Ok...i never noticied that (what can i say, i'm just that eager to play LOL )

Anyways...I have had all victory conditions turn on and still won by any victory condition.

I just checked, actually i think that if you turn them all off it will tell you that you can only win by military conquest.

It is actually not too difficult to win a 'pure military' game on maso.

First, bribe the AI to fight each other so that they send you trade and get bad relations between themselves. Then bribe everybody to close relations and ally with all but the strongest AI. Declare war on the black sheep. When you capture his last world, break the alliance with the next strongest AI and declare war on him. Continue this until there are no more AIs.

Unless you consider the use of diplomacy makes this a 'non-pure' military win.


~SDC~

You cannot get a cultural victory if you are at war. So if you get to the point of getting the countdown on cultural victory, you only have to declare war on someone to avoid getting it.

~SDC~

I think cultural victory is not well-conceived for maso players. Typically, my games come down to a fight between me and the toughest AI (the one I couldn't kill easily). On a medium map, they may have only 3-4 systems - but they have a bigger military and probably a bigger economy and manufactoring. Winning at that point would seem cheesy....

The tech nerf annoys me because it seems to be a fairly difficult victory condition or a tedious one...depending on the strength of your empire. I'm usually wrapping up the game around dreadnought / star federation - once in a great while I'll get to Ranger Tech - but I've only had a chance to build rangers a couple of times. I played tech victory out to the end once and it took so long, I certainly wasn't interested in trying it again -- as long as Alien Tech Victory is on to prevent a hide in a corner approach - I don't see why Tech Victory should be penalized at all. It seems to me that in order to beat an AI (particularly a maso or crippling AI) to a tech victory, you'd have to have a civilization that was larger to succeed -- I don't see a reason to penalize this victory type since a good player can beat an AI militarily when outgunned.

I do think turning off Alliance Victory to backstab an ally is cheesy. I don't think this condition should be able to be turned off personally. In fact, Alliance gives me an out when I win a game too early and decide it's not interesting enough to want to play out....


Cypher



~SDC~

I agree with you cypher, why should tech victory be penalised when it takes more time to fufil than any other kind of victory. In order to win you have to spend a long time and in that time a lot of things can go wrong. So how is tech victory easy?

The real problem with scoring is not the scoring at all, but the AI and the way that the end game tends to unfold. I will try to explain.


Stardock appears to place "cranking" at the top of its list of evils to be avoided. They may be right about that. At least under the current situation, players cannot crank VERY short, low difficulty games and outscore Maso players. If players do manage to score a quick, crushing military victory, they score a lot less, because the game ends early in the tech tree.

How do you stop the exploits? How do you stop players from milking the score in absurd ways? The old Tech Exploit was to win by military or cultural means, but stop and leave an AI one or two systems, then sit on that position while researching the rest of the tech to a tech win. That was THE highest way to score. How did they fix it? By adding a ratio factor to the pop scoring, and by nerfing Tech victory into the dirt.

The tech victory was not the problem. The population ratio solution helps, but it could be exploited, too. Suppose ALL scoring was tied to population ratios, the new exploit would be the terror star alpha strike, because that would leave the AI's in place until the final turn.

So why not penalize games that take longer to play? Well, because they you are encouraging cranking. If shorter games score more, players will hit Ctrl-N until they get a strong position from which they can dominate the galaxy quickly, and crank a bunch of these games, scoring more than anybody who takes on a harder situation that cannot be quickly defeated. Thus all the reward goes to cheesing the starting situation, rather than reflecting an accurate measurement of what was accomplished.

All the victory conditions have built-in loopholes anyway. Military victory can be had by terror star, without building any significant space navy. Alliance victory can be had by bribing the AI's to fight one another, or by setting all the AI's to the same starting alignment. Cultural victory can be had the most easily, because the AI's do not play the cultural game at all. They do not build cultural starbases, they will trade away their influence resources, and they do not respond to cultural aggression unless you place a base IN the same sector as their planets. Plus there is no effective limit on the number of starbases per sector. Tech victory can be had EASILY by turning off Alien Tech Win. As long as that is off, player can ALWAYS win by tech just by staying alive and avoiding a cultural loss. If cultural victory is turned on, players can avoid tripping it by being at war.

The bottom line in GalCiv is, if you survive the early phase, the game is over. Rarely, there might be exceptions to this, but they are the exception. Maybe five percent of my games. The AI is good ONLY at military strategy, and it is effective at that ONLY in the time period prior to planetary defenses, when invaders have a 5 to 1 or better advantage in the early game, and a few transports can wipe somebody out. The game is still losable if player blunders, but mostly not. I have not yet lost a game in which I've made it late into the tech tree. The AI is proficient ONLY at the early game strategy. Unless that is fixed, GalCiv will not realize its full potential.

Because essentially it DOES NOT MATTER after that point, for Maso players. Survive that early phase when the AI's are truly dominant and dangerous, and the game is already over. What's left is mopping up, in one form or another, and scoring more for this method over that one seems fruitless to me. It's all the same after that. Once there is NO POSSIBILITY of losing, the meaning of the game has come to an end. All that is left is either getting the most Metaverse Points possible, or ending the game as quickly as possible to move on to the next one, or a compromise combination of the two. Most players lean toward increasing the score. I lean more toward ending quickly, but I do give a nod toward score by avoiding tech wins (which score pitifully) and by avoiding quick wins in which the game ends early in the tech tree (which score pitifully). Otherwise I'm out of there as soon as the game will let me.

The real problem here is the inability of the AI to compete in the late game environment. Well, that's nothing new. That's the same problem the Civ3 AI has. It's HARD to write an AI for a more complex late game situation. There's more to manage, and the AI tends to ride high in the early game based SOLELY on bonuses handed it to it from a high difficulty level. Once those bonuses wear off, with astute players catching up over time, the AI just can't stack up.

Is there a solution to this dilemma? I don't know. But I do know that without a stronger late-game AI, most of this scoring discussion is moot anyway, because the scoring is not the root cause of the problem. The problem is the late game being too easy, in most situations, leading to players having the ability to pick and choose how to steamroll an already beaten AI, and players tending to choose the ways that score most.


- Sirian

A more challenging AI would definitely help. Try to remember, however, that despite how much you believe your idea of an enjoyable game perpetuates playability for the community, others will always seek aspects that you’re dismissing.

Even if we get a more difficult AI, what I gather from this thread is that most of us would still want (correct me if I’m wrong):

1. Greater skill to be rewarded with higher points.

This means someone needs to determine what requires greater skill. Hurley had a good point about biases. We’re subject to the biases at Stardock and hope they consider our widely diverging opinions. Sirian had a good point about cracks in the game. No matter which skills are intended to be rewarded, the cracks in the game must be filled in so that the rewards are applied as intended.

2. More submissions (greater dedication) to also be rewarded.

The scoring system allows for this to an extent. The division by square roots prevents serious abuses.

3. Whichever skill level we’re at, the greatest variety of paths to victory.

The difference between scores of various map sizes has received fewer comments. From this I surmise we’re fairly satisfied with these reward multipliers.

The difference between scores of various victory conditions has received many more comments (it’s the title of this thread after all). If we want the playing field more level or even completely leveled, then we have to accept cranked submissions for whichever techniques that arise. I’d like to point out that we already have cranked masochistic military conquests that are based on a handful of techniques. Opening up the Metaverse to other victory conditions would not do away with cranking, but it would give all of us more ways to enjoy GalCiv and the Metaverse. This being said, I’d like to see what the current impact of completely leveling the victory conditions would be.

As far as the masochistic bonus, if we assume it’s harder to learn an effective masochistic strategy, then it should receive a bonus. Once it is learned, however, it is not hard to repeat. Thus a series of masochistic victories carries disproportionate weight. This is demonstrated by the first page of the Metaverse. Those players (with only a couple of exceptions) know that they get so much more bang for the buck with masochistic, that anything less is pointless. The bonus has narrowed variety among the more skilled players and a flattening of that exponential curve is overdue.

4. Every positive score to not hurt our overall score or our empire’s score (ok, yes, this is actually from other threads, but it's closely related).

This is where the division by square roots is both a savior and a demon. The current calculation discourages players from submitting, for example, 50 losses per day of 100 points each. This discouragement is understandable. It also, however, discourages a player who submits huge masochistic military conquests from submitting medium painful beyond human wins. I agree that the second victory takes less skill (well... for the sake of this argument it does) and should therefore add minimal points to a player’s score, but the current calculation actually penalizes a player’s score in such an instance. The result is discouragement from exploring GalCiv’s options. I know there’s a way to prevent positive scores from hurting a player’s overall score and I hope the mathematicians at Stardock implement such a system.

I agree with you, Kitwarrior. I have a few comments though:

1) Wouldn't be an idea to start a thread on this ? (btw i think its a great idea that somebody tries to summarize these threads - that will help the communication to Stardock)

2)

Yes but i think (that i was i have found myself) that you will grow tired of the game if you keep on playing it the same way over and over again (and thus stop playing), so this is in my opinion the players own responsibily.

Well, if no one else will--I'll pipe up on this. It is not clear to me that the bonus is appropriate. While a maso/gig game does require more relative time--the game does seem a bit easier to me than a medium map where the majors are on you almost at the start. Smaller than that--it seems there is a longer time that the majors give you to send trade routes (or that their freighters get there more quickly with the decreased distance).

There may be some balancing needed in the scoring (or even the gameplay) between map sizes. For the most part, I have found the tiny and small maso games to be relatively easy, while the medium and large are the toughest. Huge and Gigantic are time-consuming, but easy to keep out of trouble with the majors.

Aaburg:


Right on the mark. I keep a log of all the picks/map sizes and habitability conditions/parties/victory conditions/alignments/etc. for my games so that I am trying something new each time. Makes for development of more than one skillset, and allows varied gameplay for longer game legs, IMHO.

They should make an ideal year for each victory condition to be won by. Every year after this ideal year is penalised in points and visa verse . In this manner the best players would get point as they would be able to win a victory faster than the other players. Points should not be awarded for population and all victory types should gain equal points and take equal bonuses and penalties based on time.

I disagree. Without further qualification, all this does is reward players for playing on easier maps. This only further encourages the already rampant use of Ctrl-n to reroll the map. Unless the scoring can evaluate the difficulty factors inherent to the map layouts -- how close the minors may be, which AI's secure the most in the land grab and what their alignments are relative to the players, etc -- then any single standard like the one Goblin proposes would only backfire.

When Frogboy asked for ideas from the community about scenarios for the expansion, I suggested a kind of ironman competition.

http://www.galciv.com/forum.asp?BID=GF&id=119039

I believe this would provide a better measurement of ability and performance, because we see losses posted, not just wins, and the situations would vary, meaning players could not build a formula on the easiest options and paths to victory, reroll the maps until they get an idea situation, etc etc -- all of which now skews the standings.

The diehard competitors would gravitate to this competition, while the rest of the Metaverse would remain unaffected, thus stepping on nobody's toes.

I have no idea if Stardock will actually try something that bold. However, I think they might, considering that all of their sales on the expansion will be direct, thus most of their customers for that are tuned in to some degree to their website.

Frogboy would like to see players play the game, not the metaverse -- well this would do that!

My ironman proposal would relegate scoring to a lesser factor, and bring the win/loss record to the fore, under controlled conditions. Thus, no need to fix the scoring or plug all the scoring leaks to make it work. Just close down the gross exploits and we'd have a real competition to play.


- Sirian

Sirian:
You have totally lost me here, im a bear with only a little brain, what do you want done with the Metaverse then? its a score table, ever since i built an Acorn Atom back in '79 , i have noted that people find score tables give a game a longer life, its a set of numbers, people replay the game to get more / bigger numbers to push themselves up the hi score table, im no genius as i already said, i undersatnd that people are a little miffed by the way the calcs are done, i think they all should be the same, just because one man likes strawberry milkshake and another loves it doesnt mean you should charge the man who loves the strawberry milkshake more money, if you see what i mean. So in iteration (i think thats the word, i lost my dictionary last time you posted) ...
Level the calcs for ALL victories, they all take work, but take into account the map size with the calculation , is that it?
Im not having a dig, im just not sure what is wanted thats all ... im blonde , large and can lift heavy weights

Sirian
I don't think that their shouldn't be score bonuses based on difficulty and size. I think that perhaps they should be larger so that the time system encourages people to play harder games and strive to get them done quickly. I think the score should be modified to prevent exploints as follows.

Militery victories should be based on the total number of major civ planets siezed in the duration of game and the base PQ of those planets. This should give players an incentive not to terror star the universe or use the cultural militery victory exploit.

A penalty for planets conquered through overt militery means or terror starred should be awarded to cultural victors in order to stop them winning through force of arms.

Which still comes down to the fact that those who dont use your 'exploits' would be penalised, so no, not a good idea (i must be one of the only ones who built a terror star and thought 'thats looks cool, what does it do?' only because i clicked on one of my planets by mistake when i moved one one did i find out how they worked, and that was 6-7 weeks after i built my first one, honestly), i choose a huge map, (would go one bigger but cant handle the teabreaks between moves later in the game), because i want to have a LONG game, according to most peeps in this post were not sposed to be playing the Metaverse, were sposed to be playing the game ...

Darkspire I do agree with you. I like long games too, even though I play mostly medium (I started a gig, my first to try out how it feels when the minimap looks like a real galaxy). I think the scoring system should be leveled: I did one tech victory, my longest game ever, I spent +/- 3hours clicking end turn, with all my resources into research, just to see how it would end. And was given a puny score. Even though I don't play for score (chech my record: so far my best is 13k)in a movement of rage I came back into the game, stoped all research, fired the scientists, and eradicated all aliens left in the galaxy (which I could have done 6 hours before). Result: I was granted a score twice as high as before! (and it was so much easier!).

And in spite of the time it takes to win a maso/gig (Iwouldn't know, I'm writing based on what I saw here), it seems to me that if a medium/maso is harder (I tend to believe it is: all races are all over you right from the start -- I just saw in the gig I started how much time I had before threats would begin) then trhat one should be awarded more points. Even if it is shorter, or at least a comparable amount of points: a gig having more points because of the time, effort, and the medium because it's more difficult --- both aspects cancelling eachother. In the end, the gig would award more points probably, because of other factors (pop, tech tree, etc) but it wouldn't be such a huge difference. That's true for all levels.



~SDC~

I mentioned this a few pages ago but i ENJOY wiping out ALL the other civs, and i dont think im alone. I agree completely that the scores for all the victory conditions should be leveled, i played to submission all the other types of victories, just didnt enjoy them as much as the military one, i dont use the cultural 'exploits', i cant help it if the one way i like to play is what all the peeps on here say is a 'score-hog', i just find that i like to play it that way, ive been banging my noggin since i went to 1.13 / 1.49 trying to find a new strategy, the AI's are so different, its almost as if you have to use cultural just to survive, which isnt how i like to play, hence my lack of submissions for the last few weeks.

The bonuses and penalties should be balanced so that it gives players an incentive to play at a high level and on a large galaxy. These bonuses as I said earlier should be far more significant than the bonuses for time. You should still get plenty more points from playing a hard game slowly than an easy game quickly. It just gives you an added reward if you can get a hard game done quicker than the next person who's done the same game slowly. At the mement I keep hearing that you get more points from winning the game late beacause of the higher population later in the game which is just silly.

GoblinCookie, i think thats actually pretty much the way it is (the only reason onr would get more points from a long game is that one would have reseach more tech's).

I actually think that difference in score between a Tiny and a Gigantic is to big. In my experience it isn't much harder (if harder at all) to play Gigantic than it is to play Tiny, so right know you get rewarded basically because it takes longer time to play. I don't mind a small reward for choosing a large map, but right know i find that reward to big.

Maybe the reason behind such a difference is that you can submit more games on tiny that on gigantic. So some bonus are needed for gigantic to balance this fact. BUT the bonus could be too big due to the effect of the number of games submitted in one month on your metaverse score.

And that still doesn't address the fact that Medium games are harder than both tiny and gigantic ones.

I struggle to play beyond normal. I find the AI exploration bonus means they expand much faster than you do. But we're getting off topic. All those in favour of militery victories bieng equal raise their virtual hands.
[Message Edited]

Problem is with that, your playing the metaverse not the game, for this to work it needs to be done in a way that makes everyone a happy camper, which is going to take some brainworking.

Making all victory types equal would go along way to encouraging people to play both the game and the metaverse. I'm sure most the gamers (including myself) would like to see this happen aswell.