I'll start the screenies.  A recent game...

I should be joining the club by tomorrow.

Sentient species taste better...

Nice game, KP!

Gee I thought there were more than this, but there are multiples (Motti, CL, Livoyna and perhaps others). Anyway here's my DL game and I'll take the liberty of posting Mag's as well.

Getting 1M+ on DL is really pretty tough and requires a bit of luck to achieve. Keep at it and I'm sure you'll get there.

985k is an incredible score, especially for DL.  Well done, Random70! 

Actually, Immense maps were introduced in TA.  DA's largest is still Gigantic, which can have over 730 planets.  AFAIK, Immense maps in TA produce less than 600 planets though.

I'd say that DL is the hardest as far as mega scores go.  In fact, I'm not aware of anyone besides Mumblefratz who has been able to attain that score. 

DA would be the easiest in my opinion, which leaves TA in the middle by default. 

If macro-managing 75%+ worth of 800 planets to crush what's leftover from a try at Influence means a Million score or more, i'll settle for a clear 250,000 points faster and at Peace, thank you for your kind attention(s).

Unless my wrongfully evaluated mathematics span a week (8 hours/day, or somethin' along those figures) worth of multiple clicks equally done for 10 points each. Where's a Governor when we need it the most.

250k for an Influence win is quite good.  You bring up a good point, too.  The game in its 3 iterations has a little something for a diverse group.  Some of us enjoy competing for score and outdoing our personal best in that regard.  There's the heavy modding ability that draws your ilk in and there's the fantasy or total emmersion that appeals to others.  Pretty well thought out, don't you think? 

Congrats Random!    I'm sure if you had played another game year, you would have got 1 million, but at that point 1 year for 15k doesnt seem like its worth it.  Next game I expect you will break 1 milion.

Sentient species taste better...

Growth in all resource allocation games tends to be exponential because your growth rate is dependent on how much "stuff" you have. Get more "stuff" and you grow faster. That is in fact the classical definition of exponential growth. You start off early in a deep resource hole but as you accumulate more planets, more mining resources and technological bonuses then growth accelerates.

Typically the game's scoring potential is pretty much fixed by the end of the second year if not earlier. You can see this when you get to the point that you can win the game and you begin checking the score at the end of each game year. The first time you do this forms your baseline. The next time you do this you get a value of how much the additional year was worth.

Say as an example that at the first score check your score was 300K and then 1 year later you check and the score is 600K so that first additional year was worth an additional 300K points. Then the year after that you check again and you'll find that year was probably worth only 150K points. Each year the additional gain from an extra year approximately halves. So you can get another 75K and another 37K and another 18K then 9K, etc. By then it becomes pretty obvious. If you haven't made a million by then are you really going to do another year for 4.5K and another for 2.2K, etc.?

It's an infinite sum dictated by the initial conditions. For example the following sequence asymptotically approaches 960K no matter how many years you extend the game or how 'badly' you may want it to reach 1 million. If you're on this curve then you're simply not going to make it, you need to be on a higher initial curve to have a chance. It's all dictated by that critical first year.

320K year 2 + 320K =

640K year 3 + 160K =

800K year 4 + 80K =

880K year 5 + 40K=

920K year 6 + 20K =

940K year 7 + 10K =

950K year 8 + 5K =

955K year 9 + 2.5K =

957.5K year 10 + 1.25K =

958.75K year 11 ... (I'd probably give up at year 7)

Diminishing returns force everyone to give up sooner or later and you accomplish little by that last year. Why denigrate an otherwise great game by beating a dead horse right at the end?

Other people can view things any way that they want but I've always viewed extending the game as "allowing your game to reach its full potential". No one achieves a 1 million point game by accident.

If it weren't for Mumblefratz, we wouldn't have ever found out that there is, indeed, a clear correlation between Turns, Years & Points.

ZYW's might be fun and yet, there's always that creepy doubt that suddenly pops-in when you think you may just be on your ways to beat your best rankings.

Here's the formula to me; Win or Lose. I might score less, but it doesn't make me any less efficient than listed Millionaires.

I prefer conditions to results while they both last, you might say.

In the meantime - Modding simply complicates the whole reasoning(s) to near infinitesimal figures, however strange that may seem to Metaverse compatible gameplays, uncheated and fair.

Back to XW06A.

The 50% mark is just a rule of thumb and is just an approximation. It depends on what is going on in the game. Once your population and income top out then there are no more dramatic gains left to be got in those categories and pretty much the only thing left is to continue spitting out ships for your military score but the support of those very ships cut into your ability to produce more ships at the same rate.

Basically if you can keep one or more of the four components of score dramatically increasing then the rate of decrease is less, but once you're no longer able to dramatically increase *any* of four components of score then you get to that level of halving (or more) per turn. Perhaps in those games where the decline was less you were somehow able to keep levels of growth higher for a bit longer.

It's not overly scientific it's just a matter of taking all of what that particular game will give you and to realize when it's time to call it quits. I think you'll see most of the 1 million point games in the 6-8 year range because that's when it's most effective to quit. When you've scored many hundreds of thousands of points who in their right mind is going to hold out for another 1 or 2K unless those few points are all you need to break some arbitrary goal like 1 million. Even then I doubt anyone would feel overly proud of a 20 year 1 million point game. Why bother? There's nothing shabby about a 950K game, just learn from it and try to better it the next time, don't try and turn it into something that it's not.