even worse than that...As I said, I decided to do this on a whim and just thought of a strategy and went for it. The initial idea was to spore but then I decided that the research I'd have to do to get enough life support to get those ships to the enemy was actually more of a waste of time (stupid decision I see after a few more of these ZYWs).

I had the thought this morning that Suicide would be around the same level of difficulty as anything else, once you get the idea of these things they really fall into place. So, I am now the proud commander of two ZYW wins on Suicidal (Not that I claim to be there yet for a regular game). My apologies for not posting them...see my response to Mumblefratz .

Off for a few more ZYWs...then I gotta get back to my normal style of play before this takes over. I think 2 suicidal opponents are called for. Any chance people have beaten all 9 opponents? Care to give any tips (dont give it all away, I'm starting to get this crazy idea that I have a grasp of this game)?

Your games-score will actually reflect your research-output. Once you go -500bcs irreversibly it's about time to end the game. You may want to mitigate range by building a base, or colonize a planet - that's usually more efficient than racial range - although sometimes it's called for both methods simultaneously.

On Suicidal you can do the fastest research, and get the best score-multiplier.

You seem to learn pretty quick. Impressive.

Yep, in a Gigantic all-rare game against max AI/ Minors. Was very meticulous to find a map.... but those 70k bcs to burn on research brought 224k score.

However, with 9 AI's you can't hope for good research-bonus tiles on your HW - and that's where your score comes from. 4 enemies is my minimum choice these days - however, I guess I do things totally different as you....

There's two basic guidelines to follow in a standard ZYW:

1) make your choices so you can end the game in time (not before 8th April)

2) try to put everything into research as long as it doesn't hinder the above rule.

Not really, why?

Yes, isn't that pretty much required?

My problem was that I used up my money fairly effectively getting to March 1st but by August 1st I had about 7K BC's on hand. In this case money not spent is a bad thing and I could and should have increased research levels between March and August both for the benefit that increased early tech spending has on your score plus the benefit of having more useful techs earlier.

It was annoying to have 300 planets and 150 small hull colony ships on August 1st but have those colony ships limited to a speed of 5 and still not have gotten Eyes of the Universe so that I couldn't really see where to send all those ships. That's why I punted on spending much time finishing it up and only landed 30 or so of the colony ships before decommissioning them and clicking end turn for another 4 months before finishing off the Iconians.

I just wondered if it was common knowledge how to avoid having your conquered enemies ships turn pirate. If I hadn't figured out how to do this I would have had to chase about 100 pirates all over the map and that would have been annoying.

Is there a special reason why you go with small hulls? I assume their speed of 5 is base, isn't it?

I'll always built Eyes very soon. However, Nano Recorders do come even first. The research-"overflow" (I missing the right word for it now...) after Sensor IV can be immense and it'll give me always the power to research Majesty + Total Majesty in one turn subsequently.

Hmmm, I never had this Pirate-issue, with a slight exception of #1 AI. I don't allow my enemies to have any MilShips at all. Simply buy them. Makes the swindle easier. Afterwards, turn them into Colonizers. However, after they've researched 'Space Weapons' (or you've traded it to them) you'll have to contact them every turn so they don't have the chance to *fleet* any MilShips.

We're playing an entirely different style of game here. Keep in mind I don't have nearly the ready cash that you have and therefore can't get through the tech tree nearly as fast as you do.

I use small hulls because other than cargo hulls that's the only hull I have and they're cheaper. Basically I'm getting all of my colonizers free out of the queued up shipbuilding from a large percentage of the close to 300 planets that I "swindled".

Actually swindle is KP's term but KP didn't invent or discover the process and neither did I. However I was far closer to the source than KP was since it was discovered by Purge in DL and shared among the Diplomats. At some point I did a writeup that intentionally gave so many hints as to how this was done that it became obvious to most everyone.

But I digress. Overflow is the right word to use and I have not particularly taken advantage of it primarily because I cannot at all points afford to do so. I tend to figure out what is the maximum techs I can research in a given turn and then turn down my research to the point that I accomplish that amount of research but with no "overflow". I do this merely to make my limited money last.

I also don't allow the AI to have any military ships prior to the "swindle". I trade for all their military ships prior to declaring war. However remember I'm not trading peace for only one or two planets, I'm trading peace for close to 40 planets per AI and it's required to add in up to perhaps ten 2/1 "fodder" trade ships to get all those planets. It's those ships used as trade fodder that later become pirates, unless of course you found some other way to swindle 40 planets from an AI or have some other method of preventing them from turning pirate. I've simply discovered one method of keeping them from turning pirate.

It's reasonable to assume that using DL opponents that this doesn't happen, however I would have thought you would have seen this in previous games against breeders unless you've only played all abundant galaxies against multiple DL opponents and your previous experience against breeders was in rare setups.

The thing I worry about using DL as opponents is that it seems like it would be a micromanagement nightmare whereas against breeders you may not have nearly as much cash and therefore can't do nearly as much research but all you need to do is to sit back and let the AI do your colonization for you and then "swindle" them out of their planets at the appropriate time.

Also I can only guess about the details of your negative balance approach but I think I can make a few reasonable guesses. And while I do see definite advantages for your method such as being willing to upgrade to very expensive but fast colonizers to be able to finish up the last wave of colonization, I also see disadvantages in having to (I assume) build ships (or at least the hulls of the ships) for your array while bankrupt by using focus from research and therefore having to forgo a good number of stock exchanges that instead need to be research buildings.

Again these are just choices to focus on one thing while giving up something from another. Which way is really better can only be determined by how well they perform. To me the 687K ZYW is interesting but not really important. The 2.2M final game is what's important and I do want to give my methods a chance at trying to reach those levels before I simply give up on them.

Mumble, thanks for your long and detailed reply. I shall raise some comments.

What about Tiny Hulls? You only need "Enhanced Min" in order for them to be useable. A PreCursorLib will give you this tech on your 2nd turn.

well that's where I went to the GalCiv-school, and this term simply sticked

I like where this is going to.

Yes, I've played Gig all-abundant games, some for ZYW, some for BigGames (some not hosted yet) - without DL ARC. Also in DL, where there is no ARC at all.

Without SuperDiplomat or DL ARC I can see your point, but only in February. Later on, Tech-brokering can keep you afloat, however, as your own strengths built upon the the economy of the AI, this is the crux and there can be things done wrong. So, in a *common* ARC the general intention is to save the AI from his own stupitidy to burn all his money with rushbuying stuff etc...

There are quite a few settings that will actually influence this. Besides racial points, political choice or SA (which I think we'll have the same) I'll always "downtune" the AI in all his abilities or CPU use, as sometimes this gives them some sort of stasis, and given the economic bonus they have they'll still have a good chunk of money on 1st March. Which will then be mine, and this way I can usually raise easily 30k bc's which will fund all my research anyway in the initial parts of the game. To do not so is like a missed chance for early score. Late research isn't really worth it.... In fact, I had games where I could scoop even more than 50k from them, as well as I remember test-games where mine and their economy recovered during the colonial rush without getting into debt ever. It's hard to balance, or maybe requires some portion of luck, but doable it is.

In fact, at some points I realized that with the right attempt to All-lab and techbrokering you'll get anything from the AI anyway, without swindle (except his last 3 planets), and that it is sufficient enough to fund maximum research (which is pretty cheap then...), so I even skipped relying on Survey Vessels. An immense research will give you a tech-advantage, and this is my premier goal I have in all games I play. Of course this fits very well into my NB-strat, although even if I wouldn't use it I would want those techs anyway, the sooner the better. Now I'm not saying this or that is better, simply that we use different methods which are ways that will finally lead to the same goal.

Yes, I've noticed you won't get all planets from the AI - although the mechanix on this are a complete topic on themselves and there are a few things that can be done wrong which will pose a limit then, and not all limits can be mitigated. However, doing a second swindle on the very same turn usually did solve all problems, although that problem persisted only for one time, and then I changed my strat to simply buy all planets, which is more convenient, and advantageous. Point being, the number of swindles is very limited, and thus, a certain amount of time needs to be allowed for the AI to gather another round of planets. Then you do it again, but compared there was a two-fold loss actually, as these planets could have been acquired on the very next turn after colonization, and by that, would have contributed more early into score. And that's the issue: Time is lost.

However, this approach does of course not allow to have a huge early MilSore, or to upgrade to end-tier techs almost exclusively, so nowadays I do things entirely differently, and in fact, there was no BigGame after which I didn't alter my strategies for quite some decrees. 

Welcome in the club. Now you know why I love ZYW's.

That's one downside but in DA neglectable. You trade a mid-game maxed Mil and an early loss in Econ against even more early advantages in all other fields. Of course not research, but who would want to waste bc's in research if not really necessary?

Anyway, good luck with your setup

 

Yeah, you can prevent this with the right AI ethics; and trade for your ships again.

This is something I've been curious about.  KP has been clear the diplo strat was not his own and on at least one occasion, gave you credit.  Thanks for setting the record straight.  I think everyone involved could agree on a term.  Purge should be the namesake and has a certain ring, but swindle better defines the process.

Sure I use tiny as well but even fewer engines on them. But they're perfect for colonizing the rest of the system once you've already got a toe hold.

As far as miniaturization I make expert min a priority because it seems to be highly valued for trade by the AI and of course I want to encourage everyone to build a shrinker.

However engine research usually lags. I go to Impulse II early but never seem to have a chance to get back to it, This is where I need more than just a precusor mine and my tech cap to get through it faster.

Actually I try to stay away from draining the majors cash. I've found that it can make a big difference in how many planets they can colonize for you. It can make the difference between them colonizing 150 planets by 8/1 versus colonizing 350. The minors are free game and in the last game I still hadn't met 3 minors even after owning 300 of the 350 colonized planets in the galaxy. But you're right I need to and can do a better job of getting and spending money.

Agreed. But I always max out the AI's and give them <AIAbilities>100, <CPUUsage>100 and <FinancialResources>200. The only thing I leave normal is <Aggression>50. I do this on the basis that the stronger the AI is the faster they can colonize my eventual planets for me, however I've never gotten anything near 30K from a single trading round. The max is usually 5-6K per round but I do usually get 2 planets from each AI in the first round, more later, as well as most of their ships other than colony ships. Perhaps I'll try detuning them somewhat but then if it makes the difference between getting 400 planets and 200 planets then that's a problem. Of course in the DL case you have to do all your own colonization which sure seems to be a lot of work and I assume is all rush bought from all this cash but still I think there has to be some benefit of gaining the pop growth from 10 super breeder races versus that from just one.

Yes you certainly can do this however again you will get far fewer planets out of the AI in return. Where the best balance point is uncertain but in DL I would wait until the AI's had colonized the entire galaxy and then swindled the whole galaxy without ever colonizing a single planet other than my starting system. While that is probably not the most efficient place to be it is the least work and least tedium on my part and sooner or later you're ability to deal with the tedium of the game becomes a faactor in you're willingness to play.

I've heard rumors of this but I never seemed to be able to do it. Supposedly after getting all their planets and peace you should get another opportunity to trade for the ships you just gave them but I've never seen that but I guess that's because I've been evil and I've set the AI to good. However the only reason I did so was to reduce pirates in the first place. I'll check it out and if I can get your system to work I'll tell you how I do it. It's actually not as good a method as gettting back your own trade fodder.

Purge did discover the process in DL and in that case you did not even need to add ships. You could do 3 rounds in a single turn and usually close out most AI. If an AI lasted more than 3 rounds you usually had to wait another 2 or 3 months before you could attempt it again with the same AI. Anyway we called this process "planets for peace".

Then DethAdder discovered that it wouldn't quite work out in DA (or even in small galaxy DL games) but that you could add low value fodder ships and take all their planets at once. I actually used this technique in the small galaxy games in the MV league where I was still playing DL. In this case we modified it to "planets for ships". However I do agree that the single word "swindle" is probably a better term and certainly a shorter way to talk about the process.

Not quite. I suspect that you gave up some pop growth with respect to my method. I did end year 0 with a pop of 2.1T. I suspect that your game as impressive as it was still probably did not match this figure (at least by end of year 0). Also while I may lose out in tech spending in the first 6 months of the game I can actually increase mine over the first 2 years or more. And I don't think that it's intrinsic of my method to give up early military score either. My goal is to optimize *all* components of score. I know I probably do better in early pop and mid to late game income than you do and although my tech and military is currently lagging there are things I can do to definitely increase them. In other words I'm not giving up *any* aspect of score whereas you give up tech after the first 6 months of the game and accept reduced income throughout the game while also accepting a slower initial pop growth curve.

But it's really these kinds of decisions that are ultimately the deciders of score and since you currently have the high water mark it needs to be proven if there is a better method or not. Like I said I don't know if the breeder and all econ approach will match your mark or not but I still will give it a try for awhile longer. After all I've just submitted one minimal test game so far, there's a lot further I can go before I feel I need to try something totally different.

Plus if everyone played the same way how would we ever learn anything new?

Affirmative.

With the DL ARC you can skip this entirely. I never managed to get them to build one, although in the "Altaria's Last Stand" tournament they did - at some time I got this message "DL's build a HS". Although it might have been Tournament-specific, or occurs very rarely. There were a few other oddities in said game (one DL Troop Transport had 1000b soldiers - 50X the pop of their HW) so I don't count the occurance of this game to be standards of any kind.

In all matter having HS or not doesn't hurt the Tiny Hull MSBA approach at all, but with Huge Hulls it surely does. You might want to take a mixed DL/Stock ARC into consideration - although it can never be known if all Stocks will turn to build HS at all, or when. Still, they might take a bit colonization-micro from your shoulders.

I'd go for the same setup if I'd take your approach, although still the danger is there that they will rush-buy Galactic Wonders that serve no usefull purpose at all....

It's vice versa. On 22nd12thy0 all my planets held a pop of 11.973T. The AI's can never play such efficient as the human player. They simply lack the right strats to do so, e.g. they will not ferry pop around in order to achieve the best possible growth rate; they'll keep ColonyShips in space (which will reduce their Econ-income) or launch ColShips from a low-pop planet. Further, they don't design their planetary build-up queue to support a 100% moral everywhere.... etc pp. Of course that's alot of micro, but there's no real alternative.

From all I know personally of the All-Econ approach is that it is staggering early on to get a 1on1-rate on all planets. At the time you'll have sustained that you've missed the opportunities to grind easy points in y0 - and you'll never be able to get them back in any way, quite easily because no matter what you do, or, said better, whatever you'll leave out early on won't give you the ability to quadruple any of the 4 increments of score later on, and that would be required to even your loss. 

Except in research, which, point-wise, is nothing but a big black hole in which to toss bc's that are irreversibly lost exept on that very turn where they are burned.

Because of the per ship depreciation I would expect it matters no matter what you ship size choice as long as your strat includes an upgrade sooner or later. Higher point count per ship is always a good thing and simply minimizes the number of ships that you need to build to reach a particular military ranking. But yeah getting the AI to build a shrinker in many cases takes too long for me to be willing to wait for them.

The last game I traded the AI's expert min on Mar 1st and had no Shrinkers by Aug 1st and I wasn't going to wait for them to build them. Mag once claimed that you could start a shrinker, gift the planet to a minor and then when the minor finished the shrinker you were free to start another but I never got that to work in any rev of the game that I tried. In DL given that my swindle didn't occur until mid year 1 I usually did get 3-4 shrinkers which made the upgrade more effective.

Actually I'm running a quick test with just one DL in it just to see, but yeah I think a mix of some proportion might be best but again who knows. Of course even if I do incorporate a DL does not mean I would be willing to go negative so early, I don't think one necessarily imples the other.

Yeah, they always do that or put super projects that you want on tiles you wish they didn't like wasting an approval tile with the Econ Cap.

Almost 12T by end of year 0? Holy Crap! That's the death knell for all breeder then.

That's really too bad. I wish it wasn't so unbalanced but it is what it is and you can't put the genie back in the bottle. If that really is the case there simply is no other way to play.

I assume you mean the ability for each planet to produce a ship per turn for your array and that is not necessarily the case. It's true if you're fully buying all ships but not if you keep the cost down lease-buying a percentage of them. Plus if the choice is 1 tiny hull per planet versus 1 huge hull per planet I would think the 1 huge hull per planet would have the advantage.

Anyway there's a lot to think about here in particular the 12T metric. 

Generally yes. But the bonus is not that great. Depending on the current level of Min a HS will give only 1 extra ZPA, 2 at best. Multiplied with racial stats that's an average 60 points of ship-bonus, which isn't really much compared to the bonus a tiny will get from the MSBA. The 'Tiny Hull'-approach always focuses on the MSBA-support as premier contribution to MR - last game only had one. At some point of the game it (after having built 50k ships) it even became neglegtable to NOT instantly upgrade anymore, as their +400 points per ships bonus wasn't even good enough to compensate for the general loss of MR due to increased depreciation. And here we've reached the heart of the matter, which the following of your quotes does belong also.

The point is that the greater one of the four increments of score get - the more it will scale down (ie the lesser it will be worth if seen from a constant-/linear approach). That is, having Tiny Hulls sitting under a MSBA with or without Shrinker support won't matter much on score; although what *could* matter is having a few additional DL's into the game (which could be used to support initial research much greater). This all leads to "trade-offs" between advantageous/disadvantageous between the 4 increments of score, and as strategies change they must be evaluated every time new, although this is the hard part. For example, at a certain early stage of the game I'll check what each new round of research still brings me to score - and reload, do a mass-shipupgrade and compare the two different gains to one another. Although in the last game this pointed well into the research-direction (w/o MSBA Tiny's are pointless) I went for the upgrade as I don't know what the initial research-output will still bee worth at the end of the game, whereas my ships stayed to contribute throughout the rest of the game. But there are simply too many variables here in order to make a definite assessment of what's best, and, like you said, the game's score itself will finally testify on behalf of that.  

Actually sad he's gone. I'd like to get to know how this could work, although usually my patience for those lame Minors is small. Could it be that they lack the ability to "rushbuy" structures/ships?

I concur, I see no way in DA. Even if you abandon your own Shrinker planet (which will be destroyed then) you can't re-built it, although it's not in the game at all anymore.

BTW the 'Freighter SB'-bug doesn't work (in DA) either, the SB isn't moving, so there's no chance to circumvent the 4-per-sector limitation.

In a way, yes. Let's assume the optimal szenario: You use the DL's very effectively and are able to lease-buy 1 planetary structure and one Hull on all your planets on any turn, from 1st March on until throughout the whole game.... which is pretty much was I did, with a small 2 turns delay of Hull-production on a freshly colonized planet during NB (which is a one-time per planet situation).

So you would have then to upgrade your Hulls to 1/1 max engines to hurry them under the MSBA, but they wouldn't match my MR as my ships get the same MSBA support but are fully upgraded already. And this szenario will be prolonged until you finally bunkrupt yourself with the mass-ship upgrade - and the question is if you think that your better *late* MR will outweigh my better *early* MR? Furthermore, you'll additionally have the problem to bring up money to support research, planetary improvement-leasecosts, all sorts of maintenances, ColonyShips, and keeping taxes low to support pop-growth.

Like I said a lot to think about. I'm going to have to cogitate for a bit on all of this. But aside from the longer term development aspect the DL's basically stay out of your way and are a ready source of cash and so the early game simply becomes who can develop their blank slate of a galaxy the quickest with an infusion of free money starting on March 1st.

Compared to earlier days this is a highly restrictive way to play. Back in the day one could pursue a high pop strat, a high income strat, a high military strat or even a high tech strat and folks could achieve comparable results. Of course those days the best games were like 300K and all strats depended upon an ability to at least equal the colonization rate if not better the colonization rate of a suicidal AI in a straight up manner. All this MSBA and diplomacy and swindle stuff has really sucked what used to be a lot of fun out of the game. It's sad really.

Posted a ZYW against 3 suicidal opponents that netted 30100...Be afraid Maiden...be afraid...

I guess just a few questions now that I am starting to look at score/increasing opponents-

1.Is it better to attack the old fashioned way via planetary invasion techs, thus saving population, or is it better to go right for the spore ships? The loss in time to research normal techs against too many opponents may lead to resistance that could drag the game into year 1, but the loss of population could seriously hinder the score.

2.Is my negative economy impacting my score heavily? This most recent game (the 30100 point game) I held my credit treasury at around 300bc by the end of the game. In my normal games I am at least -800bc or beyond...Is this draining the score or can I run at negative credit forever, increasing score in other areas?

3.Would there be any point in attempting a crash-and-burn type strategy with labs... I am thinking along the lines of pumping out all necessary labs to reach invasion/spore, then decomissioning every lab on every planet in order to recover the economy for a long term approach at score building.

Sorry if some of these are mind-numbingly obvious...I'm more of a gut player than number cruncher.

-Scanian8

So far very good. You'll only need 10k points to reach 3rd place in here  I am impressed. You'll have to know, TA is by far more difficult for ZYW's as DA. Also you are using a race that isn't that well on research either, so kudos. Keep it up.

To your questions. Spore is better than PI (Planetary Invasion) - because whenever you start a Troop Transport off into space these troops actually are NOT counted into your overall population, thus, it will both hurt your Society & Econ-score. You do know about the 4 increments of score, do you? Apart from them, nothing is taken into consideration for the overall score - no debt, no bad morals, no ethical issues or won battles.

But they do weigh heavier the faster you are able to complete the game, unless you are able to further maximize some of them. If you can't do it anymore - time to end. Or more precise: On the *second* turn after you've crossed -500bcs you'll have to finish the game, because at this very point your score, in all likelyhood, is the greatest.   

I've done some classical ZYW's in ToA, in fact, tried most races there. Personally I prefer the Yor there, which was the only race with which I could break 100k in a Gigantic. However, Thalans were very close, too. The point is that these two races can have a very strong research-output, given a 700% PreCursorLib is on your HW. (in a Tiny galaxy, there aren't, but 300% will suffice there).

No recovery is needed. ZYW's are like Hit'n'Run.

Keep production at 100% and sliders at 0/0/100.

Taxes as high as possible but not so high that morals are below 20% (you'll loose pop then).

Lease-buy everything using longest term lease.

Try to end on 8th April.

BTW if you're getting used to Spore but want to use another race simply make this change to the appropriate *.xml in your MyGames/Twilight-folder:

<SuperAbility>10</SuperAbility>

 BTW I've actually never played a classical Tiny ZYW in TA, hmmm, let's see....

This was in a way my plan on the first game...I kept morale at 100% for as long as I could and then raised taxes as high as I could. After a few more of these games I have found that I am actually able to keep things rolling and to hold my morale at 100%. This is why I am starting to wonder about the spore vs. PI...I actually might be able to raise pop for a while. Then again, after reading all these posts I am starting to realize I have a very different strategy compared to most.

PS- Up to 5 suicidal opponents now, but this is only starting to hurt my score (More entertaining though...).