1.03A.057

LOL, I complained earlier, days ago in post about how it appears to make a huge score players,run the game on and on and on and on, artificially extending the game to achieve 20 and 30k scores and they have now nerfed that. Kudos!

That exploit alone made me quit playing the game and submitting "low" scores(1000 to 2000pt scores) I had made. Skill folks, not exploiting game mechanics should determine score.

Request for Stardock: When you release an update like this, please give the stats rather than just saying "Battle Hammer tougher, more expensive." Now I have to wait another 6 hours until I get home to find out just how much tougher and more expensive it is.

Popup Target, yes, they are. Try it when you come home. I know, sometimes it's difficult to NOT take half a day off after the next Galciv update. This time I was lucky, we here in The Netherlands are 6 hours later than you

Kudos to Frogboy and gang for getting these updates out quick. Man, you're going to spoil us, customer support wise.

Crichton, high scores are always about game mechanics, now the high scores will be ruled by those who finish the game as quickly as possible. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. Possibly this style suits you better, possibly not, it definitely screws me because I -like- building up big fully developed civs. I don't like playing a game with the express purpose of finishing it as fast as possible, as if it is some unpleasant task that needs to be gotten out of the way.

Vorlin Varelse, but you still have countless ways to play Galciv the way you like it

Freya, sure, but everyone could play countless ways before it was changed, so that argument doesn't wash. Before, if you wanted to be metaverse-competetive, you had to play longer games. Now, you'll have to play shorter games. Vorlin was just pointing out that the score is always about the mechanics, which isn't the same as skill. It's just that in some cases, the mechanics happen to suit your particular skills.

For example, in my typical tech victory win, I'm on Final Frontier before the AIs are even finished with Overlord Technology. Obviously, if I didn't have applicable skills for pursuing this kind of victory, the AIs would be getting Overlords and Excaliburs out in large enough number to spank me hard and keep me from winning. However, I'm just not that good at invasions. When I wipe out an alien civ, it's almost always because I held them down, stripped them of their spaceships, and then watched all their planets culturally flip over to me. That's not the kind of game that's going to end fast.

If you're playing the metaverse then you're not playing GalCiv.

I play GalCiv. I don't care what my metaverse score is.

Amen, Frogboy. I don't even submit my dreadfully low scores.

I submitted my first game, a 77! I have 4 wins but have gone through hell getting a fifth because I cannot resist upgrading each time and my strategy is falling behind somehow(i.e. losing, losing, losing). My last game (using First 1.03 upgrade) was a lowly 1600+.

If you are the top player in the metaverse for more than a week, do you get an extra birthday?

Quality of game and value > metaverse score

"If you're playing the metaverse then you're not playing GalCiv.

I play GalCiv. I don't care what my metaverse score is.
".

LOL

Maybe I'm on crack...but I swore I read in the last update the Battle Hammer was nerfed. :notsure:

~SDC~

"If you're playing the metaverse then you're not playing GalCiv."

There you go!

A lot of people here are quite fanatical about the Metaverse though. It's their choice of course, but I couldn't care much about my score. Imho the metaverse is fun, but nothing more than that. The best use of it is to improve the AI.

Above all GalCiv is fun. And it's getting better by the day still

So says the old man who just turned 28 one hour and 10 minutes ago

LordTheRon, congrats, mate, and thanks for your great input in several threads

Thanks Veteran matey! LOL

Frogboy, I agree with you on Metaverse vs GalCiv for the most part, but that does beg the question "Then why are you majorly tweaking the metaverse scoring if it's not supposed to be important?"

I'm not upset about it, or even annoyed. I mean, how many people that focus on competition would give themselves a handle like mine? I've played one game where my behavior was affected by the potential score, and that was enough. Still, it's fun watching my metaverse position bounce up and down. With the mechanics shifting away from what I do well, it'll probably be more down than up, but it doesn't make the game any less enjoyable.

I don't worry about the metaverse. I play GalCiv for personal enjoyment, not to compete against the world.

As for low scores, I'll simply quote the Ferengi from Birth of the Federation: "Any victory is better than any defeat."

Ahh.. then what is the point of having the Metaverse. Those types of statements
"If you're playing the metaverse then you're not playing GalCiv."
are kudo statements. Cliche statements that are thrown out in all topics to get praise. They make no sense.

Obviously, if the Metaverse is here and people are submitting scores, they care, otherwise why would any of them submit any scores at all. And for that matter, why run a program to eliminate the huge scores that were on the Metaverse if you believe "If you're playing the metaverse then you're not playing GalCiv." A chart displaying the top player scores is all about competition in any kind of game, whether you care about your scores or not. And in a competition, you want to know the rules and be sure they are not exploited. Just because you want a reasonable scoring system, and clarity on the scoring process, does not mean you are not playing GalCiv. The statement is especially meaningless when part of your advertisement for the game is the Metaverse!

Plus, those players in the top ranks, you can bet they are playing the Metaverse. Statement simply makes no sense. Every game I play, I win, and it was fun. But when I play a game and win and see I am the score is no where near the HUGE scores I see(which I learned are mainly artificial by delaying victory) I question the scoring systems validity. When I can get victory quickly, but have to drag the game out if I want a decent score to post, there is definitely a prob with the scoring. Personaly for me, it has nothing to do with
"If you're playing the metaverse then you're not playing GalCiv."
No, not attacking anyone, just dislike cliche statements. And as you can see, I myself really do not compete in the Metaverse. But that does not mean I want to see it ruined by a skewed scoring system. BTW, for everyone saying they do not care, why bother to submit scores if you do not care? If you did not care about your score, you would not submit them. Matter of fact, you wouldn't even read your summary. Most likely you either have high scores, so you say that you do not care, or two, you cannot compete with the top players, so you say you do not care.

You care, you know ya do. LOL

i agree with Crichton. Well said.

I see PQ now has a 5% and 7% choice, good, after the first .03 I only saw the 7% at 8 points. I just un-installed, deleted all files and re-installed the game to clean out my data folder totally. Before I did that I only had the 7% choice now I have both. If this was added May 1, then you get a great big virtual hug because I asked about this earlier on May 1. Even if it wasn't but just a bug on my side a big hug anyway.

One of my other concerns was the constant warmongering when you dropped below some AI's militarily, with trade counting towards peace it's like Christmas Thanks again.

A game I played earlier today had the Yor (bright) attack me when I had 5 trade routes going to them and they had a bunch with me. It nailed us both economically and then the Drengin declared war because MY war with the Yor was hurting them. This is the same Yor that gave me ships earlier in the game including and I don't know how it happened the "Drengin Flag ship". They just flipped out.

Crichton: We still need a record of our scores somewhere, in game would be fine for me. The Metaverse is still nice as you can see your progress and get nice icons. When I see those super high scores I ignore the score but know if the difficulty was high it wasn't an easy game.

"BTW, for everyone saying they do not care, why bother to submit scores if you do not care? If you did not care about your score, you would not submit them. Matter of fact, you wouldn't even read your summary. Most likely you either have high scores, so you say that you do not care, or two, you cannot compete with the top players, so you say you do not care."

I don't submit. I've never even set up an empire, or whatever. I "truly" don't care about the metaverse. Some of us are like that.

This thing of 'the high scores were from artificially dragging out the game' is inaccurate for the most part as far as I can tell from my own games. The two games I did try to milk became unstable so I stopped doing that, my scores are relatively high because I play on a gigantic galaxy and like to assimilate the entire population before hitting final frontier. So it's not like all the top 25 players were sitting around hitting next turn for hours and hours to 'beat the system'. In fact, if you look at my dates of submission you can pretty much tell that I didn't have time to do that even if the game was stable enough for me to allow it.

The real unfairness of the metaverse is that it grossly penalizes people who play on the smaller galaxy settings. Since the game is really very different when played on differing galaxy sizes I've petitioned since early on for the metaverse to be split along galaxy size. You simply can't meaningfully compare the score of a tiny galaxy to a gigantic one, it's apples and oranges (which is why I'd rather have the metaverse split than to have the scores 'adjusted' to make tiny and gigantic scores comparable).

"If you're not playing the metaverse, you're not playing Galciv."

Frogboy, your statement makes very little sense to me. I thought one of the big features of Galciv was that 1) You can submit your scores to the metaverse to compete with other players, give your empire prestige, etc 2) That the metaverse submissions can be used to further drive the AI

It seems funny to me that these two features are what drove sales for Galciv, but you're saying that if you're playing the metaverse you're not playing Galciv? I'm a bit confused by the statement. I mean if it is so meaningless then why have it?

SeanB

I like the idea that there's an effort being made to prevent cheesily inflated scores.

I don't like playing a long, difficult game and getting slammed for it.

Ideally, there's some intelligent balance between the two. I'll hold off on any actual complaining until I've played a lot more though. See how it goes.