Certainly understandable and valid points, but then as you say ...

And even if they did then they would in most cases be resurrecting long dead threads consisting of stale information discussed by folks long gone from these forums. Not really all that much point in doing that.

As I said the few folks left that are actually actively interested in the game should take every opportunity to exchange as much information as possible whether they're metavers players, non-metaverse players, modders or whatever other possible criteria of player there may be.

The 10th entry on the most recent posts list is over an hour and 20 minutes old as I write this. In days past there'd be 4 pages of 50 most recent posts and the 200th post on the list might be a couple of hours old. And those were the days when the GalCiv2 site essentially shared no forums with other unrelated sites. If it wasn't for the Off-topic, Impulse and Personal Computing forums shared over close to a dozen sites there'd be even less traffic.

 

One thing is for sure and that is that Sole Soul knows more about GalCiv2 scoring than Brad and Cari put together. Of this there is no doubt.

This does make me realize there must be a lot I don't know yet. I think I'll wait for my current game to finish before writing about it after all. That will be a while, turns are very slow.

To clarify some comments:

Actually not, as he's playing TA where there exists only one 700% research bonus tile in the galaxy as opposed to the 3 in a DA Gigantic. Even if we take reduced planet count into account - it'll still be twice as long, or more.

It won't even help to attribute one custom point to +25% luck ^^

No, in TA there's no way to circumvent the 8 turn delay on diplomatic contact once a transaction was made.

still waiting for you to beat me here....  2011 could be a good year for your MV debut, don't you think?

For those uninformed, the technique that makes this possible is called Colony Storm and enables a player to fully inhabitate a whole galaxy within a few turns. However, it needs carelessly preparation, and in itself, is one of the worst micromanagement you can get in this game (e.g. you'll have to count the parsecs all your ships have to fly in advance etc pp). Not everybodys cup of tea I'm sure^^

 

I never considered it cheating.  I was just another way to reach max score.  That is what the MV is all about.

Those who do either can't or won't play to top it.

 

Both Kryo and KzintiPatriarch made it clear that *they* considered it cheating.

The fact that a troll doesn't consider it cheating is not surprising.

Go back under your bridge.

As far as Base Growth rate per race, I do have two new data points that seem to bolster Soul Sole's concern that it may be random.

In both of these cases I was playing the Altarians, the same race that gave me 7% last time, but this time I got two different results on two different starts.

In one case I got 128M of growth from a pop of 250M with the 40% pop growth ability selected. This implies a base growth rate of 128/(250*1.4*8)=0.0457.

In a different game again with the Altarians and 40% pop growth ability selected, I got 150M of growth from a pop of 250M implying a base growth of 150/(250*1.4*8)=0.0536.

AFAIK there is a random amount of pop added each turn to help speed growth when colonizing with low pop values but that's on the order of 5M or so, clearly not enough to make the difference between these two cases.

So far due to other considerations it appears that the 2nd of these two games is a keeper or at least worth playing out a bit further. I'll keep an eye on the base rate particularly once I get Aphrodisiac and the two pop growth techs to max out my pop growth ability and see if this changes or is stable.

2011 could be, yes.
Then again, I could always wait until December 21, 2012. 

That may be a fix specific to TA 2.x-I could have sworn I'd played a version of TA (after beta) where it was possible.
Good point about having less libraries, though.

Actually, Maiden, there are methods I'm using that you didn't, and methods that you use/used that I'm not taking advantage of-nor even able to take advantage of.
But I'm glad you haven't left us quite yet. 
Additionally, Maiden, aside from the time factor, the current limitation that prevents me from starting (and therefore finishing and thus posting) an MV game is not presently having access to both Internet and GC2 at the same location.

Although, there is one additional thing that I want to try-which by itself is going to take a significant amount of time-to see if I can improve my final score by one more step.

Mumble, I'm glad to have confirmation on that-it means I don't need to look for the cause elsewhere.

At this point, what interests me the most is what SirPleb's final score will be-and therefore how accurate my prediction will have been. 

I'm making steady progress at about 5 turns per day so it will be some time before I finish the game. The slow rate is because:
1. Immense galaxy and a very large number of ships in transit toward the core each turn.
2. Since GalCiv2 doesn't continue running while in the background it doesn't make sense to use my primary computer. When I notice that it has completed a turn I handle manual house-keeping for the turn and launch the next.

I don't have enough data points yet to fit a curve to them. The earliest date where all score related factors (pop, econ, research, military growth) became very stable was Apr 22 Y2. When I reach Jun 22 Y3 (a couple more days) I'll check again, maybe a curve will be clear. I'll post the datapoints here at that time if you wish.

BTW I passed Mar 22 Y3 yesterday and checked score then. It was 1,305,850.