If ever there was a galaxy designed for goosestepping through the galaxy, I hit it.

from Stardock Forums
Gigantic map, Sol all the way to the left, centered in height. nothing spectacular to see in the first month. However, I very quickly learned that Sol had 4 military resources within two sectors of itself, two more farther up/down the map, and one about a third of the way across the bottom of the map. By the time I reached Battle Hammers (didn't bother to build any military prior to that), I was sitting on 8 military resources, and my BHs had stats that looked like Overlords :) However, I'm not that good at the military campaign (note to self: WORK ON IT!), so I wound up getting a tech victory just as I was grinding the last remaining AI (the Torians) into dust. Just before I started declaring war on everyone (managed to avoid all but one war until very late game) I found one last military resource, and with that, my Excaliburs had attacks of well over 700. I don't think any of them ever took any damage :) In fact, the only ships I had that did take any notable amount of damage were my Rangers, as I was using them to scoop up space junk/etc.



517 views 11 replies
Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
Too bad they don't have a "shooting envy rays from eyes" smiley. My latest game had a not-so-hotso starting position. If I can just whip the Yor, though, I'll by golden.

I'm glad you enjoyed your game, though. I always like to pull for fellow Terran emperors.


RR
Elemental: Reforged
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
Yin, where? I see a game of his that scored 0 and he won. Triggered the anti-cheat code, I would suppose.

Pop-Up Target... glad you had a blast! :D
Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
Either influence or military resources can dramatically change the nature of your game. I had a game with 5 military resources once, and this was back when they added to your hps as well. Once I had a game with 4 influence resources, quite obviously a map made for culture flipping. :)
Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top
Most certainly did, though the long turn times got to be a bit of a drag. Until I tried a Gigantic map, I never thought I'd be tempted to upgrade my game machine (AMD 1500+, 512MB RAM, GF3 TI200 video with 64MB RAM) just to play GalCiv, it had always been so snappy before :)

Must admit that if I weren't so much of a non-agressive type, military resources would be my favorite resources. As is, econ are my favorite, but there were only four of them on the entire map, and I never did grab and upgrade all of them. Heck, it wasn't until the final war that I was able to get any of them, they were all on the far right of the map. Yes, my random generator has a sense of humor. In two games, it has yet to generate a single AI with a good (pure or chaotic) alignment.

Star Pilot: He's probably implying that the game was to easy for the boatload of points that I earned (over 9700, actually). Actually, except for the early war, they didn't affect my winning much, since I had to slow down my tech research to crush as many AI players as I did.
Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top
Star Pilot and Popup Target:

Yes, my post was tongue-in-cheek to say that an easy game on a big map like that probably got huge points...and it did! Mind you, I think Metaverse is a neat idea, it just needs some work if it's to be taken seriously. ;)
Reply #7 from Stardock Forums Top
While I'll admit that I got more points for it than I should have, since I wasn't taking the military approach until the very end, it wasn't as dramatically easier as you'd think.

YIN, how would you suggest fixing the scoring system? Serious question. I don't see any way to evenly and fairly adjust for good/bad starting positions. What you think of as a good position, I may think of as a bad position, and visa versa. I know a lot of people hate starting in the corner, but as long as I've got a direction to expand, I like it. Likewise, if those military resources had been econ resources, it would have fit my playing style much better, and then it would have been a cakewalk. Yes, I think that the scores are overinflated on large maps, but I don't think that a gigantic map should score the same points as a tiny map given the same difficulty level. The gigantic map is a lot more effort.
Reply #8 from Stardock Forums Top
The only fair way is also the most boring: you release a common map or set of maps and show scores based on those maps. Of course, people then memorize the maps and simply fiddle around to maximize scores.

In other words, I don't think there's a way to make this completely fair, but some things like over weighting map size can be adjusted. Also, if points are given for destorying ships, etc., you've got to make sure that the peaceful win isn't discriminated against, etc.

I'm testing a game no in which I plan to (on a Huge map) avoid war completely. So far through the AIs not trading tech aggressively amongst itself, I'm just bossing people all over the place (on Crippling). If it plays to the end the way I see it unfolding, I will submit this as THE MOST BORING round of GalCiv I've played to date.

Yet, it will likely get me huge points.

So I guess my conclusion is a personal one: If you want to get the most enjoyment out of the game, treat Metaverse as a quaint community building tool and not by any means as a measure of how well you play or how much fun the game was...
Reply #9 from Stardock Forums Top
Since you have the choice of which games to submit, the metaverse will never reflect the player's true ability. I would have much preferred it log the score secretly, and the next time you logged on, submit (every game completed) HEHE. You could lose 6 games badly, win one with 30,000 points and all the metaverse will show is the 30,000 points. Do you really think the guy in position #1 scored a 30k right out of the chute? I sure don't. And since score is a weighted average rather than cummulative, big galaxies score more on average. Furthermore, you can get a tech victory even after the computer already did. I think if the computer hits the tech victory first, it ought to be a loss, just like any other method. I thought I had a tech victory going, then to my surprise, The Torians deserted to my empire in droves, pooof cultural domination. But not knowing all the lil tricks to score points, I only scored about 1300 or something like that.
Reply #10 from Stardock Forums Top
*snicker* True. I'm a little competitive about the metaverse, but I don't think that metaverse score directly relates to ability to play the game well, and even if it did, the ability to play the game well doesn't necessarily make you a better person.

Of course (and the reason for the snicker) is because this brought to mind the following statement.

Anal Retentives Unite, and the Metaverse is ours!
Reply #11 from Stardock Forums Top
Oh, forgot to mention one other funny part of the final war. I had sensor drones *EVERYWHERE*. The Torians didn't want to waste the big ships on sensor drones during time of war, apparently, because they were mostly using starfighters and phoenix's to take out the sensor drones. At least at first. Turns out the starfighters were loosing to the sensor drones because of the outrageous bonus to the sensor drones defensive rating :) Not a single fighter lasted long enough to attack a third sensor drone. Even lost a phoenix, though it had taken out several sensor drones first.