'Super-Diplomat' ZYW strategy

In a Super-Diplomat-ZYW one tries to win a -most likely- All-Rare Gigantic map via the swindleing-/ forced surrender- trick, and because this tactic offers an immense income via techtrade, it's not necessarily ended at the first possible occasion.

ARC: [see also]

Player ARC: You play as Altarians because of their inherent bonuses to research, economics & moral. Change their code from this file (Altarian Resistance.customracexml) to:

<SuperAbility>0</SuperAbility>

<Homeworld>Saturn</Homeworld>

<Homestar>Sol</Homestar>

<Alignment>55</Alignment>

Enemy ARC:

<Homeworld>Thala</Homeworld>

<Homestar>Thalis</Homestar>

<AIPersonality>8</AIPersonality>

<SuperAbility>4</SuperAbility>

<Alignment>55</Alignment>  (then you can sell them 'Neutrality Learning Centers')  

so they have only one planet at their disposal and cannot spend so much money by buying ships/buildings as ordinairy AI.

 Setup:

• Uncheck „Blind Exploration“

• Check „Super Abilities“

• All-Rare Galaxy/Planets

• Abundant Anomalies & Asteroids

• Gigantic Galaxy, Clustered

• Very Fast tech speed (you need to repeat this setting EVERY time for MV games)

• 0 Minors (their planets use up bonustiles)

• Give all opponents the Federalists-political party, and bonuses to economics/morale/popgrowth. You should pick races that have no ingrained bonus to diplomacy. You actually can set up any number of custom races for this as well. Afterwards save & repeat. Thalan, Korath, Drengin, Arcean, Torian will do fine. Don't forget to save each time. Or use the "SD-ZYW_ARCpack" from the external link above, which contains all optimal changes already. 

• Next comes the player setup: Technologists Party; Distr. Points: 4*research, 1*creativity + [4*economics, 1*morale] or [5*diplomacy]

• Your homeworld should be Saturn at the Sol-system. This gives you a +10% research at your main-research world because of its ring-system. Also, you absolutely need 3 planets - this is of utmost importance because it lets you research 4 techs every turn instead of just 3!

• Set difficulty to „Suicidal“ & make all enemies „friendly“ to you.

• The AI inhabitating the first spot [#1] in this list can only be contacted every 4 turns, or 8 when you declare war. Remember this when techtrading.

• Also: don't leave any empty void places between the list of your opponent AIs - because this will result in a bug which prevents the game from recognizing them for the diplomacy list. So if you play against 5 AIs, these should sit on the spots #1, #2, #3, #4 & #5. You should see all your opponents listed in the popup at gamestart, (also in the diplomacy-list) - check this carefully: If only one AI is missing you cannot finish the game!

• All other AI sitting on other spots can be contacted every turn using quicksave-->reload. It even works during a single turn, so you can declare war & sue for peace within a single turn.

• The more AI you play against the more advanced & longer will your game become, it'll net more score (if you can translate the extra cash into researchscore) but you'll find increasing difficulties to Control-N for a homesystem that should have 2 Precursor Bonustiles. Playing against 4 to 5 for starters should be ok.

3. Gameplay: [!currently under improvisation!]

1^st January: Control-N until you have 2 Precursor-research bonustiles at Saturn. (if your homesystem doesn't hold 3 colonizeable planets abort it)

Make a manual save using a unique name.

Colonize secondairy planet - leasebuy a starport there.

Upgrade SpaceMiner to a Colony Ship for 44bcs + leases.

Send Flagship to auto-survey.

Set taxes so that Mars can still be at/over 20% approval at all times (going broke triggers a small, civ-wide moral penalty!). At 19% planetary moral 10% of your population will flee the system each turn.

Set sliders to 100% spending, 100% research.

Leasebuy 1 lab on the first PreCursor-tile.

Leasebuy 2 (empty) Tiny Hulls.

Research „Xeno Research“

8^th January: Colonize 3^rd planet - build a starport there.

Leasebuy 3 (empty) Tiny Hulls. 

Leasebuy 2 labs.

Research „Advanced Computing“, „Basic & Enhanced Miniaturization“.

(Note: if you can't get 'Enhanced Miniaturization' it's a strong indicator that your setup is too weak or started with "normal"-techspeed, and you should best revise it...)

15^th January: Rushbuild the TechCap on your HW.

Leasebuy labs on your 2 other planets.

Design a 'Tiny Worker' (a Tiny Hull + construction module) & upgrade all your Tiny Hulls to it.

Leasebuy 3 Tiny Workers.

Research „Research Centers & Academy“

22^th January: Construct 4 economy SBs giving your planets +20% research.

Leasebuy the RCC (Research Coordinator Center) at Saturn.

Leasebuy one 2 Research Academies (you may have to use the "Colony List" to do this)

Leasebuy 3 Tiny Workers.

Research: „Xeno Communications“ up to „Interstellar Republic“

1^st February: Contact all AI (except slot#1 AI) & trade for their Research-treaty in exchange for "Enh. Miniaturization" or "Research Academies". Only trade a few techs to keep you economically afloat. The very first techs to get are "Diplomatic Relations" & "Trade" as both hold diplomatic bonuses. Distribute "Xeno Economics" to all of them.

Upgrade your SBs to give +32% bonus.

Leasebuy another Tiny Worker [whenever the AI researches another factory-tech consider buying another round)

Leasebuy 2 empty Cargo Hulls.

Leasebuy 3 Academies.

Reduce taxes by -1% to not loose population.

Research „XenoEthics“ & „Good & Evil“ – pick Neutral alignment (after that you may be able to adjust your tax-slider upwards because of the global approval bonus from going neutral...)

8^th February:  Contact all AI & sell get all their techs. Then contact slot#1 AI, sell him ANY techs (NOT: diplomatic ones, although you could make an exception for "XenoEthics" since it's only a +5% bonus), finally declare war.  

If you need money contact another AI & sell either the "Miniaturization" or "Lab" branch away. (NEVER sell them techs holding diplomatic bonuses as this will diminish your ability to get bcs from them or end the game.) Also, if you get hold of techs which actually increase an AIs economical situation (like: "Xeno Economics") then trade this tech to all AI ASAP. You should have over 10k bcs now.

Reduce taxes to 69% to safely win election.

Build 2 new Academies.

Upgrade the last SB.

Leasebuy 3 Cargo Hulls.

Research „Neutrality Learning Centers" [if your Surveyship did encounter an 'overflow-triggering'-anomaly previously, reload instantly, let it sit beside it, and now use it to get NLCs during this turn. If you manage this don't build Academies but upgrade the labs sitting on your best tiles]

15^th February: Increase taxes to max (79%). Contact all AIs to sell techs.

Only upgrade labs to NLCs when sitting on bonus-tiles or @ Saturn.

Leasebuy 3 Cargo Hulls.

Research "Titanium Armor" to "Duranthium"

22^th February: Keep upgrading labs into NLC when on bonus-tiles. Only build new NLCs on Saturn.

Contact all AI to sell techs. Most will be broke now.

Leasebuy 3 Cargo Hulls (=11 Cargo Hulls, 1 stays outside the SCC & serves as upgrade-ship; keep the other always 10 under the SCC at all times).

Research "Duranthium II“ to "Tri-Strontium II"

1^st March: Check under your financial slider how much money you'll have to raise each turn & carefully consider if you want to build more labs. Your last turn of (payed) research needs to happen on March 22.

Send all hulls towards Saturn or another planet you take as SCC-planet.

Research "Tri-Strontium III" to "Kanvium III"

8^th March: Research "Duralthene Armor" to "Ultimate Adamantium" [it's extremely helpful to get a Creativity-proc or Anomaly-proc while researching down the Armor-branch, because this'll mean you'll get ZPA 1 turn sooner...]

15^th March: Research "Zero Point Armor"

22^th March: Research "Advanced Diplomacy" to "Total Majesty"

1^st April:  Build the Spin-Control Center by upgrading the RCC @ Saturn where you simply enable focus to Social Production.

Design a Cargo-hulled ship with 1 basic weapon & all the rest Zero Point Armor on it, and upgrade all Cargo Hulls to this design. In Dark Avatar you can always upgrade ships while being in debt no matter how broke you are (in TotA that's not the case!)

Note: you rely on one AI to research "Space Weapons" for you. If noone did this research it by yourself, it'll take an additional turn then but you can build a better 'Cargo Warrior'-ship

Final tech-combo: Laser --> Miniaturization

Build the Hyperion Shrinker using the ColonyList

Build Harmony Crystals

Build PolitCap / Secret Police on lowmoral planets

8^th April:  Put all warships under the SCC.

Declare war on all remaining factions. (check if they have any 'Fighter', 'Heavy Fighter' or 'Defender'-ships and take them from them beforeahead)

Quicksave/reload.

Sue for peace by taking all planets from all factions, which is a Military Victory.

4. Auto-Hot-Key:

AHK is extremely helpful to minimize time with clicking. For ZYWs you need a few basic macros; the first being à la

F1::

Send, {CTRLDOWN}n{CTRLUP}

Sleep, 1200

MouseClick, left, 1000, 724

Sleep, 200

MouseClick, left, 1802, 1005

return

which helps finding a suitable starting planet faster.

The others are for:

-leasebuying an improvement on a planet & selecting next planet

-selling a tech in the diplomacy screen

-quicksaveing/reloading & recontacting the 2^nd slot AI.

-quickly leasebuying a ship from a planet

You can use the AutoScriptWriter to record all macros & then attach them to a special key.

5. Techtrading & hints 

To make the most out of techtrading you need to obey some mechanics. Always trade from the latest, most expensive tech steadily down towards the oldest, least expensive tech. That is, if you want to trade "Duranthium 1-3" you do it like this:

1. Duranthium 3

2. Duranthium 2

3. Duranthium

some techs are a requisite of multiple branches, that is, if you pass them around freely it might be that you devaluate a number of future techs. For example, if you offer the AI any defense-techs, and he doesn't have "Space Militarization" then your offer will be potentially more worth to him. So be wary of excessive techtrade esp. when you already have enough bcs.

On the other hand, once the AIs have enough ways (mostly through techs) to spend their money they will do so - and then you'll have to act swiftly and basically sell all techs that you may still have in order to get all their money & bancrupt them.

Some techs run a high potential to do so even at the start of the game - for example "Advanced Computing" usually triggers the AI to rushbuild the TechCapital, so I don't sell it, or, only very late.

You don't want to give the AI any diplomatic bonuses otherwise it may happen he's not going to accept a peace agreement while still trading away his homeplanet.

'Creativity' in DA gives you (occassionally) an extra percentage of your conventionally raised research on top as a bonus. Because of this, research-patterns may vary slightly. For this guide, I've testplayed without Creativity, so you should always be able to follow the same researchpath.

With 3 planets under your control the game allows to research only 4 techs in a single turn. So if you happen to have enough/more research as you can spend on techs, then the excess output will be stored in an invisble pool and will carryover into your next turn. For the first time this will happen on Turn4, when you get to "Interstellar Republic". 

It may also happen when you research the end of a branch like "Total Majesty" or "Good & Evil" etc pp. Not all branches are able to overcarry but the route specified in this guide is specifically designed to make the most out of it (for example,  some techs we get only by specifically using this carryover).

Funny, there exist some anomalies which actually trigger this (ie. if some research is available in the pool it gets instantly applied but ONLY to a single tech). IIRC this is the "+25% bonus to research", "lucky coin" & "waste of time"-anomalies. So if you see these types of anomalies close your flagship, and you know you've got currently a good amount of carryover, you could select another available tech & then manually fly your surveyship into it - in order to get a technology which normally would lie outside the traditional research-path! 

Once your economy crosses -500bcs, and all production comes to halt, we can still get a significant amount of techs via this  carryover, esp. because the buildup when researching down the defensive armor-branch is massive (because the resp. techs are quite cheap)

There exist alot of alternative research-paths/patterns which may yield equal/better results, esp. using "Neutrality Learning Centers" (TBA).

Don't give the slot#1 AI any weapon-techs, and try to pick one that doesn't prioritize research into weapons; because this potentially raises the danger he militarizes up in the meanwhile & if he is able to get sufficent Military Might Rating he won't give you his homeworld over peace anymore.

With maximum enemies present you can even go so far as to upgrade ZPA CargoWarriors under the SCC and still stay economically afloat when you use the longest-term lease. If you can pull this off you'll net also Military Score which contributes significantly to your total score - these games don't end on 8th April but can be played +10 turns longer. Quicksaveing + resigning in order to check on current score will help you picking an optimal date to end a game.

You'll need to develop a certain feeling when it's time to stop building labs on your 3rd planet & instead use all the money to fund an ongoing research. This is actually heavily dependant if the AIs waste money on wonders & your ability to successfully techbroker. However, at all times should you outpuild your planet holding the TechCapital & RCC to maximum labs & also overbuild the starport.

It is important to first put all ships under the SCC, then quicksave & reload. Otherwise your Military Might won't be at its full strength.

With 2 PrecursorBonustiles your game should easily score 120k if you manage to keep researching & finish somewhere in April.

Never offer them any of your treaties - because the loss of trust from broken treaties means the AI doesn't accept your peace offer anymore.

On turn1 - before you do anything - make a separate save using a unique name so you can go back & replay the entire map in case you somehow bungled it. Also, you've got a one-time-per-game opportunity to re-upload a games score to the MV (the old score will get overwritten) therefore you might need this file.

Sometimes the setup of a game is bugged (its either that the techspeed or diff. level defaults to 'normal', both greatly diminish your research-ability...). You can deduce this if you aren't able to get 'Enhanced Minia' on the second turn although you've got 2 PreCursor-tiles on your HW. You need to re-log to your MV profile & start anew.

If you somehow lost an election simply reload the autosave. (specify in Options: 'Turns before autosave:0' & enable it). The election will then be held this turn. Warning: Don't use this method the turn after you've researched "Xeno Ethics" - because the bonuses from your ethical choice amongst all ethical technologies will be lost forever (bug)!

Prolonged Version:

After an AI accept a peace-for-homeworld-agreement (which effectively defeats him) you can still get his treaties which will give you some RP/money out of nowhere... also take all his cash/ techs etc. However, this is only important if you decide to prolong the game in order to get some additional Military Score:

Buy a maximum of 10 empty cargo hull (you either start right on Turn1 or you erect a second starport and begin mid-February) and upgrade them to your best military design once you're running out of money at around mid-April. When you put these under the SCC you'll see your score declining for about 2 turns - but afterwards it will rise again because the late military score will contribute heavily to your total score. You should see a rise in score from 135k to 155k over the course of 15 to 20 additional turns.

You can check on this by simply retireing - multiplying this by 14 will get you the real score for a military victory. Once this score doesn't rise or fall on 3 following turns you know that the absolute height of the curve has been reached, and you simply declare war on the last remaining AI, quicksave/reload, and sue for peace by taking his planet.

Of course you can take the worlds of all the other AI far sooner - actually at the turn when you build the SCC & put all warships under it. A few more homeworlds will also contribute towards additional score.

If you want the most out of it you can go to all world, toggle social focus, and build economic improvements with it. Your NLCs at Saturn could also be overbuild by a number of Galactic Wonders eg. Harmony Cristals etc...

Note: for the prolonged version it might be an option to choose '30% extra defense' during the games setup instead of diplomacy or economics/moral. (I'm currently trying to find out the best setup & research-pattern so stay tuned^^)

6. The Metaverse Scoreing System (in short)

Only 4 main-items contribute to your ingames raw score; these are your:

- research output

- total population

- economic income

- available military

in short, the stuff you see under 'Civilization Manager' --> 'Timeline': Economy/ Military/ Population/ Research

Every turn, the game collects the raw data from these statistics, adds them and divides the product through the number of turns that have been passed, though -2 (ie. everything you do during the final last 2 turns doesn't have any effect on your score whatsoever) That is, the longer you prolong a game the more increases your scores divider which actually depreciates your score, that is, in longer games you'll have to constantly find ways to increase your raw score in order to thwart off this depreciation.

Also, initial raw score that is divided through a large number shrinks to negligible size. This is why a ZYW can amount so much score in a very short time-frame, because we only have a divisor of 13 (or slightly more) present. Note: Don't end a game sooner than 8th April - it will create a cheatflag & its score won't be counted.

Furthermore, this value is then multiplied by several factors (representing/steming from)

- Victory Condition (Military is best)

- Difficulty Level (Suicidal is best)

- Mapsize (Gigantic for DA is best); (Immense for TotA)

in order to formulate your complete games' score (which then can be uploaded to the MV). You can re-play any game & submit its score a second time; your old score will then get overwritten.

Any MV account can hold up to 3 player-profiles. The very first game you upload to each of these profiles will count for 100% in score. But everytime you upload another game, only a part of that new games score will be counted towards your players total score; this fraction decreases the more games you contribute - thus, it will become increasingly difficult to actually contribute significantly (to your players total score) once your player has already many games in his profile.

As time goes by, every month, the MV depreciates any new scores, it actually shrinks it until finally coming to rest after approx. a year. This is done -automatically- in order to give new players a better chance to compete against old scores. That is, if you want to reach a specific high amount of score for just a month (perhaps in order to get a medal  ) it's actually better to play alot of games and upload them all together at one day. The MV process of score-depreciation is also restarted if you re-upload a game: this gives you actually an opportunity to have all your games undepreciated for approx. a month if you manage to keep all the endgamesave-files.

Use this link http://www.xup.in/dl,44784474/Score.xls/

to get a scoreing sheet containing the exact ingame formulae (courtesy of Sole Soul & the Kzinti Empire) which also contains some additional infos on the varying setup-multiplier.

Control-N Bug: If you load in a game (which has been started & saved as a valid Metaverse game) - and use Control-N to generate another map - then this new map will default to some general settings INCLUDING all your foreign relations' set to "unknown". But this is very negative for score, so don't do this!

Further notes:

Bonus-tiles: A gigantic map in Dark Avatar will maximally have 3 +700% research-bonustiles (in TotA, it's less...) and a bunch of other +300% & +100% research-bonustiles. All other bonustiles are entirely irrelevant for this strategy. 

Only ships that carry, at least, a single weapon will count towards military score, though starbases will never count (but all bonuses steming from outmining resources naturally count!). The formulae calculating the Military Might actually divides through the amount of such (armed) ships - because of this it is better to have less but strong ships instead of many weak vessels; so try to not arm most civilian craft. Also, hitpoints only count in with 10% of their strength, so basically what you're aiming for are the largest-hulled ships sporting full attack/defense (whatever is bigger in numbers).

The SCC ('Spin Control Center') multiplies the Military Might of your ships in orbit of the planet where the SCC is build upon by a large factor - this is actually your very best shot in order to net a very early military score.

If you want to completely maximize your Military score you'll have to construct a 16-/24- Military StarBase Array (MSBA) and put all your ships at its sweet spot; also, make a bankrupting mass-shipupgrade to max-weapons/defense (or play a Negative-Balance Strategy), but this usually involves a completely different type of setup/game - all-abundant Stars/Planets setting.

Population score is normally pretty insignificant (even if you have have +1200 planets fully developed) because of the lack of ingame multipliers to population.

Technological score can lead to extremely high numbers in the first year of a game, but for larger games, it&#text-decoration: underline;Military3margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-bottom: 0cm;9;s not a good method because you constantly have to pay for it. Note that even if you finish off the techtree your raised research will still count towards score.

Economic score can also achieve fairly high amount numbers if you play all-abundant games & all your planets' population is maxed around +15b people. The amount of economic ingame multipliers from various techs, maxed-out resources, the bugged evil-MCC (in DA) & planets stuffed full with Stock Markets are responsible for that; while other sources such as Trade/Tourism/Treaties are rather insignificant (IIRC treaties may not even count at all...). Under no circumstance does money count which comes to you by means of diplomacy (techtrading, brokering, extorting) or cash-anomalies.

Current strength of tactic in terms of score: ~135.000 points per game with 2 Precursor-tiles at Saturn vs. 5 AI.

Prolonged version: ~155.000 points

Last updated: 01.03.2016