By all means TP, do what ya can over at the core.

Well, I finished earlier than I thought so I may as well post it to give everyone something to shoot for. It was an interesting game and I found it quite challenging, particularly with the combo of very slow tech with no tech trading.

TP_Scot was right, I ended up with 28 planets in the small galaxy which was more than the 23 I had with the last round's medium galaxy settings. Anyway here's a screenshot of my MV post.




Score: 17000
Years: 3
Victory Type: Military Conquest
Character Name: Toshiro Mifune
Submission datetime: 8/23/2007 10:05:00 PM

I'm not as far off from you this time. My first attempt netted me 14500 but took me ten years. I'm not submitting it to the league yet as I may try another.

3 years Mumble! Very fast game, i highly doubt i will come in under the 10 mark, so i will be shooting for a high score.

Well done.

Unbelievable, MUMBLE!
That might be the highest score and fastest game!
8 points!
2nd potential victory for the crusaders in a row!

I think the Blade Runners should trade their suckiest player for Mumblefratz.

(Oh wait, that's me... err, never mind.)

Doubtful. I'm sure the 17000 will be outscored. However, it does point out that winning quicker is the foundation of higher scoring.

In this game I did absolutely nothing to optimize score. I just tried to win as quick as possible. I did actually make it with 3 weeks to spare so I did stretch it out 3 turns to win on Dec 22nd but that was it. It was pretty tough to accomplish and I did things that I wouldn't have done if I was trying for a top score.

The biggest example of this is that I often used mass driver invasion tactics that basicaly wrecked the planet but allowed me to conquer with the minimum pop that I could spare. All in all the biggest limitation was being able to generate the pop required to fill my troop transports so using mass drivers was probably one of the keys to doing this in 3 years.

That's a terrific submission, Mumblefratz - see, I told you that you would adapt easily to the smaller format.

Posting a pretty average game here - I just don't have time to take another shot at this round. A slightly higher score than Mumble's, but after two more years and with DA's higher planet count. Anyway, I expect it to be surpassed by a wide margin, and probably soon.

Score: 22750
Years: 5
Victory Type: Military Conquest
Character Name: WhiskeyTangoFoxtrot
Submission datetime: 8/24/2007 7:02:27 PM

MAN! I feel stupid. I submitted an 8750 pt. game, at the time I thought that was good (it was for me), but mumble and the gang come in and post scores that put mine in the garbage!

Heeeeelppp, meeeeeeeee!

Wait a minute! I need to fix this...

MAN! I feel stupid. I submitted an 8750 pt. game, at the time I thought that was good (it was for me), but mumble and the gang come in and post scores that put mine in the garbage!

Heeeeelppp, meeeeeeeee!

Dont feel bad, I'm in the same boat.

My score is the lowest so far. I'm now playing on higher difficulty to get the upper score in lower time.

The higher difficulty really has a very small impact on the score. It's pretty hard to go up in difficulty and suddenly finish the game quicker than you're used to. I mean there's nothing wrong with raising your difficulty. I would hope that part of the goal of the MV League is for everyone to improve their game and raise their level, however it doesn't happen overnight.

Part of playing against higher competition forces you to do a whole lot of things differently in subtle ways that are very difficult to describe. It's often so hard to describe because mostly you do pretty much the same things that you did at lower levels, you just do them faster and sooner than you used to. Balancing your colony rush is absolutely critical. Colonizing too quickly can cripple you just as easily as colonizing too slowly. The biggest thing against higher level AI is in knowing when not to go for that extra planet because you'll be over extended. This is less of an issue on these smaller maps but still a major factor.

The best players, of which I would consider myself in the bottom echelon, are so because of various reasons, but the biggest reason is that they manage the colony rush better than anyone else. I would have to consider the best player that I ever knew to be Magnumaniac with Purge and Syrrus K not very far behind and probably folks like Killzone, Evil Druid, Fuels Chief, Livonya and perhaps myself rounding out the bottom tier. There are probably many others that should be included in such a list but these are the ones that come to mind off the top of my head. Apologies to those that I should have mentioned.

The whole point of this litany of Hall of Famers is that besides whatever special skill and focus that each of these players have on the game, and believe me each and every one of these do have at *least* one aspect of the game at which they excel, the one thing in common to them all is that they can at least equal the colony rush of the suicidal AI. That’s at a minimum. The reason Magnumaniac is so great is his ability to out rush the suicidal AI at close to a 2 to 1 ratio.

When you can do this and come out of the colony rush with your planets strong that gives you a tremendous advantage. In that case you don’t have to use diplomacy to trick the AI or pick your way through the tech tree to research just the few specially selected techs that will give you an advantage over the AI that will allow you to gradually gain enough of an advantage over them so that you can actually start taking over an AI or two after which you become strong enough to win. If you can out colonize the AI 2 to 1 there’s no subtly about what you do. You’re simply stronger than they are and just start taking them over one by one or even two at the same time.

The question is how do you do this and the answer is I don’t know. The best I can do is equal the Suicidal AI colony rush. I’ve asked and I’m certain that Mag has been perfectly willing to share how he does it, it’s just that he can’t because the things he describes are the same things that I do and the same things that everyone else does he just manages to do them quicker and better and precisely how is simply indescribable.

Anyway the point of this is that it's a mistake to focus exclusively on the score. If you focus on doing things faster, better and earlier then the score will follow. People tend to focus on the “tricks” of high scoring and not the actual game itself and that’s a dead end that can only take you so far. Sure you need to build up an array of military starbases and plop a bunch of ships under it to maximize your military score, but if that’s all you do and you expect to score with the best you’re going to be disappointed because there’s far more basic skill to it then there are tricks and the problem is that no one can simply tell you how to do it.

Hope this helps some folks.

Hey, mumble can you show me how you do it?
I mean, make a video. And narrate a bit. I want to see and learn.

btw, I cranked up the difficulty too high. The AI creamed me in every area. I'm the First National Bank of the Galaxy where you don't have to make a deposit to get money.

It wouldn't really help. Everyone must find their own path, Grasshopper.


Actually, I pay the AI all the time to not attack me. There are demands for money that you need to pay and there are those that you don't. If an AI is across even a small galaxy with other AI's in between then I ignore demands for money. If they're right next door then I give it far more weight. I also take the race into account as well. The Drath and Iconians I usually ignore. I'll pay "reasonable" requests from most everyone else. It basically comes down to them being a credible threat or not.

The thing is that it's good not to waste early development on weak ships that will be no good in only a few turns but by some point war is going to break out and if you're not ready by then you're toast. Evil really is the way to go. However, you need to do it quickly or all the good races will jump all over you. Psionic beam will win pretty much any game for you.

My research sequence is very dependent on what I'm trying to do but being evil is pretty much part of everything. I usually try to have beam weapons up to phasors done before I "announce" the direction I'm going by researching xeno ethics and choosing evil. From there it's full speed to concepts of malice and I build the mind control center for the 100% economic bonus and the artifical slave center for the military production bonus while researching psionic beam.

From there it's just a matter of switching all my planets to production of a small hull ship with 2 psionic beams for an attack of 24 each plus whatever weapons bonus I've managed to accumulate. I've built up my planets so that each can spit out one of these "fighters" in 4~6 turns. A few of these is enough to fend off the folks that have declared war on you while you still haven't researched the planetary invasion path. You'll lose the first dozen or so that you produce but just keep'em coming off the assembly line and sooner or later the tide will turn and you'll get a few techs down the planetary invasion path and you'll be on the offensive. If you have multiple attackers, which you usually will, dispose of the closest and biggest threat first. As you build ships your military rank will rise and some of your attackers will see the folly of their ways and will accept peace, do so with ones that are furthest away. I usually avoid committing genocide early because the rest of the galaxy will gang up on you but once I have half the galaxy I wipe out the single planet that I've left my previous victims and just wipe out the rest as I come to them.

I try to pick and choose my opponents early. Weak military with a strong economy makes a nice target. Once I get rolling I just take'em in order so I'm not flying back and forth over the galaxy. That's pretty much it. Once you have the galaxy basically under control you can do what you want and go for the specific victory condition or maximize the score or whatever. One thing about the score is that the best thing that you can do to increase it is to do the first part as fast as possible. Gaining planets, population, production early generates far more points then the same pop and production later. Certainly rounding out the score by building up a military SB array is one "trick" that everyone should by now know about, but again starting it early and having a few ships under it over time is far more effective that just putting it up at the end of the game and having far more ships for far less time. Points are basically divided by the turn number so the same points in year 2 are worth twice those in year 4.

Oh, but it will. All you have to do is have a screenrecorder or your digicam recording while you play. Play on tough. That would be short(for you). Please. Pretty please. Pretty please with suger on top.  

-Scot
Commishioner,
Metaverse League.

What's a digicam? Don't bother I know, but no I don't have one, and no I won't get one.

Also it does no good to play beneath your level, it develops bad habits. For me to win quickly at tough would be an entirely different game and would really be of no benefit to anyone. Plus I'm not so sure it would really be all that quicker in real time anyway.

To record a complete game, even one as short as the one I just posted is not feasible. I probably spent about 20 hours on that game. I have 20 save games from start to finish so I could post screenshots of the game as it progressed but even that would be tedious because you'd need to see research screens, the colony list, the map, the graphs of pop, income, military might. Probably 4 or 5 screenshots per each of the save games, about 100 screenshots in total would probably give you a glimpse of how the game progressed but that would only give you a vague idea of how but no idea of the why.

I'd be happy to zip up the 20 save game files and let folks go through them if it will provide them some instruction. But I doubt anyone will get what it is they seek from such an excercise. What you're looking for is the easy answer, the single "trick" that makes everything easy. I can gaurantee that just as in life no such thing exists. At some point you will get to the same point that I'm at now but when you do it won't be by doing exactly what I do it will be by doing what you've discovered over time works best for you. At best perhaps the spark of an idea that I mention may be part of it.

It's very zen to say such trite things like "Everyone must find their own path" but it really is the truth. What works for me may very well not work for you and vice versa. I've had many people explain many different strategies to me, some of which I could replicate partially but most of which I've never been able to get to work for me. But usually there's some small part of it that has made sense to me and I've incorporated into the way I do things.

You're looking for a cookbook answer and no such answer exists. I can't possibly explain the why and wherefore of what I do at each and every point in the game because each such point in each game is unique. If you were asked the same thing there's no way you could do it either.

I will tell you what I will do. I will zip up the 20 save games from this round's posting and make them available to all, but I will wait until this round is complete. However, don't expect magic because there is none. It will look pretty much like your game just a bit faster.

I'd like to see those save files actually. Thanks!

I've already zipped them up but I'll wait until the round is over to make them available.

The point I've been trying to make to Scot is how difficult it is to say precisely how you play. It's easy enough to describe the basic strategy in general terms but the real details of what you do when and why are very difficult to describe. I know many people have described their strategies to me and they seem reasonable and logical, however when you really try and implement some of them you find they just don't work. It isn't that they don't work, it's that they just don't work for *you*.

Anyway I have no issue sharing these save files with the community, however I do ask that if anyone happens to gain some insight from them that they please at least try to share that insight with everyone else.

BTW can anyone recommend a decent file hosting site that doesn't require you to be a member? Something like imageshak but for files instead of images? The zip file is 4.3MB.

Hello! the Don't push buttons empire is looking for members!  

Click here!

Or if you want to see where I got the idea...

click here!

The only problem is that I can't figure out how to make the pictures appear on the forums, or the movie.

Earliest submitted 4-year game? I thought it would have a shot at winning fastest game, but the 3-year is just... wow.


Re-edit: Whoo, it works!

Back from holiday. It took me a while to find the new round of gaming. I'm not complaining since I've still got plenty of time.
To the Team C-ers: I may have been somewhat rude on this Team-only forum thing because I didn't see the point first.
I do now - but how do I get in?

Well here is a link to the registration at the core:

Core Registration

Just register, introduce yourself to the community and then post a message on THIS thread and I'll PM you our private forum password and a link to our private forums at the core. The galactic core isn't a bad place. It's really cool.

Things that have developed since you left:

No.1)

Our new banner:


This is the address:
(use it with the "Insert Image" button)
http://img297.imageshack.us/img297/2015/ccbanner2ba2.png

Our team name is Celestial Crusaders. And Round 1 was a victory for us.

No.2)

I am now a commishioner.

No.3)

Xei Win Toh has joined the league.

Any more questions and I'd be happy to answer.

-Scot
Commishioner
Metaverse League

I'm in the Core.

Black Forest logo - I am so impressed - I could never design anything like that. Wow!

What's your name in the core. I'll send you a PM about our private forums.