A few metaverse questions:

Players that play at the highest intellegence levels that is AI all set to Genius will have the highest scores.

There are many factors in determining scorc economics, technoligies obtained etc..

I hope there would not be any cheats, after all what would it prove ?

hi soulfire!

1. yes the more you play the more point you get. look at the metaverse now and you can see i've played over 30 games

2. the greateer the degree of difficulty the greater the chance for higher points (assuming you survive )

3. There has been a lot of work done by stardock on eliminating "cheese: tactics, so that type of cheating is reduced. To save before determining if you want to attack someone, or anything else , is not cheating in my mind. There are times that i want to save and try something to learn more about how the a.i's react. But i'll never get there if i wasn't able to save and restart after taking what i have considered to be the wrong path. IMO i don't consider that cheating (that's being smart after playing 40+hours on that particular game)

hope this helps
rich


~SDC~

3. One man's cheese is another man's cheat. Save and reload defeats the whole point of the game for me.
Of course, your milage will vary. If I save and reload if something bad happens after my decision, what's the point of being confronted with the decision in the first place? In reality, the difference between how many games I win would be how patient I am....why not reload 1000 times till I win? Why not reload every single turn if it doesn't end perfectly. Me, I acccept
that I blew it and move on to the next game if it costs me big.
Just my humble opinion, as I said, games are for fun so if you get more fun playing that way, I'd go for it.

Saving and reloading is fine when you are playing by yourself and not uploading your scores to the metaverse. A player who saves before major battles and then undoes every loss, or replays every battle until the get optimum results would pretty much guarantee those players always had the highest scores. They would afterall be virtually guaranteed to win every single battle, because if they didn't they would either undo it and thereby not lose or just keep replaying it until they get the precise results they want.

So there is nothing wrong with save/reload to learn the nuances of the game, or even if that's just how you LIKE to play, but scores generated like that (with all the uncertainty taken out of the game) do not accurately reflect any real strategic playing skill. Personally, I don't want to download the simulated "AI" of a player who has a tremendous score, but only got it because they made sure nothing bad ever happened to them. An AI that simulated such a player may well end up worse than the regular AI when you take into effect that the AI won't be able to cheat the same way the player whom the strategy was modelled after did. Make sense?

--Soulfire

I also imagine that one will not be able to save a game a turn before they win, then submit it to the Metaverse, then re-load and submit it again. Correct?

~SDC~

The metaverse keeps track of each game's ID so the same game can't get it's score posted twice (by saving and re-playing). There had been talk about it allowing you to continue playing and upload a HIGHER score, but I'm not sure if that was ever officially changed (I prefer the "one shot" meathod, but thats just my opinion).

~SDC~

I agree BoogieBac, allowing the upload of a game more than once, even if there are some subtle differences, opens up too much availabilty for cheating.

~SDC~

The purpose of playing is to have fun, so play as you personally like, just have fun. Save/Load is a gaming convention that should always be available just as adjusting game speed. At least that is how I feel about TBS. I don't remember if GalCic gives the option to adjust game speed?

~SDC~

by the way guys the saving and reloading was how i found the latest "cheese" problem which was the point of the exercise. So i'm not endorsing it but if you want to play that way go ahead


and i didn't submit the game with a score of 4000+ (new metaverse scoring)


rich


~SDC~

Not talking specifically about the metaverse, but I save and reload because time is limited. Maybe if I had unlimited time to play the game, I could accept the fact that a particular game is lost, but with limited time, I can't do that. I don't do this on minor, even significant setbacks, but if I am losing I do use the save and reload option. I don't reload if planets are lost, but if I am at a strategic dead end that would kill the game for me.

What I usually end up doing is treating a particular game situation as a puzzle that I need to solve - ok, I'm in this bad, losing situation, so how do I resolve it by reloading from 10 or 20 turns previously - what strategies, tactics can I employ to keep me from getting into this problem.

Grifman

I think it's fine to play however you like too, but I don't think save/reload games or hacked/edited games should be uploaded to the Metaverse. I don't know if there is any practical way to prevent that from happening, but I hope there is.

--Soulfire

Perhaps the Metaverse softwhere could at some point be updated to only add data from games that have X amount of reloads.

I never use reloads in Stronghold Crusader. But would never finish a level in Warcraft without them. Some games take it for grated you will use them, like shooters. Hitman I got slammed for the lack and Hitman II reviews were quick to point that out as well as the fact that II lets the player save as wanted.

~SDC~

Hmmm... I'd rather have a system where your score is adjusted based on the number of reloads + the number of turns that pass since the last save. That way players who reload frequently would be penalized, while players who don't will be rewarded, and all players'll be able to participate in the Metaverse.

What about people who can only play for an hour or two at a time, but enjoy the Gigantic Galaxy games? Those people will reload frequently. It is unfair to have thos people penalized for their playing preferences. The fact is, people are going to save and re-load. It is a fact of the TBS universe. To be honest, I doubt the scores will be drastically affected by this. The people who do that will take MUCH longer to finish their games, and the people who don't will have the opportunity to submit more scores over the same amount of time. I think it will balance out, and isn't worth making Stardock spending any time to try to curtail it.

-Dave

~SDC~

I'm sure Brad has put a a lot of thought into it. I agree David I think it is a non issue.

~SDC~

Dave makes a good point if scores are going to be cumulative. You can probably play two strait games in the same time it takes to play one game with constant save/reload.

I do save/reload in FPS games. Not because I don't want to lose but because after dying you have to repeat the same exact scenario over and over, which I find boring. I don't do it in TBS because, for me, it takes the chanlenge out of it knowing I can't lose. But as others have said, everyone should be able to play the game whatever way is fun for them.

~SDC~

Speaking about the metaverse, I'm getting kicked to the 52nd place
That got 2 change

~SDC~

David, unfair to have them penalized for their playing preferences? I know many disagree with me but those playing preferences (when it comes to an online ladder system) are not different than pulling out the hex editor. It's faster and achieves the same result.
Just my opinion.

The number of saves per se should not be penalised but soemthing like the number of saves/turn.

If a gme last 500 turns with 10 saves that isn't a problem
but a 500 turn game with 500 saves does seem to suggest a bit of "This game will blow the hell out of averages because every turn was PERFECT". Eliminates the influence of luck.

Youa re forgetting that there is an autosave feature that could be set to autosave very turn. Poeple who have an unreliable computer system will definitely take advantage of this, maybe not every turn, but maybe every four or five turns late in the game. The number of saves will NOT be an effective or just way of limiting metaverse submissions.

Rasta, when I said 'playing preferences', I was more referring to the person in my example who onl;y plays a turn or two at a time late in games, not people who save and reload. I think the save and reload people will have their scores balanced out by the time it takes them to play a game.

-Dave

~SDC~

Sorry for the double-post here, but I just had a thought. Civ3 had a feature that was called "Preserve Random Seeding" or something like that. It made it so that saving and re-loading did not change the results of random events and battles. I am sure that was a product of how their AI handled the generation of these things, but if the GalCiv AI works in a similar way in that regard, perhaps there could be a similar game option. Then, only the "pure" games of people who preserve the random seeding who be allowed in to the MetaVerse. Again, not sure if this is possible for this game, but it is just a thought based on how another game handled this issue. (well, not quite the same issue, but anyway...)

-Dave

~SDC~

David, if you refer to regular saves and loads then yes, you cannot penalize people from just playing the game!

'but a 500 turn game with 500 saves does seem to suggest a bit of "This game will blow the hell out of averages because every turn was PERFECT". Eliminates the influence of luck. '

It also take a long time to save and load a game 500 times, and the Metaverse score is (IIRC) a weighted average; players that play more often will have a slightly higher score that would already offset the save 'cheater's inflated score.

The randomizing of AI's next move after a save might be a good feature for future release updates or sequels.

~SDC~

I think that randomizing the AI's next move would weaken the AI as it would not necessairly be the best move for the AI.
I would suggest that it would also make for inconsistant strategy as most strategies require namy turns.


~SDC~