Metaverse scoring out of whack

I agree with the comments about galaxy size affecting scoring a bit too much, and it's not just sour grapes becaues I've benefitted from galaxy size far more than I think I should have.

What ?
Olaf are you insinuating that my preferences (Gigantic galaxy- to be safe at the beginning, Rare planet- to have more planet than the AI thanks to my PlanetQuality bonus giving me access to 14 and even 13, and my Tech victory goal) make my score overated ?

How dare you ???? LOL

Seriously, I agree with you, I don't see a significant difference when I choose a higer severity level and I should.



~SDC~

based on my observations of the game, i think the problem isn't so much easy oppnents/large galaxy, but the fact that the game rewards long and sustained games and all but punishes you for short and quick games.

i've slowly but surely been ramping up the difficulty in my games and found that in the two games where i had the easiest time (my second and third to last games respectively), i got a pretty ho-hum score.

in both those games i got incredibly lucky early on and found a ton of nearby yellow stars and 6-8 resources for my starbases to mine. before long i was kicking everyone's butt severely in both tech and culture and wound up winning in 20 years or so, gametime.

now, my last game, the UP managed to pass a 4-module only law (against my wishes) and i effectivley lost my will to build star bases after that and concentrated on a tech victory. the result was a 40 year campaign that had me fighting like mad at the end to stave off being culturally overwhelmed by another race.

and my score was almost 40% higher than the previous games.

i suspect that if you go for a quick and decisive victory via military or culture, the score will remain somewhat low. whereas if play out a prolonged and difficult campaign, you get more of a reward.

lastly -- there are people out there racking up 8-9000 points on uper-echelon difficulty gigantic campaigns. comapred to that the 26-2800 i seem to eek out looks like tiddlywinks. i think the current system works well enough to allow all types of players (from casual to hardcore) to be able to particiapte equitably in the metaverse.

Gigantic scores more, because there are more worlds.

More worlds means more people.

I've had VERY early wins, thanks to waging early war, and aiming for a cultural win. Got a very low score. Noticed just letting the game roll on the next time and not push hard for a win, yeilded a significantly higher score. Early wins shouldn't realistically be scored lower. It's more difficult to push the game for victory then just slide into it via dominating culture, for instance.

If you play for score, it seems you want to go for Gigantic with Most Worlds, and a somewhat decent overall level.

I don't worry too much about it. I'm more curious about how I maintain/improve my overall standing compared to before, rather then as a comparison to others. There are ways to cheese out the play, after all, and the game scores you higher for cheesing then not.

> I don't worry too much about it. I'm more curious
> about how I maintain/improve my overall standing
> compared to before, rather then as a comparison to
> others. There are ways to cheese out the play, after
> all, and the game scores you higher for cheesing then
> not.

Amen to that. The top slots are going to be dominated by "game masturbators" - changing the focus of the scoring system to difficulty will never eliminate that factor. All it would accomplish is separating player A, capable of handling 5 Incredible AIs and willing to keep a handful of alien planets chained up in the corner while he raises the population into the multiple trillions, from player B, capable of handling 5 Incredible AIs but too impatient to micromanage the game into those sort of scenarios. It might give us a higher calibre of weenie, but it would still be focusing on the weenies.

Much better to focus on your own playing and relative score than looking for a ladder system that isn't capable of being dominated by power munchkins - I sure haven't seen one yet.

Possible fix: Having time affect score. The faster the better.

Normally, I'd agree that faster should be better. However, it is possible to do something called a "Transport rush" capable of killing major empires early on in the game.

Early in the game, the only thing the races start with is a colony ship and a flagship (aka Survey ship). With this configuration, there is bound to be either at least one undefended colony, or one colony total. The AI (especially on the easier difficulty levels) doesn't recognize the incoming transports as a threat until it is too late.

Of course, fixing the transport rush is another issue to be discussed.

I agree that speed should certainly be more of a factor in metaverse scores. There should really be no significant difference in taking the cultural win or alliance victory now, or waiting many turns later for a tech victory.

~SDC~

Well two things should be done that just make sense, regardless of whether or not people will tweak their play styles to max out points.

1) Reduce the impact of galaxy size on points. Gigantic win on simple shouldnt be twice the points of a medium win on tough.

2) Close the gap between the types of wins. There really ought not be any points difference between the victory types.

olaf

Gigantic scores more because they take a lot longer to finish.

But they don't score that much more. It's not even linear, it's less than linear. But if gigantic didn't provide better scores, everyone would just play on tiny to pump up their score.

I've got to disagree with the idea that the different victory conditions shouldn't score differently for their base amount. They involve significantly different amounts of work on the players part. Alliance victory is by far the easiest way to win unless you go out of your way to make it difficult. Culture, particularly on lower difficulties, is nearly as easy to pull off. A total military victory is tons of micromanagement, and a tech win is even more so.

Ditto for map sizes. When spending 18 hours at a game *doesn't* score more than spending 6 hours at a game "in the name of fairness", somebody needs to get a dictionary.

Somehow, some seem to think there's a "right" scoring system, when all there is *is* a scoring system. No matter what the system, the people who give a crap will "exploit" what gives them the most score. Currently, that's to tone down the difficulty of the opponents while winning by tech with a monster population on a gigantic-abundant map. Change the critera, you change the "exploit", you still got weenies at the top, get over it.

When Stardock starts giving free yearly subscriptions to Drengin.net for being in the top 10 for more than 30 days consecutively, bitch and moan that it's not the best representative system, otherwise, why does anyone care?

This whole thread (and the other 942 similar threads here and in the newsgroups) are virtual repeats of threads for every game that implements a ladder system. It's sort of how Blizzard resets their ladders every few months to be "fair", and the same people are right back there within a day or two barring the five guys who got tired of playing the game 14 hours a day. I mean, they reset all of the Diablo ladders and there were people with the maximum possible level characters within a day.

If they make any change at all they should just make a more significant difficulty modifier and be done with it.

You really need to look at the scores if you think that gigantic doesnt score much more. It does, its ridiculous. Check the metaverse. You will see plentyu of 2K+ gigantic/simple wins and and plenty of sub 1K medium/tough+ wins.

And the victory conditions are also ridiculous. Why should a tech victory score more? Because you sit on your ass and hit next turn? Come on.

olaf