Military scoring is a bit out of whack

from GalCiv2 Forums
The social, tech, and economic scores are all pretty much bounded by how much you can develop the habitable planets in the galaxy, and since you eventually run out of new planets to conquer or colonize, there are quickly diminishing returns to letting the game run longer than necessary just to try to increase those scores. I'd argue that the goal should be to eliminate those returns entirely, but the status quo isn't too bad.

But your military rating is only connected to the number of planets via ship maintenance. This would be okay if someone interested in inflating their military rating would quickly run into the maintenance cap. But right now, you don't actually need high-maintenance ships to do that. All you need to do is build a 24 military starbase array stocked with all the ship assist modules, and then configure every single planet in your empire to build a single 1 attack/1 defense tiny ship a turn, rally pointed to one of the two squares that benefit from all 24 military starbases. These ships count as having over 1500 attack+defense yet require only 1 bc maintenance, so you could keep doing this for over 10 game years before maintenance is a problem. (A regularly built ship with over 1500 modified attack+defense would usually have ~50 times the maintenance.) As you keep clicking the "turn" button, your military score goes up and up and up. You don't actually have to do anything on those turns (it helps to spend your treasury below 20000 bc to avoid the economic hit, but truth be told, it really doesn't matter since no matter what you do your economic score will only be a small fraction of your military score).

Look at my last two Metaverse scores if you don't believe this is a real problem. By just hitting "turn" a few hundred more times I'm sure I could have broken 300k, maybe 400k, ON A SMALL MAP. As is, I already more than doubled the previous highest Small map score.

There are various simple fixes to this, such as making military rating give only a small one-time bonus for starbase ship assist modules rather than having them count for every single ship.
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Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Wow, the last time an eploit was posted the fellow had his scores ripped down, and/or his Metaverse account closed.
Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
See you have some replies

I think i will try this out and see how it goes.

Congrats on being our new number 1 too


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Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

Wow, the last time an eploit was posted the fellow had his scores ripped down, and/or his Metaverse account closed.


I really do not care if my current Metaverse scores stand; I'll be the first to admit that they overrepresent my skill level. I care more about improving everyone's future gaming experience (including my own, of course), and eliminating this one imbalance in the scoring system should help.


See you have some replies

I think i will try this out and see how it goes.

Congrats on being our new number 1 too


Happy hunting. Be warned that as the number of tiny ships you have rises into the high thousands, the wait between turns will become really long. Make sure you have something else to do. (I actually brought my laptop home and used it to websurf, etc., while my desktop was crunching away.)
Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Wow, I guess I admire your dedication, but I just couldn't deal with that. That, and the fact that my computer would most likely explode if I tried something similar!


Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Nice stance on it, the problem the gent prior had was his metaverse account being killed and no thank you/apology from moderation staff. Ah well, just a game. I hope to have my first meta game up sometime tomorrow or later this week. I can't bring myself to play for score like that, props to youfor the diligence and mechanical awareness that it takes DoJ.
Reply #6 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Can't say i really agree with someone's account being nerfed for exploiting a "loophole".
Granted i do not know the circumstances of that situation, but if his game was not cheat flagged it should stand, regardless of the ethical/morale debate of how said score was achieved.

Like i said, i had not heard about this till now and there is prolly more to it....by the way anyone know the score he got or is there a thread about it?


Reply #7 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Like i said, i had not heard about this till now and there is prolly more to it....by the way anyone know the score he got or is there a thread about it?

This happened before my time but I did read some old threads about scoring in the days of v1.1. At least I think it was v1.1, whatever version it was before v1.2 anyway.

I actually find this history stuff very interesting.

From what I read prior to v1.2 the score was divided by some factor of the number of turns, but since the score is some kind of cumulative total of your econ, tech, mil and pop values this really has a factor of number of turns automatically built in to the numerator. The end result of this mathematical mumbo jumbo is that there was really no limit to the score, just pressing end turn and doing nothing else caused the score to go up and up.

This was apparently reasonably well known at the time but pretty much kept on the QT. Anyway a fellow named AW Trespasser pushed this to the limit and did a 210 *year* game that scored over 4 million points. From what I've read AW Trespasser seemed to be a decent sort and claimed that his posting of that game was to show how broken the system at that time was and to force Stardock to change the broken system.

As far as I can tell this was the reason the game scoring was changed to having the overall score divided by some factor of the number of turns squared. Anyway AW Trespasser's account was not deleted but his 4 million point (210 year) game was deleted. From there some bad blood developed between Brad and AW Trespasser although from every indication AW Trespasser did accomplish what he intended to do which was to reduce some of the cheese related to scoring. It seemed that AW Trespasser did want some kind of recognition for his game after all even though he felt it was total cheese. However there was certainly no thanks forthcoming from Stardock for exposing this issue.

I think there was over reaction on both sides but if I had to assign blame I think in the end more of it can be assigned to AW Trespasser than to Stardock.

Anyway you can search on AW Trespasser and find some of the threads involved with this. Here's a few links in no particular order, there are certainly other related links for those that are interested to search out.

The most amazing end game save ever!

Why was my score deleted?

For Frogboy

As far as the OP's point I agree that the military bonuses generated by military starbases shouldn't be used in the military scoring calculation. If military starbases gave a more standard percentage bonus then I think it would be fine to include since the effect on the 1/1 fighter would be minimal. I'm not sure what changes would need to be done in the game to accomplish this, it may not be quite as simple as it would seem.

I also agree this is a large source of cheese but I also would suggest that the effect of this is by no means infinite. Due to the division by the square of the number of turns this cannot be used to get any arbitrarily large score simply by hitting end turn enough times. If you have enough patience then you will find that you do reach diminishing returns. That's not to say you can't score substanstially more points doing this than by not doing it.
Reply #8 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

I also agree this is a large source of cheese but I also would suggest that the effect of this is by no means infinite. Due to the division by the square of the number of turns this cannot be used to get any arbitrarily large score simply by hitting end turn enough times. If you have enough patience then you will find that you do reach diminishing returns. That's not to say you can't score substanstially more points doing this than by not doing it.


Yes, there are diminishing returns, which is why I put a "maybe" qualifier on getting 400k on a small map. But seeing as how nobody has broken even 100k on a small map before without this exploit, it's still pretty bad.


As far as the OP's point I agree that the military bonuses generated by military starbases shouldn't be used in the military scoring calculation. If military starbases gave a more standard percentage bonus then I think it would be fine to include since the effect on the 1/1 fighter would be minimal. I'm not sure what changes would need to be done in the game to accomplish this, it may not be quite as simple as it would seem.


Yeah, it's hard to know exactly what is the cleanest way to deal with this problem without knowing a fair amount about the internal game architecture. So all we can really do is bring this issue to Brad's attention, from there he can decide what he wants to do and how high to prioritize it based on its man-hours/benefit ratio.
Reply #9 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
You probably would have been better PMing Frogboy with this information, instead of sharing the exploit with everyone.

Just sayin'.
Reply #10 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Hi!
it's hard to know exactly what is the cleanest way to deal with this problem

The solution is already known: next GalCiv game will not have Metaverse.

BR, Iztok
Reply #11 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Thankyou Mumble, i suppose i will eat my words a little. 4 Million points!!! Yes in that instance some form of correction is warranted, but perhaps a compromise or official notification on-behalf of AW would have eased the situation.

Nevertheless, it was sometime ago, no need to dwell.

Reply #12 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
The solution is already known: next GalCiv game will not have Metaverse.


Did Brad say this at some point?
Reply #13 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Did Brad say this at some point?

I don't think he said that the next "GalCiv game" would not have a metaverse but I think he did say that the next "game" would not have a metaverse. Regardless of exactly what's been said in this regard it's clear that Brad is not entirely enamored with the metaverse.

I'm not trying to put words in his mouth but from what I've read his biggest concern is the big fuss that gets made each time a new version comes out which nerfs some aspect of the game. Although I wouldn’t necessarily assume that it's only metaverse players that complain about the loss of the morale benefit of the stock market or the speed nerf in DA (for example), there is perhaps some validity to this assumption.

He's certainly also expressed disdain at what he’s referred to as people playing the score instead of the game.

However, I think even with this known attitude towards the metaverse, I assume that it still must be considered a double edged sword. Regardless of your individual opinion about it there is no doubt that the metaverse has generated more interest in the game for a certain percentage of people. We can fruitlessly argue about what kind of a percentage that we’re talking about here but without the metaverse there are many that would have given up the game long ago.

I assume my opinion about the metaverse is reasonably well known. My intent behind pushing for the changes that we’ve instituted in the AltMeta is to address a number of different inequities that are inherent in the official metaverse. Clearly, the mechanics of the internal scoring of the game are outside the scope of what the AltMeta can affect.

In any case there are those that point to issues like that pointed out by the OP and say that's why the system should be scrapped and good riddance to it. People are certainly welcome to their own opinion as long as they’re tolerant of the opinion of folks that vehemently disagree.

My opinion is that there are always problems in scoring. Look at Ice Dancing for a recent example. Ideally the scoring system should reflect a person’s skill in the game. To some extent I think it does, however it’s clear from the OP that it’s by no means perfect. Neither is scoring in boxing perfect. In boxing it would be a simple matter to change the scoring system so that the best boxer would always win, make the fight to the death.

Anyway, again my own personal opinion is that just because something’s not perfect doesn’t mean that it should be scrapped. I think you fix what you can and live with what you can’t fix. Over time the most egregious of issues get resolved and things improve. That’s certainly been the goal of the AltMeta.
Reply #14 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
In the original release starbases needed to be a minimum distance (3 or 4 squares) from each other and only squares entirely within the circle got the bonus. Then they switched to 4 per quadrant and later switched to applying the bonus also to squares partially within the circle, which meant it is now possible to have 24 starbases stacked! Why not switch back to setting a minimum distance rather than 4 per quadrant to prevent the 24 stacked starbases cheese!?
Reply #15 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Why not switch back to setting a minimum distance rather than 4 per quadrant to prevent the 24 stacked starbases cheese!?

Perhaps. I'm not quite sure what the effect of a minimum separation would be. Clearly there would still be some potential of stacking of starbases.

I don't think anyone really objects to being able to get 16 economic starbases to concentrate on a planet or small group of planets so as to make uber research or production planets. Whether the military score is boosted by 24 SB's or only by 16 doesn't make that much difference.

Anyway it's my opinion that the use of such a military array for purposes of making a super Spin Control Center is a very legitimate use of this feature (actually without this I see no reason to use military SB's at all). The only downside of such an array is that you get an undeserved boost to the score because of the effect it has on the 1/1 fighter. On a percentage basis this is a 54+9/2=3150% bonus (per SB) for the 1/1 fighter and only a 54/300=18% bonus it would give to a 300 attack value BHE huge hull missile boat. It's the additive nature of the bonus that's really the issue. If this was simply a more normal 24% per SB then due to rounding it wouldn't help the 1/1 fighter at all.

I have no idea what kind of change would be the easiest from the point of view of the game mechanics. Perhaps a minimum seperation isn't a bad idea. I still think the best would be for military starbase bonuses to simply not count towards the score and next best is to change the military SB bonus to be a percentage instead of the straight addition of 54 attack and 9 defense points per SB regardless of the attack/defense value of the ship.

I wonder if this is something that Stardock would be willing to address?