I just continued the same game, and finished it in two more years with influence victory (twice as many pop, and a few more techs), 6600 points.
So it seems if alliance has a *9 multiplier and the influence *8, the base scores are 780 and 825.. maybe I'll try a military conquest for the same game.. Hopefully it will be 900*10

~SDC~

Hi RayChua. I just try the scoring system with painful. The game was completely diplomatic-influence. I had only battleaxes, never been at war. Again I found that scoring is strange I got the score even better than for very similar crippling game.

Can you give some details about your medium crippling game with score around 15000 ?

I'm not going to play much, but from time to time I'll submit just to stay at top 50, or top 100.

If only I knew what the tricks to scoring are. All my crippling games are about the same, I rush to be the dominant force in the galaxy then play SimGalciv to get all the wonders/TGs (I get them every one) and techs. But my scores vary, as you see my Medium did better than Huge. It could be because of the fact that the pop score rewards you only for the percentage of the galaxy you don't control (ie. 30% score when you have 70% of galaxy pop)so that could be why I score poorly as I rush to dominate quickly.

I will try a Crippling Large next and play without rushing and see what kind of score I will get.

Finally pushed myself off of Normal and moved to Challenging. Scored an Influence victory (damn, I have to remember to turn that off next time).

And by the way Pontius, I have every intention of moving you to second

I finished the experiment to win the mentioned game with conquest: 10580, that means a base score of 1058. A pity that quick wins aren't revarded too well:(

~SDC~

Yes, Staffa wrote long essays explaining why he thought speed should be rewarded and I do agree with him. This is a 4X strategy game of which the objective is to win. This is not SimCity or Pharoah were the objective is to build.

However, Brad thinks differently so we will play by whatever scoring system is presented to us.

Philopoemen, you are averaging a medium game a day. That's a terrific workrate! Remember to recharge those afterburners once in a while.

One week has passed since the Summoning Call was made. The White Council has more than doubled in numbers and tripled in score and it is now well poised to give the Top 3 empires a run for their money.

Continue to post your thoughts, war-stories, questions and other stuff on our thread so that we can build up our little community here on the board. We may not have a swanky website like some empires but its more important that we are having fun here.

Well I think this thread is fun AND swanky.

Damn someone has to help me with my rushing skills.

Maybe I'm screwing up my rush, but i've never gotten even close to the results from my second attempt at it.

I figure as soon as I win a maso game on 1.05, I'll join some empire.

Seeing as how I am in third now, thank you very much. Proceed at once. By all means move me to second.

ha! my maso alliance victory only scored 4500

and Brad is thinking that the longer you play the more replayability you get from a game, unfortuantely I only get that sickening feeling of tedious boredom.

Join the "Why I am getting so a low score for skilfully beating Maso faster than someone beating Calkwalk" gang, Maike.

The scoring rewards empire building, not skill.

Ray, I have a confession (don't tell Pontius) my last crippling small map I milked as I have never milked before. I built every playground, every retirement village, this and that, I built hundreds of ships and missiles, researched every evil tech, bought every good tech, every civ was an alignment of Very Good- and it still only scored 10,020. Yet I note that EBZM gets 11,000+ points for small maps! I have no idea how people get such high scores. :notsure:

The best way to go is to own half the galaxy until you reach really high tech + population levels, slowly culturally assimulate everyone and win then a military victory in the end

yeah, I played that maso pretty skillfully, but there was no way I would have scored a high score, I owned about 1/2 the star-systems but still wasn't producing nearly enough to keep up with the other civs

and I forgot about that feeling of repeated redundancy.

Ok, finished my Crippling Large yesterday. For that game, my bonuses are PQ+5, Econ+30, Spd+1. Main objective is to build up a solid economy and tech.

Only wars I fought was against minors. Game ended through cultural assimilation in 20yrs. All tech and all TGs/wonders save Grav Acc (which Dregs rushed early and it was obvious that their economy was crippled for many months).

I didn't build a single cultural SB or culturebomb planet but had 3-4 influence resources so everyone just fell over after my pop shot up.

All this leads me to believe that that it is the pop that is causing this big variation in scoring. Being aggressive and rushing AI early would give you more pop but likely less score as there is a multiplier of 100%-x% (x is % of galaxy pop owned by you). So if you own 75% of galaxy, you only get a 25% multipler. The best pop score would be obtained by having a big pop but not owning a huge % of the galaxy pop for the most part of the game. So peaceful building game with limited aggression, then all-out-strike or assimilation at the end.

This component of scoring disadvantages the maso player as I have not yet heard of any maso player being able to play a peaceful game and win without rushing. You can put all AI to good and play good but once they build battleships in year 5, their military rating will shoot through the roof and you will look like a tasty (albeit sainty) desert.

Another aspect of scoring that disadvantages Maso is the points for wonders/TGs. In Crippling, I get them all unless AI rushes them (in my current game, Yor rushed Diplo early and again I see their economy grind to a halt for many months. Then I bought it off them for a song.). In Maso, I can't get most because the AI with their tremendous bonuses get them easily through rushing or building.

As such, I feel that the base difficulty score for Maso should be increased by a larger factor to compensate.

Noticed that we have 6 Council Members in the Top50 board, more than any other empires. (Here's the opportunity for all empires to come out with their own league table victories like the consultants. Eg, Highest number of Evil Normal Small games among the Top 43)

Happy also to note that the 6 of us are challenging the harder difficulty levels rather than reaching the top through spamming easy games.

Ray, I have to agree. Maso wins should get many more points than they do. But in Frog's explanation of the scoring he suggested that you get a good score for having a high population at the start. How does that work if it pays never to have a high proportion of the galaxy population? Although, I suppose a high pop at the start wouldn't be a large % of the galaxy pop: and you need a good pop for the economy.

So, how does this sound to get a higher score:
- balance the number of worlds one has to about 50% of the galaxy population
- build up the home worlds' infrastructure, whilst stacking combat transports (siphoning off population steadily which also keeps one's pop % down) as well as an attacking military
- then in a sudden rush, take out as many planets as possible
- the quick wrap up should be assisted by culture flipping and the odd attack on a hold-out alien planet
- presumably, the game could still be milked at the end to get all the techs.

Difficulties would be juggling influence, and letting the remaining civs get too strong and too high population (so too many combat transports required).

Obviously a slow grinding game with the odd war and then relying on culture flipping over several years is not as good a scorer.

And not only is maso under-valued, but maso is now beyond impossible for me and all bar a dozen(?) players. Before, I could occasionally win on maso small maps if I had a fantastic start. You also previously suggested another difficulty between crippling and maso, which would be much appreciated.

The way to get a big pop without having a high% of galaxy pop is for the AI to grow fast as well. In my current game, I sold Aphro and other +pop growth techs to the AI once I got them. I'm also not eating up minors as they also usually have big pops.

I've not done the number crunching (where's Ellestar when we need him?) to see what is the magic % of galaxy pop to have to maximise pop score but 50% seems reasonable, enabling you to balance a large but not overwhelming pop.

Maso is a real chore for me now as well. I play it occasionally. I suppose it currently does live up to its name but it would be good if there is a intermediate level for Crippling players looking for a moderately harder challenge.

Okay easy way to get military victory is just get a huge tech lead trade all your techs for all the major powers ships go to war and then make peace and get a few planets. Repeat going to war and peace as necessary as no limit o how many times you can go to war a turn and since you just bought all the ships in the game except colony ships they wil easily capitulate planets also this gives you a huge score as you military is huge influence goes up as you gain planets and just jack social spending up to 100% to get the most points by the time the game ends.

~SDC~

The trade value for mid/end techs is rather insane. I managed to buy SBs off the AI by selling them techs alone.

IMO, the trade value for techs should be modified to actually represent the value to the AI at that point in time. Why should the AI pay through the nose for some obscure espionage or trade route+1 tech when it is locked in a life-n-death battle?

EBZM is running on advice I gave him. His economy is probably well above normal b/c of it.


I already tested your pop hypothesis unwittingly. Game 1. Held a small percentage early. Just gave away all pop and morale boosters to the Aliens. Took em fast via cultural later. Ended up with about 90% of the pop I had in the second game. Second game. Took alot fast, ran pop way up whole game (Didn't just hit turn though) The first game scored about 19k the second 20. So the differences we are talking about are minimal. Not worth taking the extra time to worry about "ok well what's my pop percentage.. Oh too high oops lets load up a transport." Geez, I'd never get through a game in 3 weeks if I worried about that kind of thing. Got the same wonders (and ironically missed the same both games)

Just play a solid balanced game at whatever skill level is fun for you and forget about it. And you are looking at it from the wrong perspective. A single game perspective. Known fact. Totally milked games take longer regardless of skill level. I have found a way to score well without milking at all on Gigantic. I would have to milk to score well on smaller maps and I just won't do that.

EB is using a quick game technique he came up with, and I gave him tips to keep it the same quickness, yet score just a wee bit higher to his advantage. He's using a trade strategy I came up with to maximize trade income. It really really works on small maps.

Guess what led to the problem of maso not scoring? Nerfing pop. It seems pop represented the greatest percentage of score on maso and a lesser percentage on other levels due to being able to do more things at those lesser levels.
And it was precisely the Maso players that complained the loudest for that change. Just goes to show: Be careful what you wish for, you may just get it.

Also: I would disagree highly that Maso indicates greater skill. In a system where you do not have to submit losses or bad scores, It cannot, by definition indicate superior skill (or even inferior skill) On those terms, there is no system, no method of scoring that is going to measure skill. Get it out of your heads right now BEFORE YOU END UP QUITTING IN FRUSTRATION.
Who's superior? A 2 win 10 loss maso player (the two wins submitted, the losses not, or the 10-0 painful player? There is no real answer to that question. I see too many are still under the total delusion that this metaverse can (If we could just find the one ideal scoring system that I want and know will work) measure skill. Skill of course is always defined by the player lobying for whatever he or she wants. It really does get tiresome hearing it go on and on and on.


On the other hand. Darn that EB!!! He's gonna pass me!!!! It must be because he's milking those easy games. That's the only explanation seeing as how his skill is knowingly inferior to mine. What's this? Why Ray's ahead of me. That damn unskilled milker. Squeezing those cow teats are ya? Again that's the only explanation seeing as how his skill is knowingly inferior to mine. If you didn't detect it, this last bit is all sarcasm. But it's just what many who are yapping about score make themselves look like (no one in particular in mind here)

Oh and too many are under the notion that Oh well this skill level should always score higher than that and blah blah.

There is only one way to do that.

Score as follows.

Maso Gigantic win predetermined points regardless of what, how, why.
and so on and so forth down the line.
And this metaverse will be boring in the extreme sense of the word.

I find it great that I can come up with something to help eb score gr8 on normal. (he did most of it himself) And conversely, I can come up with something to help painful score real well, or crippling. That's a skill in itself right there. Yet another talent for which there is no economic market...Dang.

Yes, it's good advice for everyone just to play the game accordingly to their favourite style and screw the scoring. But for the idle minds (like mine), it is an interesting challenge to suss out this scoring system.

Relative skill is certainly difficult to measure but due to the wide gap between Maso and Crippling, I would say that the person who can beat Maso on any map size larger than Tiny for a couple of times is more skillful that someone beating Crippling 10/10. For example, Staffa is more skilful than Sergey even though Staffa wins 10% of his Maso games but Sergey wins all his Crippling. Can Staffa beat Crippling in his sleep? Most certainly.

A person winning all the time on any level should be proceeding to the next and give himself a challenge. For myself, I'm stuck at Crippling even though I am winning handily because I get frustrated by the difficulty of Maso.

I don't think anyone is living in a dream state in thinking that there will ever be a perfect scoring system. However, I do not think it is too much to ask if Maso games will always score above Normal and most certainly Calkwalk no matter what the game settings are. If we could factor in a heavier weightage for difficulty, I think the current scoring system works very well.
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By the way, I'm above you by just a mere 5,000 pts because I have double your games and lots of deadweight.