Race doesn't matter when it comes to scores.

Difficulty level doesn't seem to matter much either.

Victory type does make a difference. Military Conquest definitely scores the most. The other victory types seem to score about the same although perhaps a Tech Victory scores the least.

I remember people posting something a little more quantitative about this but I couldn't find it nor do I remember very much, but if I recall correctly there was something about a military victory being worth 2.5 times the base score. What a base score is and what the other victory conditions are worth I don't know, perhaps someone else will know this.

Size matters. More specifically the number of planets matters. The more planets, the higher the score pretty much end of story. Picking abundant everything as well as scattered systems or perhaps loose clusters is the best way to go, for some reason dense clusters seems to result in far fewer planets. Also the number of resources in the galaxy to mine can make a huge difference. I think it's far more important to get the lion's share of the galaxies resources early and hold onto them than it is to colonize the most planets.

As far as strategy to get higher scores there are a number of things. There are four components of score; Social, Tech, Economy and Military. These are reflected by the graphs that are shown in the timeline section of the civilization manager. Getting a high value in any or all of these components of score won't necessarily add much to your score, you need to have high values in these components that are held for a noticeable length of time before they have significant impact to your score.

Concerning your Social score it's definite that your population is a prime part of this component. I also strongly suspect that the overall level of your influence contributes to this. There is also some possibility that your approval is part of this as well although I tend to doubt it. Clearly maximizing your population over long periods of time tends to increase this component. Also I would recommend that you grab every influence resource you can get. I know some folks that are uncertain whether or not influence matters but it seems that games where I've ignored influence resources have a lower Social score than games where I haven't.

Your research score seems to be dependent on only your research spending. The tech rate you select doesn't seem to matter. Also whether or not you have any techs to research doesn't seem to matter. Money spent on research even after the tech tree is complete counts as much as anything else. The number of techs you have or whether or not you researched them yourself doesn't seem to matter. This component is one that you can spend a lot of time and effort on for very little return. I've had games with significant amounts of research that I doubt have ever been equaled and the Research score was extremely disappointing. To put this in context I had 5 separate PQ32 research planets all of which were surrounded by 16 economic SB's giving me total research bonus of 384%. My top research planet was giving me over 16,000 RP's per week and the least of my five main research planets was giving me over 10,000 RP's per week. Besides the 5 PQ32's I had close to 50 other planets that shared in at least some of the bonus from the economic starbase arrays that were optimized for research. My total research exceeded 200,000 RP's per week. It's a little tough to correlate but I suspect that research perhaps added about 30K to the score of that game. Very disappointing.

Economy is a component that you can get a lot of benefit from but it does take *very* high levels to get something noticeable. I've gotten reasonable results from having income in the 1.3M bc to 1.6M bc per week range held for on the order of two to three years. This obviously requires a good amount of economic resources (usually 6) to mine. This is also where alignment can help. If you're evil you can build the Mind Control Center which gives a 100% global economic bonus. Finally, there's the luck of getting (and keeping) the Economic Prosperity event that doubles your economic output.

Military ranking is another area that can be maximized. This is simply the sum of all your attack points plus defense points plus one tenth of your hit points. The bonuses supplied by military starbases as well as the Spin Control Center count in this calculation. So of course do the bonuses supplied by military resource mining and racial ability as well as the bonus you get when ships are in orbit (not quite sure the value of this bonus).

As I mentioned earlier you need to do these things for long periods of time to show any noticeable benefit. To be used to the best effect, doing things that increase your score should be an integral part of your strategy that you employ from the beginning throughout the entire game. Thus building a military SB array early to pump up your military ranking helps you to avoid wars that you don't want, helps you to end wars that you don't avoid on more favorable terms (such as being able to demand a number of your opponents planets as part of a peace treaty) as well as increases your military score over time.

Finally, with all other things equal, ending the game earlier versus later scores higher. The all other things equal part is what's usually in question.

I have my own personal theory about how length of game works. It seems to have applied to every game that I've ever played although I've seen the breakdowns of scores from other folks, some of which fit the following data and some of which don't. In any case as I said this is my own personal opinion so take it for what it's worth.

If you look at the four individual components of your score and sum them they usually don't add up to the total score that's reported. In general the longer the game, the bigger the discrepancy between the sum of the component scores and the total reported score. This seems to correlate well, although as I mentioned there are some games that seem to violate this. In any case based on my games I've come up with the following percentages. The following lists the reported length of game in years. In each case these games were all ended Dec 22. Since ending a game anywhere between Jan 1st and Dec 22nd all count as the same number of years, it's probably always advantageous to end the game Dec 22nd. In any case the following lists the game length in years and the ratio of the total score to the sum of the four components of score.

5 years = 87%
6 years = 78%
7 years = 66%
8 years = 58%

That's the only data I have. I'd be interested if folks were willing to post data from their games to see if we can extend and/or validate this theory.

In any case it's clear that the longer a game goes on the more points you'll accumulate but on the other hand the less credit you get for them. There is a balance with length of game and potential point increases. It doesn't seem that you ever really get to the point where score starts to go down but there's no doubt you get to the point where it's not worth the effort to continue the game. Where exactly this point is depends a lot on what's going on in the game. If your pop is still growing fast, or if your income is growing fast or military rank is growing fast then it's probably worthwhile to continue the game. If nothing much is growing (and growing fast) there's really not much point in continuing.

In any case some people seem to think that you can take any game and arbitrarily extend it and get pretty much any score you want. Please feel free to try it and let me know how that works out for you.

I appreciate the observations by Mumblefratz. This should help us figure out what is going on with the scoring. Up to this point, I am generally surprised (either pleasantly or unpleasantly) by the score at the end of each game. It would be nice to at least be able to have some sense of how I was doing as the game progressed!

I have to agree with tetleytea. Usually when I get an influence victory ,it's only because I dont' want to take the time to "clean up" so to speak. However, once or twice I've gotten it where I wasn't sure I could because my tech defenses didn't line up with the AI's weapons.

The new AltMeta is here, see the AltMeta Class Beta.

So in what way is the scoring not fair? What do you suggest could be done to improve fairness?

I'm not critical of anyone's opinion. There are those that are just not interested in the score. There's nothing wrong with that. It's a legitimate choice. But then there are those that would like to compete but feel the playing field isn't level. This is an issue that *can* be addressed. Addressing these kinds of concerns was the entire motivation for the creation of the AltMeta.

No one is deluding themselves into thinking the AltMeta is the end all and be all, but I do believe that it's an improvement over the official metaverse. With suggestions from others it can be even better, but not if you don't participate. So I ask again, what is it that you don't think is fair and what do you suggest could be done to improve it?

Please check out the AltMeta Class Beta because that statement is no longer true. If you wish to play large or medium maps then there is a seperate division for you. In the Galactic class, gigantic and huge galaxy games don't count. If you prefer small or tiny then there's the Solar class where medium galaxies and above are excluded.

Don't want to have to go through the tedium of conquering everyone to the last planet? That's fine too, we now have a set of Civil victory classes, again broken up by galaxy size, where military victories are excluded. Basically we now have seperate classes for pretty much any kind of game you want to play. Within these classes competition is only between those playing games that have a similar scoring capability.

Please chack out the AltMeta Class Beta, because the goal of this *is* to level the playing field. I'm not saying we've got it perfect, in fact the AltMeta is a work in progress, but the point is that we're trying to make things as fair as possible and we in particular want the opinions of those that have felt ignored by the official metaverse to help us drive future changes. You say you want a level playing field. We say we're trying to provide it. The least you owe us is to check it out.

The fairness comment was more directed at dystopic, which was his complaint.

What I'm saying is that we're trying to change things and we want the input from all to guide us. It's fine to complain about the problems and inequities of the current metaverse. But when someone comes along and says, "yes, I agree with you, what can we do to make it better?" and you fail to contribute then you give up your right to complain.   

BTW I've always been for some form of the dreaded multiplayer. Maybe someday we'll get it.   

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PS. Scenarios are not very far down the list at this point. We're not quite sure exactly how we'll be able to include them but we're looking at them at this very moment.
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My point wasn't to put you on the spot. My point is to sound out folks that don't play the metaverse, try find out why they don't play the metaverse and see if they have any suggestions as to what could be done that might interest them.

The reason I specifically asked about fairness is that there's no doubt in my mind that there are a lot of things about the current metaverse that are definitely not fair. The point that Mistralok made is extremely valid. In the current metaverse there's really only one style of game that you can play if you want to compete. You play gigantic abundant all military victories or there's really not much point bothering.

For those that prefer this style of game that's fine but everyone else is faced with two choices. They can either give up the kind of game that they prefer and play the style of game that it takes to compete, or they can become disgusted with the metaverse and not bother. From my point of view neither of these options is very good.

There's also the whole aspect of score. Simply by scoring something you're making a value judgment. The clear assumption is that a higher score is somehow better than a lower one. In an ideal scoring system this assumption should be true, someone that scores higher than someone else should be a better player. However there's no such thing as an ideal scoring system, look at the scoring in Figure Skating if you need a prime example of this. Even in a sport like boxing the assumption that the winner is the better fighter is not always true. The way I see it is that the only truly valid scoring system in boxing would be if all matches were fought to the death.

In a similar way, I think that the only real way to tell if someone is a better GalCiv2 player would be with multiplayer. In any case there are a lot of complex arguments one could make on all sides of these issues and still nothing would be decided. Ultimately you have to admit that you can't interest everyone, but that still doesn't stop me from at least trying.

In any case we're trying to improve the metaverse. We think the AltMeta *is* an improvement, but we aren't deluding ourselves into believing that it's perfect. If there's anything about the metaverse that particularly annoys you or anything that could possibly change about it that would interest you, I'd like to know about it. That's pretty much it.

No it's not fair. But then again no one has any real certainty either. I know what I've done to get high scores and I pretty much freely share those methods with everyone as listed in post #2 of this thread. The problems are that there is a lot more behind this than just what you do specifically for score. How do you colonize planets? How do you decide to colonize a new planet or instead use the pop and money to build up a planet that's alread colonized? When do you first go to war? How do you decide whether or not to go for that new planet or grab an economic resource. The answer is pretty much trial and error guided by the experience that pretty much everyone shares on this site everyday. There are endless questions like this that make a difference in how fast you can win the game and ultimately how high you'll score.

There really is no magic formula to this game whether you're talking about winning or scoring. As I've said many times nothing is perfect. All I can do is to try and make things better than I found them. I can't give you fair, but I can give you a little bit fairer than it was before.

It is possible to do this if you want to make the effort. You would however have to have the game installed on a PC with internet access. You can then merely start the metaverse game on the internet PC and then immediately save the game. You can then take the save game to any PC to play it out. When you end the game you get a endgame.sav file that you take back to the internet PC to submit.

As far as MP, that's really an entirely different discussion. Certainly no one would ever mistake GalCiv2 for a RTS and definitely the AI is the heart and soul of this game, I don't think there's a single person that would want to jepordize the AI for MP. I just think that it might be nice to have the ability to play a MP game once in a great while. But this really isn't the thread to discuss it.

Yes. That will be a military victory. It doesn't matter how you get there only how it finally ends.