At one point, I thought I'd go for the racial medal, but some races feel handicapped compared to others and I just missed those extra bonuses too much. Hats off to those who can play any race *and* score well. For DA, the Super Hive ability is a real biggie for me. It shaves at least 6 months off the game and saves me a ton of clicking since I can let planets build on their own for the most part. Otherwise, I'm buying social projects all the time and doing that for as many as 750 planets is not only time consuming, it's incredibly tedious and boring.

It certainly is the truth but I'm pushing 20 months of play and only 8 games to show for it and the first two were both with the Drath so I still have the Korx, Iconians and Arcean left to do assuming that the racial medal is still based on the original ten DL races (anyone know if this is true?).

The Arceans seem to be decent competitors but the Korx and Iconians always seem to be weak sisters. All in all in DL with no super ability I don't think that the racial choice makes *all* that much difference to your actual play. It really ends up being a difference in a few cheap starting techs and effectively a point or two difference in racial ability points.

My usual spending is 30% economic 20% morale and 30% pop growth. The only real deviation from this is for Torian and Drengin where you get a free 25% morale bonus and I simply go to 70% pop growth. That's also what I essentially did with the Korx which was to accept their free 15% economic bonus and use what I would have spent on the 30% economic bonus on the 70% pop growth bonus. However, I think just going with 30% econ, 20% morale and 30% pop growth and throwing away the free 15% econ bonus makes more sense for the Korx.

Yes, this is still true, as having just earned that medal a few weeks ago.

And I can't conceive of playing a game out for a million points (ok, thats not true, I could actually, I'm just not good enough to do it). Its funny but I have a Gigantic Abundant that I run concurrently to give me a break from the tiny games. During the time that I've completed 26 tiny games I've managed to get into my first real war on my giga. Its a major change of dynamic.

It is a little upsetting that all the time/effort won't show up on the actual MV (due to the way score is calculated) but I have the AltMeta so I'm ok with that. I should be overtaking Motti today on the MilSolar stat board.

I was putting my points into those areas as well, but now instead of pop growth, I put them into military production. It seems to me that pop growth is more expensive with less noticable benefit. Also, races get bigger free bonuses in DA. For example, the Thalans get a free 33% social and military production bonus. The Yor get 20% free in those areas. It's quite noticable when playing them. Unlike DL, you can stack your points on top of free bonuses. Ships are more expensive in DA and they build much faster when you start with a 70% or 83% military production bonus.

Pop growth is great to get a good economic start. Although I agree that the benefit is in some sense limited in time it is a very crucial time. Basically this is a resource allocation game and the thing that is common to all such games is that they are characterized by exponential growth. The rate at which you can produce and grow is dependent on how many resources (planets, mining resources, etc.) you have. The more stuff you have the faster you can aquire more stuff with which to grow even faster.

Basically pop growth puts you on a higher curve earlier on in the game and even though the benefit "wears out" later in the game you get the benefit of being on this higher curve throughout pretty much the entire game at least until you obtain all planets and resources.

I agree that DA changes up the balance of things a bit. I also tend to look at pop growth as something that helps you win the game a bit earlier as opposed to something that could make your ultimate score higher. However winning the game earlier is something that makes your ultimate score higher just not in such an obvious way as, for example, a direct weapons/defense bonus that multiplies your military score.

In any case it's good to play around with various combinations to see how they play. Also for my MVL games I've pretty much given up the pop growth bonus in favor of planet quality of all things.

I've just joined the Galactic Diplomats after reading a bit about your history on these forums. Hello to everyone and may there be many good games for all of us.

Stop on by The Galactic Core if you haven't already. We have a private forum there, just register and send a PM once you're there and we'll set you up.

Welcome.

All empires ebb and flow yet the Diplomats have so far endured.

It's not required to always be number one but it is required to always be.

The Orcas and Diplomats exchanged the number one position many times but regretably the Orcas have faded.

Before that and before my time I'm sure the Diplomats and the Overmind had some decent competition as well.

HCH came and went, I don't actually recall HCH reaching number one but I would be surprised if they didn't.

Now we have Kzinti in the number one spot and congratulations are absolutly warrented.   

However the true test will be where they are and where we are in a year and the year beyond that.

All empires ebb and flow and the Diplomats are no exception to that rule. However unlike many other empires the Diplomats endure.     

Plus, besides the above rhetoric we're only 240K behind and I'm still getting credit for 40% of any new submission and I expect to submit another 800K+ game soon.   

No not really. Even though I may indeed soon post a game that puts the Diplomats back in number one we could as easily be passed the next day or even the same day. However what we won't do is to stop trying.

I really added the last part as a way to lighten up the post from being overly maudlin.

However, I honestly do believe the initial sentiments I expressed are truly what is important and that's also how I view individual competition in the metaverse as well as our team competition in the MVL and in fact it's how I view life.

It's not the destination that is important. What is important is the journey itself. The Diplomats don't need to be number 1 in the metaverse to be winners. Neither do I have to be number 1 in the metaverse. In the MVL my team doesn't need to win all the time nor in fact does it need to win any of the time. All that you need to do to be a winner in all things is to give your best effort. No one can do better than that. No one that does that can ever be considered a loser.

To burden you with one more platitude.

It's the striving not the arriving.

Valid point.   

Of course you should probably hope that it also happened to be just over the horizon you're actually rowing towards as opposed to some other direction.

However I do believe that you get the gist of what I'm trying to say.   

It's always better to negotiate from a position of strength.

We are more of the talk softly and carry a big stick style of diplomacy...And we like whopping big sticks!

I finally started up a new game yesterday. I'm doing some experimenting, so I'm expecting a less than optimal score. Still, I expect it should break at least 400K and hopefully it will only take me a week to two weeks.

I'm still playing, though not as much as before. Man, this game is just hard to put down.