ok..... since maso seems to be the only way to rack up some points now....

Ray!!!!! Get over here and reveal those maso cheeses you talked about so we can all get some decent scores

I'll do a huge step by step guide for you. I've just started it now. Gonna take a bit as I'm writing as I go and watching some football. I'll do a step by step guide for every size and play style eventually. For the record I was against this type of change. Before there were several paths to the top. Now there's just one. Totally have no life other than Galciv and crank the Maso's. Silliness if you ask me. I can get about 28-30k on a maso small. 4 hours of actual game time. (takes me at least two days to get in that kind of game time though.

You haven't been reading the GC Strategies board then?

The GCMCG

Just follow the following simple rules, and victory is absolutely guaranteed in an hour or less, with a minimum of 50K metaverse points:
Set the game to Large, Rare, Masochistic, Scattered Clusters, Abundant
Always play as the Universalists.
Set income tax to 68% and leave it there. No other value is acceptable.
Build nothing except for colony ships until you have colonised every available planet, irrespective of PQ.
Research Communication Theory, Universal Translator. Then set research % to zero for the rest of the game.
If someone asks you for a bribe, give them a bad planetary system. They will like you more, but the maintenance cost will bankrupt them.
Use your money to bribe the minor races to declare war on the majors, or vice versa. That way, all the minors will have to trade exclusively with you.
Then it's just a question of filling the Sol system with starbases, each with a single cultural bonus modifier. The combined effect of 100 +10% starbases will generate at least 1,000,000,000 influence points per turn. You can then swap these influence points for alien planets and buy the entire galaxy.





~SDC~

There's a thead called "Maso Strategies" in the GC Strategies Forum that has all sorts of descriptions. Everything you need to know to beat maso is in there--admittedly not in a very organized fashion, but it's there. If I were to write a guide I would basically condense and organize the contents of that thread, and maybe one or two others.
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Some would actually like to play a game rather than a robotic boring cheesefest Mathew.

It was a joke, Pontius.



This from the man who passionately defended the GCCG...

Typical cheap shot. I've come to expect it out of most of your gang. The Gccg was not cheesy. It was a way for beginners to keep up. And yes. I was one of the few higher level players defending it even though it was to my own detriment. I guess all you whiners can do is advocate a system to your own benefit whatever you perceive that to be at the time.
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yeah, thats the problem, by the time i get halfway through that post, i forgot what i read already. Some of the strats have been very helpful, but there are still a couple things that i cant get:

1) Everyone says expand as far as possible... but quite frankly, its impossible to expand past your home sector unless your playing on gigantic, as the AI will immediatly flip any planets that arent in your home sector, even if there nearest planet is 1000 sectors away (ok slight exaggeration, but i really cant get more than 1 or 2 sectors away even on huge without getting my planets flipped, even if the AI is about 8 sectors away.)

2) Tech: Cant keep up. I research 1 tech, the AI researchs 10. Pretty much hard to win when your sitting with battle axes in year 3 while the AI has dread's...... And tech trading doesnt work either, since in the initial colonizing period the AI takes such a huge lead over me that i cant ever get a tech that they dont already have.

edit: and i dont see what was wrong with the old point system other than that maso players werent being rewarded enough. So to fix that problem, they reduced all difficulty levels scores, then doubled maso scores. They should have done one or the other, not both.
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Black shade read the last page or so of the G.R.O.S.S. communication thread. We have some good strats to help you there. And The AI will be ahead in tech. That's just part of it on maso. They are ahead the whole game mostly. But most people give up at that point thinking the game lost. That's the key. It isn't lost.

I sure did notice that even on Cripple level. It sure changed my building order estabilsed at the lower levels.

Are you playing tight clusters? That usually gives you some breathing room.

ive been reading some more strategies and some ppl say espionage can help get them techs.... i have tried doing this in over 20 games when im behind in tech (full funding) and get to the stage where i know more about there gov than they do, yet i have yet to gain a single tech. How is this useful (am i missing something) ???

yup, and no matter how many times i control N (100+ and counting) on huge, i still have yet to start without seeing the AI having more influence than me in sectors that are more than 2 sectors away from my home sectorm unless i start in a corner with no planets.

Fifty percent wrong, one hundred percent irrelevant.

Irrelevant: arguing that the GCCG isn't cheesy, since I never said it was. I really doubt I've ever posted anything to that effect anywhere on this forum. The issue isn't whether the GCCG was or was not cheesy, but how you justify calling one thing a cheesefest and not another.

Wrong and irrelevant: you saying that I do nothing but advocate changes in my favor. I have almost always stayed out of scoring debates. I can only think of three times where I've ever done anything that might be interpreted as scoring advocacy, and those were pretty non-controversial statements about how an ideal system wouldn't encourage people to do things like finish the tech tree when the game is already won. And two of them were buried in the Fellowship thread, where it is quite certain that Frogboy wouldn't read them. And even if I had been constantly badgering the devs about scoring, it would be completely irrelevant to anything here, now wouldn't it?

Now perhaps your original post to Downie was a joke, in which case I missed it and my comment about you and the GCCG was inappropriate... but your response would be even more so.
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I think this business of everybody only playing at Maso is bloody silly.

Have fun.

Black Shade, in addition to tight clusters try going to rare stars. It will keep the AI from building up a huge amount of culture to flip you with.

I suggest you start on a Tiny/Rare map and hit control-N until you have two yellow stars in your home sector. This solves many of your issues: you don't have to worry about expansion, since there will almost certainly be no free yellow stars, so you won't fall way way behind in tech. You will own your home sector and you won't have to worry about being flipped. This will allow you to just focus on the tech and military issues rather than having to worry about influence.

Once you can beat tiny-rare, you can move on to harder maps.



never worked for me.
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You implied it was cheesy by posting it in response to me saying something else was cheesy. And if you had a clue about me, you'd know I don't really care if people think this or that is cheesy. Of course it was tongue in cheek. But sometimes the written word is hard to detect as such. So I'll let you off the hook there.

But assuming you thought I was serious, your comment was still a cheap shot and totally innappropriate.





Irrelevant. This tells me you know your post was innappropriate. Why? Trying to justify your inappropriate behavior by claiming someone else's is "more inappropriate." Clearly, the Johnny did it worse defense does not hold up to logical scrutiny.

Rainbird, as a long time maso and other difficulties player and now a totally maso only submitter who has taken it totally on the chin defending non-maso players and techniques, I must say I agree with you.

And with that. I'm outta here till later..... Time to go out and have fun.

Let's post this again:



Thus I was not implying that it was cheesy, I was implying that it was puzzling that you called Downie's post cheesy.



let us again try and make this completely clear. If your post was just a joke, then I missed it and I am guilty of not getting a joke on the Internet. Mea culpa.

In a completely seperate issue, though, I am noting that you have made an inappropriate post, since you could have simply said "it was a joke." You know, twenty minutes after my original post I did indeed think, "hey, maybe he was joking" and came back to post an addendum. By that time you'd posted your response, in which you gave no hint that it was a joke, instead going off on me and "my gang," whoever that might be, or inventing a history where I have advocated things that I have rarely even mentioned. Why am I bringing it up? Yes, it is irrelevant to me not getting your original joke, but it ought to be relevant to you.
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Ditto! Pointius and Rainbird . . . Maso seems so unrealistic to me . . . in many ways its a completely different kind of game! While I have a great respect for those who play that level its only a matter of time befor it will become a common playing level with those yummy over-bloted scores it generates. 22k for a tiny map on maso that takes just over an hour to play . . . shez . . . seems a bit 'much' scorewise but thats the way things are for better or worse . . .

The thing I find interesting about Maso is that you seem to be so far behind all the time, I must admit I find it an exhilerating change from the other levels . . . its all so new to me

Theres actually plenty of advice in these forums (click on the Statergy tab to our left too) and a lot of diversity (suprizingly) on methods to beat maso . . . good luck Black Shade!

Black Shade,

To survive the AI's influence, you need to either get an influence resource rather quick or build up individual planet influence. Don't colonize any planets in the same sector as the AI, those are goners. Sometimes I still do that but than I gift them to a minor once the skull appears. You can still colonize planets at adjacent sectors but you need to build up your planet's infuence quickly and the best way to do that is to grow your population.

You don't have to research a tech for trade. Look for the rarest tech among the AIs and buy that. Then trade that for other techs. You get multiple techs for the price of one.

~SDC~

I beat maso! I beat maso! w000000000000000000t!

Thanks to Pontius and Koala's strats, I BEAT MASO!

Indeed you did! Congratulations! Feels good don't it, what a buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz!

A Buzzzzzzzzzzz that I have yet to achieve LOL