I've got three words for you...

Zero Year Win

It's not cheating, it's just a player being fast enough to finish a game in the first year. Check out this thread...

Year Zero Club

...it's not even that uncommon to see those scores from the lower-ranking players.

And, truly, a ZYW takes about 15 minutes...and that's pushing it. They don't take 24+ hours. Just read that thread and all will be made clear.

EDIT: Dang it! SS beat me to the punch. Not a surprise...

Ya know it's not good form to come on here and within your first few posts accuse folks of cheating.

Many people, myself included do not take kindly to that type of insinuation and you should do some research before opening your mouth.

How, what and when others play the game is non of your concern. Some folks have all the spare time in the world, others just like the game that much. I could care less if you play the game for 20 hrs a day, more power to ya.

And every 2 days????

I can do a 100K ZYW in 4 mins my friend, does that make me a cheat just cause i have perfected the speed aspect of this strat?

KP has 1, 2 and 3 cause he is committed. Nothing more nothing else.

Even though he is my rival as we are the emperors of the two top ranked empires i will jump to his defence to put a halt on any talk of cheating.

Just because you cannot achieve things does not make them impossible.

And why should the scoring be changed? There are points for less habitable planets. Same game but with more planets albiet a longer game can yeild over one million points.....

I wish i had seen this thread before answering your questions in the ZYW thread.

In any case cheating is something that we are all concerned with and transparency is the best path to avoiding any concern. While corphicks method of expressing his concern may have a little to be desired, I would far prefer to have these concerns expressed in the open and see them addressed by the many well respected members of the GalCiv2 community that have responded here and elsewhere than to have those concerns fester and simply drive away potential new players.

As far as suggestions for different scoring mechanisms, there's nothing wrong with making suggestions and some points may be valid while others may be less so.

The thing is that it should be acknowledged that the metaverse is an imperfect system just as *all* scoring systems short of a fight to the death are imperfect. There are many good players that enjoy the metaverse and Altmeta and that in itself justifies it's existence. But there are also many good players that don't play the metaverse and that's fine as well.

Basically we all live in the same glass house and I just think it's best if we all avoid throwing unnecessary stones.

[edit] As far as what Rev and even version of the game people play some of that is dictated by a desire to not have to install Impulse to get updates. To some this might seem like an unreasonable concern but to others such as myself, I don't see any compelling reason to install an entire store/software download system just to update a single program. Also I think there are far more "exploits" that occur in newer versions than the "standards". There's nothing wrong with DA v1.80g and in my opinion is the "standard" for DA. Once things settle down in v2.0 then I'll see if I can overcome my inhibitions about installing Impulse, but as far as I can tell v2.0 is yet to become what I consider "stable". [/edit]

is it me, or are these grapes sour?

Since i mostly MOD, i must also admit to using cheat mode very often. I can't even imagine performing any given test phase games with stock settings only; next version(s) would probably come out in a year or more, assuming i'd be at my keyboard 20+ hours a day!

Oh, wrong Cheat, sorry.

You can just about set your watch to it hey.....

"If you don't like what you've got why don't you change it,

If you know there's something wrong why don't you right it!"

-- Trooper's Raise a little hell song quote.

But, heck yeah... i buy games cuz i love playing HOW i really want to -- highly customizable features simply add value to this feeling also. Not to say that actual default balance from a stock game is or has to be somehow wrong either.

The trick with modding is to find the ever soooooo sligthly different value(s) to alter gameplay dynamics enough to create a reasonable challenge within new context.

i got no beef against mods; in fact i love them. i modded GC2 long before i was playing MV games. i've downloaded and/or created mods for Civ3, Morrowind, Oblivion and MOO3 (the governor mod that actually made the game somewhat playable). i don't think there's anything wrong with buying a game with its mod-ability as a major selling point; i do. there's a huge difference between modding a game and making one of your own; the later takes a lot more time, knowledge, skill and other resources.

however, trolling around a game forum, relating every thread you post in to your own personal vision of a mod, and requesting the game's developers changing things to suit your own tastes: that is another matter.

Also I'd like to make some attempt at smoothing the waters here a bit.

I did receive a PM from corphicks about this topic before I had seen this or any other thread and I responded simply explaining that KP is a well respected member of the GC2 community and that he was simply using ZYW's to achieve his position and there's nothing illegitimate about it.

I also agree that it was probably not the best choice on chophicks part to create a thread entitled cheating as his first ever thread on the Galciv2 site. However I still stand by my opinion that our best response is not to immediately jump on someone that after all is merely asking a few questions even though he's obviously going about it the wrong way. There's plenty of time to first answer his concerns and if he continues to be a pain *then* jump all over him.

On the other side, folks new to the game often do things like this which is to see people getting huge scores or playing hundreds of games and not knowing how they could do this themselves they instantly assume someone must be cheating. In our defense this kind of thing gets rather old, rather quick.

There's many different ways to play this game and many different criteria that folks use to determine how "good" of a player people are. The metaverse is certainly one way but anyone that's been here for awhile knows that the MV is an imperfect system and not everybody plays it or is even interested in it. It's merely one piece of information and often not even the most important piece of information.

Also people need to play the game the way that *they* enjoy it and not how someone else *thinks* is the best or fairest or "right" way to play. This goes for those with years of experience as well as those new to the game.

There are legitimate arguments that can be made as to why the game may be easier or harder on one setting versus another, but so what? Most people play anywhere from tough to suicidal with tiny galaxies and few opponents to immense galaxies with a maximum number of opponents and everywhere in between. It's not always obvious precisely which settings are "easier" than others.

The bottom line is that if you want folks to respect the style of game that you play then you need to show the same respect for the game others play. As I've said before the only reason you will play the game and continue to play the game is because *you* enjoy it, not because you're able to impress someone with how many games you can play in the shortest period of time or in how high you can score. If you don't enjoy the way you play simply for yourself then it won't be long before you stop playing.

agreed. i personally don't see "advertising" a mod as significantly different than an empire, or any of one's relevant achievements and contributions to this game. it's a tasteful and evocative way to engender interest without derailing others' points.

Add a +++ and you got a deal

QFT. (That's one thing i've learned from dystopic, but LAMO?... Look at my Oooolahoops?)

PS; LMAO-LAMO - 1 definition - 1. The act of laughing at someone online not because what they say, but be cause of their ignorance and incompetance.

X-WORLDS -- now, that has a lot of meaning, and megabytes, and patiently drawn graphics, and bik movies, and multiple xml files editings. If you haven't played X-Com, you do NOT know what tactical TBS gaming is. Thus, a mod. Under development. From me. To you. Free.