Yr score is lower beause:-
1. U lowered the difficulty level from crippling to painful.
2. U played a year less, missed out on more points from increased pop. growth, economy, military and research.
I think if u had stayed at the same level, plus played 1 more yr u would have got 60,000 - 70,000 pts. 1.31 still lower than 1.2 but only slightly so. |
It is not as simple as that. I was comparing it to the score on Sept 5,2006, where I played a 5 year game on gigantic and scored 84,500. And yes there was another game that took 6 years on Sept 19th in which I scored nearly the same amount with 83,750.
The game I played using 1.3 that only scored 42,000 was played on Painful instead of Crippling but that also is part of the problem, Crippling is now much more difficult, then it was before, in fact the painful game I played was harder then some of the Crippling games I played on 1.2.
I don't think playing only one level lower should reduce my score from 84,500 to 42,000, but the fact that I had to play on a lower level is part of the problem.
The problem is that it takes so much longer to accomplish the same things you did on 1.2 because the economy is now so extremely slow to develop, and that makes everything else slower. Before I was able to develop a fantastic economy on Crippling, now I can not even come close to that on Painful. I was able before by the 4th year to purchase many ships and buildings per turn with cash, this resulted in my research, military, and social building all to develop at an incredible rate, I can no longer afford to do that with 1.3 even on the easier setting.
So I should have been able to accomplish a lot more on the easier setting not less. Before I was able to complete all research by year 5 and the other time by year 6 with 1.2 on crippling. On the easier setting of painful with 1.3 I was no where close to accomplishing that because I could no longer afford to purchase lots of Neutrality Learning Centers or Discovery Spheres which helped me to finish the research tree quickly. Also could no longer purchase lots of ships etc. That is how I run my economy, I create a super economy where I can purchase most things instead of waiting for them to be built, but I can no longer do that. I was so far behind with 1.3 on an easier setting that it probably would have taken 8 or 10 years to accomplish it with 1.3 which would lower the score anyway because it would be more years.
So the fact that I was playing on a easier level should have made it even easier to develop my economy, research and military, not slow it down to a crawl. Also you cannot get the higher population like before because of the changes they made, the morale now gets too bad if you build more then one farm per planet, so this hurts your score as well. These changes may seem minor looked at individually but they have a domino effect. Poorer morale effects how large a population you can have, and how much you can tax which hurts the economy, which in turn effects research and military, etc. So that is why I said those still using 1.2 have a big advantage and can get higher scores because they are not handicapped by the changes in 1.3. It has really messed up the game balance in my opinion.
