Staffa Staffa

Comments on the Metaverse scoring system

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Comments on the Metaverse scoring system

from Stardock Forums
This may be a long post, I tend to be long winded but
I will try this time to be very concise. :)

I recently finished a game that I think demonstrates
some rough edges in the logic for the scoring system.

My score was 23232 using version 1.035. Which is about
10k more then the next highest score im aware of in any
version.

Before I get into how I got this score, I will first
list some balance concerns I have.

Problem 1. It is far to easy to win by influence,the
computer will just roll over and be influenced to non
existence without even once putting up a fight.

Suggested Fixes.
1. Put a cap on the number of systems an empire can
lose through influence before war is automatically
declared(make it depedent on map size). This will
keep influence useful without making it the obscene
steam roller it currently is.

2. Cut in half or even 1/3 the effect influence
resources have. Currently they are way to good for
both the computer and the human. I will come back to
this.

Problem 2. Buying trade goods/wonders/achievements.
It is fairly easy dash to a trade good early in the game
buy it on the long term payment plan, and then trade
it between 4 races for every non military tech I am
missing(which is about 20+ techs at this point, as I
do a super land grab at start and fall way behind in
tech). Then taking these new techs, buy the new
trade goods/achievements/wonders and basicily own them
all and trade them all for obscene rewards. This is
so easy and cheap that it seems highly abusive. I can
even do it so I dont go below -500 funds, by building a
preemptive stash of cash and trading much of this stuff
for cash.

Fix. Simple, prevent buying wonders, trade goods
and achievements. Make sure to slow the computer down
in its own creation of such things to keep it in
relative balance.

Problem 3. Tech victory is worth the most and is also
the easiest way to win. There is some interesting
dynamics that make a tech victory challanging IF the
computer could win via tech. But as it is now, tech
victory should be worth the least number of points, why
it is worth the most, I cant fathom.

Fix. Military worth most, Cultural second, alliance
3rd, tech last.

The first 2 require you to dominate the galaxy, and are
by far the hardest.

Problem 4. Pop calcuation. This is how I got my score
My pop at the end of the game was over 23 trillion and
was still growing at nearly 100 billion a month. I just
got really bored with hitting turn over and over again.
I dont know where the pop would have leveled off at, but
a rough guess would have been about 50 trillion. What
ever time penality there is, it doesnt even come close
to making it worth not running ur pop up(if ur going for
score, for fun, this is not fun).

This was my 2nd masochistic game where I succesfully
took over the galaxy(except 1 or 2 planets left to
prevent the half price military victory) The first
one took me longer(I wasnt as good!) and my pop when I
finally got to the final frontier was 6 trillion.

My 2nd game, I did it quite abit faster and my pop had
just edged past 5 trillion. I went to submit and low
and behold, identical game, but this time I was getting
7k score instead of the nearly 9k i had last time.

I did better(by taking out the galaxy faster and
getting to the tech quicker) but got a much worse score

So I ran up the pop, it quickly became apparent to me
that pop easily dominates the time factor(at least on
a gigantic map).

Crude Fix. Put a turn limit based on difficulty/map
size in which a game can be submitted. This will
prevent running up the pop which is both abusive and
not even fun. It literally takes all the fun out of
competing for good scores.

Better(harder) fix. Try to rebalance the time penality
so is more effective in curbing obscene pops on larger
maps. This can be hard to balance without actually
knowing whats people can achieve(and the reason its
so out of wack right now).

Problem 5. Metaverse is penalizing you for submitting
low point value games. As has been pointed out before,
this is illogical.

If you are scoring every game that everyone ever plays
then you can penalize for bad results because you
penalize everyone. This is how most multiplayer scoring
systems work(the MSN zone, BattleNet, etc) The
metaverse is not of the same type, its a comparision
scoring system for a single player game in which
its optional for a player to submit a game. When its
optional, dont punish people for submitting all their
games.

I am currently ranked 6th with 10 games. If I had
submitted by game on a new alias, I would have been
ranked first with 1 game.

Fix. Several have been suggested, you could simply sort
the scores from highest to lowest and stop
calculating the score when the next game would lower
the overall score.

Ok, back to why innfluence resources are to powerful.

With 3 influence resources built up, I can simply drop
1 billion civillians into a computers home system on
some 12-14 pop world and it will on its own, without
any starbase support, begin converting their HOME
systems.

In my last game I had about 10 influence resources by
the end of the game, it was a joke.

This also works in reverse, if the computer gets all
the influences resources, no amount of early starbases
will stop him from creaping into my sectors either.
By the time you get cultural palace, this can be
stopped, but thats a rather late game tech.

If your curious about my strategy, I will make another
post after I hit submit here :)

I do hope the developers will address the pop explosion
problem before everyone has 20-40k games where they
spend literally more time hitting turn waiting for their
pop to grow then they did actually beating the computer.

That isnt fun for anyone.





961 views 66 replies
Reply #26 from Stardock Forums Top
"I post "nothing constructive" because my position has been from the beginning that *any* attempt to make a balanced scoring system will fail and cause more problems than it solves because I have seen it time and time again with other games. Their attempts so far have done exactly that: still left loopholes for "abusive" scoring while shutting the door on normal playing."

I fail to see how any of the changes to this point have shut the door on normal playing. Your position is a valid position. That I had no problem with. Its your remarks you were coming down rather hard on Staffa calling him a metaverse masturbator, or implying that those of us who are in the top 250 (and therefore myself) somehow have no life or aren't an ordinary player.

I appreciate that you took the time to observe my posted scores. Yes it's true that I play on the Huge galaxies. My average time to complete the games in realtime hours are about 6 to 7 hours. With a couple of exceptions, most of my games are spaced out between about 3 to 6 days or so. I've played on varying difficulties and varying military types. I like to think I do have a life considering I work a normal job, have a social life outside of work, and time to play this game. So your conclusion that people like myself have no life is a bit premature.

Now allow me to interpret your post some. You want a scoring system where tech vicotry = alliance victory = culture victory = conquest. I'll counter the argument by saying that they *should* be taken into account. It's been my experience that in most games I've ever played, that it is far too easy to secure a cultural victory versus any other kind of victory. I personally find that tech victories are the next easiest to do. Strangely enough I find that tech victories are *ALOT* easier to accomplish on the Crippling and higher levels. Why? Well since the computer researches a whole lot faster, if you're able to rush buy trade goods, you can parlay them for the non-combat techs you don't have. I've also found that if I'm militarily stronger than another race, and they have techs that I want, I can pound them into the ground, and gain alot of their techs as a condition for peace. After a certain point, all I need do is field a sufficient military and shell up for the rest of the game. I geniunely think that the military victory ought to be the most valuable, with maybe an alliance victory in tow.

Now there are situations where caps are prudent. For one, I think that planets should have a finite population limit dependent upon their class. It will sooner or later get to the point to where either 1) the aren't enough resources to support the people on the planet or 2) there's just no room. Assuming number 1, if that's the case, perhaps a maintenance fee to sustain a population greater than the support threshold (since goods would need to be shipped from outside the planet to feed it) Civ and Orion had this nailed down with the amount of people governed by the amount of food produced, although Civ had no way of shipping food between cities.

The other issue is that people are milking the turns for the population bonus. I submit that we ought to have a bonus for finishing the game quickly rather than a penalty for taking too long. Set a baseline for a zero bonus, and then have increasingly larger bonuses as the finishing time grows small. Have the bonuses set so that someone who finishes a map with blinding speed would outpace someone who milked it on the other side. This type of thing would again favor most every victory type except for the tech victory. I personally think this is a good thing since generally if you're reaching a tech victory its because you're either holding station to get that win, -OR- you're caught in some serious quagmire and neither side would win any time soon. The only kind of exploitation here would be if someone finds a way to rush destroy the AI's early, in which case, more power to them. I would also have this bonus increase rapidly as the # turns decreases. This would truly reward the person that beats the game in the fewest turns, which is as it should be IMHO. If you take that and then for the metaverse, account for the 10 best games for each player, you accomplish two things. The casual player will stand a chance and two the top rating goes to the person who can beat the computer the quickest.
Reply #27 from Stardock Forums Top
By flat you mean all victory conditions are equal?

I may not have any problems with that, it clearly
would be better then the current situtation where
the easier conditions are worth more.

What about scoring different galaxy size and difficulty
levels?

What do you think the score should be based on?

Purely time to win?
Purely pop when won?

And if all systems will be open to massive abuse in
your opinion, including i presume your own ideal
system, why do you care what the system is?

How exactly are you suffering?

Do you actually care if you get 1 point or 25 points or
250 points, they are just arbitrary numbers that have
no meaning unless related to other people with their
own numbers.

If i have 10 points and the next highest person has 5
points, thats the same if i had 100 and they had 50.

And if im not compared against anything, it makes no
difference whatso ever.

So what exactly is your 'stake' in this?
Object Desktop - Get all of our enhancement utilities in one suite
Reply #28 from Stardock Forums Top
OK, let me clarify my idea of a flat scoring system:

You decide what score is based on. Such factors could be turns to victory, percentage of map under your influence, total population, percentage of total population, number of techs, number of trade good monopolies held, etc.

Once you have the factors that contribute to score, you assign a point value to each.

Done.

Optionally, you can put caps based on map size for things such as population so that they can't be "run up", but beyond that you don't try to get any fancier. This is not at all an 'alliance = tech = culture' situation, but it is one which rewards playing each version well rather than the current mess of a scoring system.

Players who care about score can look at what effects their score and try to max those things. If you make turns to victory a strong enough part of the scoring formula, you can even counter balance the nursing of other factors as well as smooth out the differences between the rush to a military/alliance victory, versus the longer time to achieve cultural/tech victory.

It should be simple, and it should be as flat and boring as possible so that people can easily understand what sort of score any given game should yield. Right now the algorithm is so horribly boofed that I find myself saving at different possible victory points and trying them out just to see how wildly different they are because of the penalties introduced in each subsequent patch.

It's not that I necessarily am against improvement of the game scoring in a general sense, but that Staffa's suggestions fly directly in the face of what I think needs to be done. From a work perspective, culture is already the hardest way to win and all of his suggestions are designed around making it even more of a tedious effort to win that way. That's not an improvement, it's just trying to introduce additonal penalties for what he sees as the biggest metaverse abuse method.

Secondarily, I'm all for letting all scores count for your metaverse rating. I think the top 10 idea is horrible because it stagnates: just submit until you've got a nearly unbeatable top 10. If somebody surpasses you or you drop farther than you want, just wait until you have an even better scoring game and submit that. There is no incentive or reward for continually submitting your games which violates the real purpose of the metaverse: to allow devs to study how we play and win the game.

The current system is much superior to that one. If somebody can keep scoring 10K games and keeps submitting them, more power to them. But it also provides a sense of satisfaction for all longterm players to see their score continually increase even if it never reaches the top slots.
Reply #29 from Stardock Forums Top
Your method is an alliance=tech=culture situtation
Too make them equal you just remove them from the
formula as you have done.

Other then making all victory conditions equal your
method is no different in its vague statements then
what currently exists.

Points are assigned based on many of those criteria
and like I said, I have nothing against making the
different conditions equal, so long as the different
methods of getting to the end point are equal.

Now currently influence is too powerful. I suggested
two methods of corecting this, nerf influence resources
and limiting the number of planets that can be converted

It seems obvious now that while limiting the number
of planets that can be converted might make sense
from a pure balance standpoint, it does defeat the
4 pathes to victory that you and the developers relish
and as such is a 'poor' idea. The point of a discusion
is to discuss ideas. Your method of discusion is to
throw flaming garbage at people. You also focus one
a single suggestion when there is a multiple list of
suggestions and lump them all together as being crap.
You have never even directly mentioned any of the
others.

Anyway, the 2nd idea of nerfing influence resources is
still valid as it would still bring influence conquest
more in line with military conquest(its equiviliant
for taking over the galaxy. Tech and alliance victories
in a flat scoring system will tend to score less
as they do not require you to dominate the galaxy and
will result in a lower population, though of course
you can dominate and use that path, its not required
as it would be for military and cultural games.

A better idea for influence nerfing is to give planets
a bigger intrinsic bonus to being converted, such that
its not 'possible' to be converted unless a system
influence passes a certain threhold rather then just
being higher. For example, to even begin considering
a system as being convertable you need to have less
then 75% of the influence in the sector as the one
your being compared against, rather then just having
less.

I never suggested limiting the number of games.

And perhaps cultural is the hardest way to 'win' the
game, though I still believe military conquest is at
the higher difficulty levels. But you miss the point
cultural is the easiest way to take over the galaxy.

Its not hard to win via tech, its very hard to win by
any method while controlling the entire galaxy.

To get lots of points, you need to control the entire
galaxy, and influence is an easier method then
military might, and thats a balance problem.

I still think using Planet quality as a measure for
scoring rather then Population is supperior as it
removes the time factor for growing pop which is my
actual main problem.

My 2nd main problem is that influence as a means to
take control of the galaxy is much easier then military.

3rd is buying tradegoods/wonders

To be clear, my 3 big concerns would be these questions?

How do you feel about making PQ the factor for determing
score instead of Pop?

I believe you hate the idea of making it harder to
convert planets, but that you find this difficult I find
hard to fathom. So i guess this one is answered.

and U have never expressed an opinion about buying
tradegoods/wonders, do you have one?

Reply #30 from Stardock Forums Top
Sure, I have no problem whatsoever with buying them.

I do not believe in the concept of continually making games harder to play so that the minority of players who find 5 incredible AIs to be a cakewalk can be further "entertained".

Make the AI react more cleverly, do not keep throwing logs in front of the players as they try to run to the finish line.

Also, you misunderstand me, I said from a *work* perspective cultural victory is the hardest. Any other victory condition requires far less clicking and time invested on the part of the player. As such, any suggestion which is going to further increase the tedium on the player is verboten in my book.
Reply #31 from Stardock Forums Top
Why shouldnt the 5 percent also be entertained, isnt
that the point? You seem to have little regard
for anyones enjoyment but your own(and those you
identify as being like you, which I grant you think
is most people, but of course your the one in a really
small minority, as is everyone)

The AI isnt clever, clever implies actual intelligence
and the AI has none. ZERO, try to understand that
machine intelligence does not exist and baring some
miracle breakthrough will not exist in your lifetime.

If an AI appears clever to you, that is because the
logical behind it was developed by a clever programmer.

With that in mind, this is mostly done by elimating
certain possibilities from the game that make it hard
for the developers to program the AI against.

Rush buying tradegoods is one such thing. Now another
solution to the 'problem' would be to vastly
devalue their worth as a tradegood. I dont like this
idea, and I doubt you do either, as it would essentially
eliminate them from any relevence. I want to keep them
relevent and remove the abusive ability to purchase
them instantly which is both unfair to the AI and
illogical from a realism perspective. To be able
to instantly purchase an item that instantly denies
anyone else the ability to aquire said item is just
lame. There is also a precedent for it in the gaming
community, as Civ 3 possess the ability to also purchase
things for rush building EXCEPT wonders.

I do not misunderstand you, I disagree with you
the amount of work required to take the galaxy over
in a military conquest is > then the amount of work
required to take over the galaxy in an influence drive.

Though your use of the word 'work' now instead of
'challange' suggests to me your 'problem', which is
your playing this game as a 'job' and not as
'entertainment'. Perhaps this is why your so bitter.

Your finding the game tedius, why the hell are you
playing it.

I find cultural victories to be easy and quick, nearly
painless in their difficulty at the highest levels.

Tedius to me would be trying to take every system over
with a freaking combat transport, rather then just
infecting a sector with a single colony and waiting
a year or 2 to get ALL the planets in and around that
sector. One requires a magnitude larger amount
of work. And it is NOT the one you keep suggesting.


Reply #32 from Stardock Forums Top
I see what Code Monkey is saying. Building a gang of constructors to post starbases everywhere in sight *is* quite a bit of work. Currently the AI doesn't recognize culture bombs taking place outside of their sectors, so at least on the advance levels, they should recognize that hey...someone is droping + influence starbases near my doorstep, I should do something about this.

Glad to see this thread is alot less heated now :-) Hopefully Codemonkey and I can get along better now.

SeanB
Reply #33 from Stardock Forums Top
Well, I think you play with greater planet density than I do because military conquest is cakewalk compared to trying to micromanage a gazillion constructors into culture bombs to get the one or two inhabited systems in a sector to flip in the space of a few years versus capturing them outright in a few months.

Regardless, I tire of this bickering. I think your points have next to no merit for bettering the gameplay, and you think the same of my points. We also clearly have different playstyles, map conditions, etc. which drive our perceptions.

Still, given Brad's comments in the post mortem and many other posts, your opinion probably counts about as much my dog's for shaping the future of this game, I just wanted to make sure that the counter point gets heard on a board too often dominated by the "hardcore elite" lest they do start listening and messing up things even more than they already have.
Reply #34 from Stardock Forums Top
Even if you have to use starbases, its still less work
constructors are very cheap compared to dreadnoughts
and they cant lose. If your trying to use military
you can actually lose a fight.

Losing means doing it over again, hence more 'work'.

Cultural bombing is easier, more effecient and less
prone to failure. And if you get 3 or more influence
resources built up, you dont even need starbases.

Reply #35 from Stardock Forums Top
Ive played fewer games then you, I have treated your
opinions with far more respect. I have actual points
to which you have next to none. And yet im the
hardcore elitist?

You seem to me to be a veteran(pun intended) elitist
who enjoys bashing 'new' players on the forum.

All I ask is that Brad looks over the suggestions and
makes up his own mind, I have great respect for the
style of game he has created and the potential that
exists for his future versions as well as his future
works.

I have almost no respect for you as an intelligent
commenter on gaming theory, but I know that feeling is
mutual :)

As a person I wish you well and good luck with your
games.



Reply #36 from Stardock Forums Top
staffa, why did you care to join GROSS?

It seems like you convincingly proved sever flaws in scoring. And how you did it? By getting huge scores.

Are you trying to prove that GROSS is gross? You don't like them much, do you? Any respectful empire would not tolerate obviously "unethical" points.

Great job on your research though! After developers listen to you and other players the game will be ultimately better.

Alex
Iowa City
Mid West Confederation
Reply #37 from Stardock Forums Top
They are an evil empire, about the only thing
evil about me is my 'unethical points' :)

Hey im the first one in line hoping they recalc the
scores to put everyone back on a more ethical playing
field. The only difference between my 23k+ score
and any score over 10k in my opinion is that I made
it obvious and made a stink about it on the boards.

I feel any score over 10k was milked to a fairly
signifigant extent. Not that I think there is anything
really unethical about trying to get a high score
in a competitive game by any means allowed within
the framework of the rules of the game. I just think
the rules should change. In my opinion milked scores
are not unethical. But many will disagree with me
but hopefully we can all agree that there needs to be
a solution :)


I love calvin and hobbes, I have half a dozen of
watersons comic book collections, any empire that uses
a reference to them as their name has me before it has
begun :)
Reply #38 from Stardock Forums Top
In reply to post in MWC comm thread:
#1 by Citizen Trelane - 5/18/2003 8:05:44 PM

We're ahead of yoyou haven't noticed
----------------------------------------------------

I have noticed. But not what you did. Please read more carefully what Staffa has to say. If you missed that, you missed the point.

MWC stands for noble cause and fair game. Your current position is a shining example of what's wrong with GROSS.

Thank you Staffa.

Alex
Iowa City
MWC
Reply #39 from Stardock Forums Top
Wow axels2000. Them are fighting words.

I've thought of an elegant solution (or has it been mentioned earlier?). Why not make it so that at a certain high population, your planet's happiness plummets, and it joins (or becomes) the Independent League?
Reply #40 from Stardock Forums Top
'scuse me for coming in a bit late... timezones and all that, doncha know.

Firstly, we already know that score can be retro-twiddled, so I don't see anything particularly wrong with Staffa submitting his "proof of concept"... if it's intractable, TPTB can just baleet his score.

Secondly, the difference between a scoring system that can be milked for an effort-free 10000 extra points and a scoring system that can be milked for a +10% boost if you're really trying is significant enough for serious discussion.

Now, on to the show.

It's important to distinguish between cultural victories, and pseudo-military victories achieved through bomb-induced mass flipping. The former needs a little work, but is fairly sound. The latter needs some serious overhauling.

1. Brad has already indicated that he has a philosophical problem with hard-coded caps, and I'm inclined to agree. However, I *do* think that when a planet flips, your diplo rating with the target empire should drop a little according to how valuable that planet was to the original owner. This will encourage are more careful approach, because excessive culture-bombing *will* cause a war, and as a sometime bomber myself, I have never been in a strong military position during the bombing phase.

2. For a cultural victory, the influence resources are about right. However, they do turn bombing into an unstoppable force... but IMHO, this could be easily rectified by simply having the AI detect dangerously high levels of SB-produced culture near their core systems and respond accordingly. The culture output required to own a sector is about right, but the amount required to actually flip and entire cluster in 10 turns should *not* go unnoticed.

3. Rush-buying trade-goods and wonders *is* off-balance. I don't actually remember the last time I built either of these through normal means. Perhaps a times 2 or even 4 multiplier on the cost of these things will take the edge off, while still allowing the player to rush the last 50% if they're in a hurry.

4. Tech-victories come in two flavors. Players who have a weak empire, but manage to stay alive out of diplomatic and military skill, and finally squeeze out a tech victory without getting squashed by their warmongering neighbours should be amply rewarded. However, at the far end of a 'long game', there's absolutely no difference between a tech, military or alliance victory. Either can be acheived in literally one turn at the whim of the player. Perhaps the bonus for the type of victory should be based on the inverse of the player's population as a percentage of the galactic total.

5. The solution to the population-based score element is clearly some kind of nobble... but I don't like hard-coded caps here, as they're a little too subjective. A pop score based on the log of your total population would be a much better idea, IMHO (with a suitable lower bound on the input, of course :) ).

6. I suppose the low-score problem on metaverse could be optimally fixed by having separate tables for each difficulty level and each galaxy size, but that's obviously too many tables. IMHO, having a separate table for each galaxy size is an adequate solution.

7. I think the problem of overwhelming influence could be better fixed by increasing the effect of the 'culture-resist' projects, and/or introducing techs that give empire-wide resistance. Remember that a cultural victory is based of sector ownership, and would therefore not be affected by this... but it would make 'crappy-planet culture bombs' much less trivial to execute. For that matter, perhaps the culture output of a system should be toned down according to the average morale of its planets.

Anyway, that's my 20 million credits.


~SDC~
Reply #41 from Stardock Forums Top
#40 Cataletpic
Very nice post. In a later post I mentioned an idea
to deal with the population problem that I think
works out very well. It involves using PQ instead
of population as the measure of galatic ownership.

I can think of several reasons its signifigantly
superior and no signifigant problems, id apperciate
your thoughts on it.

I also abhore hard limits and have already discarded
the idea of limiting the number of cultural flipping
as an idea out the window in my own mind. So we
can discard that flawed idea.

I do think flipping should be harder, how it becomes
harder isnt that important to me, you had many good
suggestions and im sure many more exist.

Increasing the cost of purchasing the trade goods out
right is a nice compromise, though I think the increase
would need to be more then 4 times. It is really
abusive right now. I would still perfer just banning
it and slowing the computers down on building their
own trade goods to keep it in balance, though I would
gladly comprimise on a signifigant increase in cost
to purchase outright.

I do favor having victory method eliminated as a scoring
device, it should just end the game in victory and
let the remaining factors determine your score.

Difficulty should just be a modifier to the score as it
likely is now, perhaps a bit more signifigant.

Size is tough, as larger universes allow higher
pop which naturally leads to higher scores. If there
is an added bonus for larger sizes on top of that
then I would be shocked and it should be not only
removed but given to the smaller galaxies.

Also as pop(or hopefuly PQ) is the biggest determinant
of score, lower abundant galaxies should also get a
bonus to score to offset their lower pop(pq) limits.

I also think opponants that are 'good' aligned shouldn't
be worth as much of a bonus as opponants that are evil.

I think all the games should be kept together but I
could see the benefit of having filters that would let
people see what others scores would be using only
certain paramaters that the viewer could select in the
filter. This might be a very big number cruncher though
and undoable.
Perhaps a better idea would be to keep an overall
ranking list and then seperate lists for just
the galaxy sizes.

Again, great post, much I agree with!




Reply #43 from Stardock Forums Top
staffa, why did you care to join GROSS?

It seems like you convincingly proved sever flaws in scoring. And how you did it? By getting huge scores.

Are you trying to prove that GROSS is gross? You don't like them much, do you? Any respectful empire would not tolerate obviously "unethical" points.
________
Unethical? sheesh. You clowns posted total lies about a merger supposedly happening between us that you and we know never took place and now you dare call anything unethical? Talk about Pot calling the kettle black.

Axels Quite frankly, you're a bitter person who knows nothing about us.


We are an evil empire simply because, if you've read the comic strip, (it was get rid of slimy girls in the stip) Calvin's G.R.O.S.S. empire was also an evil empire. It was play. This game is play. IT ISN'T REAL. IT'S FUN!!!!
It doesn't make us evil people. Tis a shame you cannot grasp the concept. The "evil empire bent on controlling everything" is straight out of Calvin and Hobbes, which I've already said on numerous occasions. I thought it funny, and designed what I thought might be a fun empire (in the theme of this game) based on it. Others think it's fun too. Some don't that's their choice.
We aren't Satan worshipers or anything like that. Besides, In this game, all the dang strategies are evil. No need to get jealous because someone had some creativity and ingenuity other than "Join because you're from spot x" So simply stop lying, try reading our thread and learn something.

If you bothered to read, Indeed if you stopped being bitter long enough to read, you will see our policy on score milking right in our thread. It states clearly several times. And I have repeated it several times that I recommend not doing that. Reason: Ultimately, score milking leads to quitting as after about 5 or 6 7 hour sessions of boredom, what else is there? But, quite frankly, I will not and cannot I don't dictate how someone plays and that's up to them whether they want to exploit a perfectly legal and above board way to score points that is not as you say unethical. Unethical is cheating (deliberately altering the game from stock or aproved mods to score points) That will get you kicked from my empire.


Quite frankly, :) Staffa did what I would hope all my members do. Found a totally non fun exploitation and posted it here in hopes of fixing it, Not exploiting it further. Because now that everyone knows it, no one can truly exploit it anymore and we all agree it's boring.

If he were a masturbator, and exploiter as you have charged, he'd have kept it secret.

Speaking of doing that, your very empire has it's own message board independent of this site for that very purpose. Thus, we are totally innocent of the very thing you charge us with and you are totally guilty.


G.R.O.S.S. has not started its own site for two reasons.
1. We are a Galviv empire and are receiving Galciv services so we should post here and support the galciv site.
2. Our strategies are posted for anyone that wants to read em right here on this site in our thread. Of course, none of us are as good as staffa at the moment so no one should pay attention to our strategies if they want high scores. HEHE.


Funny how you added Copernicus when he exploited a high score, Yet he never posted how. Though I think he probably would have had he thought about it. he seems to be the best of you.
You added him and leapfrogged us with nary a peep on the exploitation then. And we made none of these cheap charges against you. Seems it was all well and good when you were benefitting from it and we weren't. Now we get a benefit and it's waaaaaaaaah!!!!!!!!!!!!

And Staffa had the integrity to post it in the attempt to get the Dev's to change something that's makes things unfun for all. If he were truly unethical as you charge, he'd have never posted it. He'd have simply exploited it, told us and moved on. I think Copernicus would have too. But I know darn well you, Surther, and Idle would not have. Perhaps that's why you're so upset. You just had a Grosser show you how it should be ethics wise and you can't handle that. Well too bad. Well done Staffa. Well done.

I've quite frankly had enough of your crybaby sourgrapes false allegations.

P. B. O.

Reply #44 from Stardock Forums Top
Codemonkey: You're genuinely upset with the scoring system. That's ok.

But I believe you're wrong on Staffa. You namecalled and made charges. That is not.

If he were merely exploiting as you charge why post it for all to see? After all, an exploit only benefits you if you are the only one that knows about it. Once everyone knows, it doesn't benefit you any more.

He posted it in the hopes of changing the system. The same thing you would also like to see changed. Now you may disagree with him on how to go about it, but that's all it is.

I looked at his scores. He indeed posted it right after he discovered it happened once he was certain.
Reply #45 from Stardock Forums Top
Rush buying tradegoods is one such thing. Now another
solution to the 'problem' would be to vastly
devalue their worth as a tradegood. I dont like this
idea, and I doubt you do either, as it would essentially
eliminate them from any relevence. I want to keep them
relevent and remove the abusive ability to purchase
them instantly which is both unfair to the AI and
illogical from a realism perspective. To be able
to instantly purchase an item that instantly denies
anyone else the ability to aquire said item is just
lame. There is also a precedent for it in the gaming
community, as Civ 3 possess the ability to also purchase
things for rush building EXCEPT wonders.

I believe both from a realism and a fair to the AI perspective, Military ships should be the only things rush bought. After all, Private companies out there building and sellng military hardware isn't all that much a stretch and in fact exists on Earth today. A private company having Terreforming of planet x ready to poof into being in a month is pretty darned far fetched.
Reply #46 from Stardock Forums Top
Pontius, you should learn to be consice. I doubt many people read your two page long essays.

My reply to you: of course it's fun. Nobody mentioned anything else. You and Code Monkey take it personally for some reason. Oh well, I am sorry for you... And now back to the game :D

Alex
Iowa City

P.S. I will be dying laughing when Staffa comes to his senses as Midwesterner.
Reply #47 from Stardock Forums Top
I've already posted my comments on scoring once, but after reading this discussion I want to state them again in a more refined shape. My point of view is that the score should be awarded according to the difficulty of the game and should not depend on how the victory has been achieved. Basically, there're 2 major factors affecting the difficulty: AI level and the start position relatively to the start positions of other races. Galaxy size and planet frequency also have some impact.

The main reason for my position is that any other scoring usually makes one path better than another thus making everybody who wants to score high follow the certain path ignoring much of the depth of the game. To eliminate this problem and allow the player to chooce any path he wishes it is necessary to remove dependency of score from the any parameters at the end of the game.

The second reason is that it also eliminates Ctrl-N exploit. Or rather converts it into difficulty selector.

Such a system would produce the highest scores against the stongest AI from the poorest start (if one can win). This also creates a natural progression for every player allowing him to go to higher difficulty as he masters the game and reflect his/her improved skills in higher scores.

How to estimate the starting position. Basic algorithm is probably to evaluate it as sum of the planet ratings for all nearyby planets. Rating of the planet will depend on PQ and from the distance from the homeworld
comparing to the distance from the homeworld of other races. Then it should be weighted against the starting ratings of other races. Minor races in close proximity should also be accounted.

Besides scoring concerns Staffa has expressed few gameplay points - influence conquest and trade good rush. In my opinion they should be addressed, and actually, they're probably more important that metaverse score issues.
Reply #48 from Stardock Forums Top
//The main reason for my position is that any other scoring usually makes one path better than another thus making everybody who wants to score high follow the certain path ignoring much of the depth of the game. To eliminate this problem and allow the player to chooce any path he wishes it is necessary to remove dependency of score from the any parameters at the end of the game.//

This is wrong because then will be most efficient to play games that will took least real time.

//The second reason is that it also eliminates Ctrl-N exploit. Or rather converts it into difficulty selector.//

Better respawn - less micro you need to win -> more wins/less losses -> better score

//How to estimate the starting position. Basic algorithm is probably to evaluate it as sum of the planet ratings for all nearyby planets. Rating of the planet will depend on PQ and from the distance from the homeworld
comparing to the distance from the homeworld of other races. Then it should be weighted against the starting ratings of other races. Minor races in close proximity should also be accounted.//

And resources too.

~SDC~
Reply #49 from Stardock Forums Top
#47 Alexti
While I think your scoring idea is a good one,
especially trying to take into account the starting
posistion, I still think that a victory that occurs
after total galatic domination is > then a victory
that occurs when you scrape by on a tech or alliance
victory with owning very little of the galaxy and your
scoring method would rate these as equal. I also think
time should be a factor.

If you could take these into acount(again I restate
using PQ ownership as a method), then I think
your method would be awesome.

Reply #50 from Stardock Forums Top
Having read this entire thread....

Good points Staffa, CodeMonkey, et al. (means and other in latin :) ) Scoring system probably should be somewhat more level or probably not based on population. Planets shuold definately have caps, and they seem to do as far as I can tell.

Regarding the Midwesterner vs GROSS thing...well it's just a game, its not like (as Pontius) mentioned we are all Satan worshipers. I think some people protest to much. You don't see me whining about my pathetic scores, do you? :) My hat is off to anyone who can breeze through the AI on Genius or Incredible level. Apparently Brad, early on, had some suspicion of cheating if anyone managed to do this and rack up these huge scores. But ultimate, all's fair in love and war (as long as you don't cheat). I think most GROSSers are honorable people, just not so nice to the AIs. Which is as it should be. Too bad there is no multiplayer, that would really be interesting.

Happy GalCiving.