ZERO YEAR WIN

Okay, I *think* this is what a ZYW is:  Start with a small universe as Kzinti Korath with Super Abilities enabled.  That allows you Spore Ships as a possible tech.  Now instead of doing any colonization, use your money to buy labs.  Research the techs required for Spore Ships.  Pump out Spore ships and use them to "conquer" (i.e. destroy) all the planets in the universe. 

No year will have elapsed - thus a Zero Year Win.  Supposedly this gives you a huge score.

Seems kinda bogus to me. 

DMF, this goes into the right direction but let me just add a few hints:

- setup is; Dark Avatar; Gigantic all-rare galaxy, abundant anomalies, tight cluster, suicidal, un-check Blind Exploration, 0 Minor Races, Very Fast tech-speed

- Korath (player) against Thalan (AI)

- pick all bonuses to Research (!!!) as these are most important, with rest you pick economics & moral

- change the alignment of Thalans to "friendly" in the last screen so you can contact him on 1st March (also toggle "Ownership" on minimap to enable this...)

- start game

- Control-N so long until the Thalan homeworld is close to your own homeworld (within reach) and your own homeworld.

- Set taxes superhigh (planetary moral red), 100% production, 100% research

- every turn quickbuy a lab using the longest lease on both planets

- upgrade your own Freighter into a Constructor and send him towards Thala - you want to build a starbase with it in order to generate extra range.

- research better labs, diplomacy, sporemod, and a basic weapon

- on 1st March, contact the AI, take all his money by selling him all your techs (NOT: WEAPONS), get also his starting freighter

- upgrade this Freighter to a SporeShip with a single weapon & ultimate range & some speed. (beforeahead, construct said starbase). If your range is sufficient that should take no more than 3-4 weeks. Otherwise it'll default to +300 turns and then you'll have to reload the save, and let your Constructor move more closely towards Thala before upgrading, or start another game.

- on 8th April, use this vessel to shoot down any planetary defenders at Thala & destroy the planet. You'll then win a military win which is the best victory type if you play for score.

- the amount of score you ultimately get is dependant on your ability to mount score. therefore, you should have, at least, 2 Precursor research bonustiles at your homeworld. also, your researchpath has to be carefully chosen, and there are many options or different routes present which will be beneficial towards your general aim to get more research, more money etc. As you play more & more successfully such games, you'll see from your score what works and what not.

- Also, you'll have to master the art of techtrade - always selling one tech a time, going from end of a branch towards its beginning is the right way.

perhaps, but I can tell you that my greatest fun in playing GC actually were ZYW games; just to find ways and methods to get score ever greater can be a great challenge in itself. In the beginning I wasn't even able to cross 100k, then later 200k became no problem etc

My best 'normal' game is a bit less than 250K.  How much can you score with a ZYW? 

From 120k onwards. I've even played a 1.500k one, but see, these kind of games are only technically ZYW, but really are million-pointer all-abundant games which are just ended premature. actually a complete different kind of setup or game.

A ZYW in its classic state is nevertheless very useful because you need just a bunch of minutes to complete it, that is, you could play an evening of repeated ZYWs and transmit several million points of score to the MV.

Though the MV scoreing system will depreciate score dependant of how many games you already did transmit, but for a beginning that can give a huge rush.

So, from 120k one can work itself upward to 200k to 250k to 300k... but what this really means is that one has to steadily increase the amount of opponents (more starting cash ingame), to even maximum settings. And you'll understand that constantly techtradeing against 17 opponents every turn just takes so much more time than just against 2 or 3, and that, these kinds of games are more or less only interesting if one wants to break a personal record in scoreing, but in order to get fastly a part of the galactical map under control speedy fast games are more worthwhile.

thanks I will try that.

what do u mean by "start with kzinti"?

cool, man, thanks for the info,, I will try that,,, does not seems easy...

so I need the spore ship?? all races has spore ships? or only the korath?

so let me see if I understand,, i basicly create gigantic map with one oponent,  high fast tech,,  i will try there..  buy research tech, and then send in a contructor to where the enemy is and then send the spore ship there..

does it has to be dark avatar?? or can it be twigh light of the arnor?

my highest score was 60 000 ,,,

but on my game stats is written average score 28 000,,

i dont think the points are added,,,  they make up the average score, is that correct?

why do you uncheck blind exploration?

So you can see the approximate location of the enemy homeworld on the mini-map with the Ownership view selected.

Yeah, your enemies homeworld should be located close to/at your border of influence you see on the minimap.

Yes you take Korath, or better: you make yourself a Custom Race which uses the Spore-SA and that has all its points allocated to research, economics, moral, range/speed etc

Actually Altarians are the very best race for this because of their inherent bonuses to these abilities, but in order to use them you need to do an ARC, but that should be explained in intricate detail in order to not trip a cheatflag.

The MV scoreing system does NOT fully add flatly the total score of all of your games, instead, it will simply add a fraction. Also, the more games you did add, the lesser will you be able to contribute to your total score. Further, your score does depreciate over the course of several month down, so "new" score is naturally higher than old score (this is done to promote ongoing play/contributing)

If you want to make the most out of it, don't upload low-score games or defeats. Also, your very first games (1-20 etc) should be high-score games.

You can always clear a players score and start again from scratch, but seeing that you did upload a lot of normalplayed games, which probably took you each time a week or so, I think this player is still a nice history of your past games.

So what I would do if I were you, just try to refine your ZYW strategy until the point where you can get +120k score each game. Until then use your player1-profile to execrise and contribute these games to the MV. Later, you create another player and deliver only good games to it; after a couple of games you can repeat this with a 3rd player and that actually should do the trick in entering the top10. You'll need to wait until the MV did update itself, though.

If you just wait a day, I'm currently writing a step-by-step guide to achieve 120k games in under 10 minutes, with some info on ARC & AHK as well.

Good luck 

That should be interesting, though I'm more interested in customizing races than in ZYW.

cool thanks man,,, i will go for it,,, make a custom race,,, can I custom race on meta verse?

i managed 28 000 points yesterday, in one game , my best score so far...

but i had trouble finding the enemy on the map, took me several turns to build constructors, them several turns to get trade center for economics,,, then many turns to get warfare ships... any way, took me some time to win, i dont think i can make a win in one year..

does meta versa has update?? 

i love this game,,, I like the music back ground atmosphere,, this game could have been even better..

i think metaverse should have given more points for number of planets colonized and diplomacy and batles,,, not just win..

keep in touch , i will be back on this thread soon or later,,,

I managed to get victories on normal level, and tough,,  but I yet neve won in suicidal,, but i think if i try with  sparce map i can make it..

Orbital, here's a step-by-step guide how to score 120k:

https://forums.galciv2.com/475765/page/1/

it's just a basic rundown, useing cutom races & some late military score this can even be improved much farther, but I need some time to figure out the best scenarios.

Yes, both the player or all AIs could be custom-based.

congrats 

hi , i managed to get a victory on cripling level.,,, i will try mazoquistic tomorow,,, or suicidal...

how many tech centers u build on your first planet?

 problem i have is that if i build many tech centers,,, i get money problems,,, i need space for banks and galactic stock exchanges...

thanks i will check the link u sent..

my rank is going up,, now I am 401,,,

and my empire is on 70.

i got 80 000 points total..average score..

cool, i am reading there,, I used to think  u guys had big points because u played on dense map gigantic , many oponents and the game would last weeks,,,, but as u said, the faster the game better,,

how did u learn about the game points settings??

another question: you configurate the enemies setup? and the planets location i nthe galaxy, ? in the menu of the game?

have you treied to play on dense packed of planets and stars galaxy?  man, sometimes i play it takes 7 hours to finish a game,, hahah  your way is quicker,,, i think the point system is a bit unfair... as it is divided by the turns..

how can i research zero point armor in a few weeks, if it takes dozen weeks to get there?

and if the enemy uses lazer wepons??? will my zero point armor be useless??

hi , regarding the game medals,, is there a way i could see all the medals available,, i got some medals, where do they come from? who created them?

No.  Defenses that aren't directly opposed to the weapon (e.g. shields to beams) apply at 1/3 strength.  So a ship with 12 armor factors would defend against lasers the same as a ship with 3 shield factors.  Not great but better than nothing.

to be more precise, off-type defenses get depreciated by their square-root, your example is correct though.

but especially at extreme values, things behave much differently.

if you have a ship with +100 off-type armor, it'll only absorb +10 fire, at best.

but things look better at the other end of the line, a single +1 defense on any branch will work always flawless against any type of weapons. so, esp. in the beginning phases, some intelligent ship designs can be made that are typically much stronger, eg. a +1 armour, +1 shield +1 pd is far better & simply more allround than a +3 shield (etc) ship.

your games do create them. here's an overview of a them

http://metaverse.galciv2.com/index.aspx?g=legend

unfortunately, there's no explanation on them, so noone really knows how you achieve some of them, but most are actually self-explanatory.

the "Stripes" simply have to do with the amount of games you submitted.

If you hover with your mouse over some of my medals you'll see their name.

The one called "Racial Victory" can actually be very easily achieved - you have to win & submit a game with all available Stock Races. [*]

Your "Tuti" guy even has one I don't get "Wounded in action" which I think has to do with uploading a few defeats^^ but it doesn't show on the forums (hmmm, I wonder if I could get it by getting some decent maps, then retire + upload, getting the medal, but then replaying those maps successfully in order to contribute decent score.... hmm, let's see if this works 

[*] to be more precise, your MV profile needs to show, at least, one winning game you played as Yor, one as Drengin, one as Human, one as Korx etc pp ALL Stock Races

what do you mean by control N??

i never managed to win on mazochistic level,,

i tried today 3 times,,

I only win on cripling level.. their inteligence is genius,,

but i cant win on "incredible inteligence.."

how many tech building do you build on the first planet and secondary??

I see, control N is to reset the map..

intresting that staff about acess level...

what am I , ? a senator?? citizen??

IF i have shield armor,, will it work agaisnt gun wepons ?? or misseles??

some times i invest in armor,,, then the enemy comes up with beam wepon,,,