JustinSane4

On the whole, I guess I would be slightly in favor of a "no straw-dogs" rule (and strongly in favor of it if the league member who raised the issue would be satisfied with this compromise). ARC is one thing, but that would seem to grant a much larger advantage, though I've never used it and so can't speak from personal experience. Additionally, banning straw-dog AIs, in my opinion, enhances ARC. For instance, in the current game you could make a reasonable argument for a customized

Personally, I think one function of competition is to push the edges of what is possible within a ruleset, without going past the boundaries. This contributes to the collective knowledge of what is possible with the game and thus makes the game more interesting. "Advanced Race Configuration" expands the range of possible strategies, (most probably) decreases the likelyhood of every player who wishes to compete on speed/score adopting the same set-up (notice the proliferation of Korath and to a

The Drath get one unique (shared with the Altarians actually) good technology also.

You've used the Korx successfully these last couple of games? That is incredibly cool. I would not have thought them a viable choice. If you don't mind, are you actually using trade for the income? Or just for the diplomatic benefits? Or is it because you can build the economic capital really early?

I think you've got to have a good starting position on this one. I had a +700% research square on my homeworld and got 6-7 worlds other than my homeworld (2 of which were toxic and 1 of which was radiated). That gave me the population level I needed to fund the research. Probably just a random thing; whoever gets the best starts, wins. I'm not actually at all sure 0 year is possible. I'll be very impressed if someone can pull that one off. :)

That's terribly surprising.. I'm guessing you (Wyndstar) just weren't happy with your scores/times on those games? In my game, I basically used a modified version of the fast tech victory strategy you outlined for the Altarians and did reasonably well by my standards. I was sure that you would come up with a 30,000 point 0 year. Actually, I'm still sure you will. :)

Thank you very much everyone! :) I really appreciate how sporting you've all been on this mess I made. I'd have joined a while ago if I knew how great this league was. Better late than never I suppose. :)

Sorry again for the trouble everyone. And yes, 2/19 was a typo, should have been 2/29. Thank you to everyone for taking time to help get this straightened out. I'll be a lot more vigilant in the future to make sure I don't mis-read (or mis-type). Triple checking for me from here on out. :)

Alright, I just finished a game with the correct settings. Since my score was higher this time (12,180) and no one has submitted since then (so no difference in submission order) I propose we keep the first game so that I don't benefit from my mistake. The game stats were 1 year 12,180 submission date 2/29/2008 10:19:03 on JustinSane5 character.

I'm terrible sorry everyone, but I mis-read the initial post, thought the number of players was up to each player and played the game I submitted with one player rather than 4, so that is not a qualifying game. Again, I apologize to everyone, and please dis-regard that game.

Oh, thanks! I should have thought of that myself. The timestamp on my game was 2/19/2008 at 10:58:59 AM. My JustinSane5 character is Metaverse League/tournament exclusive, and I'd not been planning on playing another game on that character until round 8, but this makes a lot more sense. :)

It looks to me like Stardock made a conscious decision to make trade viable only for the Korx. They are now the only race with access to a Galactic Privateer equivilant, they have a unique tech they start with that gives +20 trade and they start with +50 trade and +3 trade routes for starting bonuses. For the Korx, trade is good. For everyone else it's useful only for diplomatic purposes.

Alright, can't compete with KzintiPatriarch on speed, but at least I've got second. Most recent game on my JustinSane5 account. 1 Year, Suicidal, Beyond Mortality, Very Good, 10,875 as the Altarians.

The Drengin are, quite clearly, an inferior version of the Korath. I still feel that they are competitive in games without tech trading (which minimizes the effect of their diplomacy penalty. The Thalans are terribly underpowered. They can't get the MCC and don't have enough going for them to compensate even that loss, but they also have crippling pop growth and diplomacy penalities. Ouch. The Arceans may also be a slight touch weak, but that is very debatable. Other than that, every other

Thank you for the update. We appreciate the communication. Good news on the Beta. :)

I don't begrudge them taking the time to get this right. I'm thankful for it. I would, however, appreciate a bit more communication. It'd only take five minutes to say "we haven't forgotten about this, we're working on it, here's our best estimate as to when we'lll have the next beta out". If they had some more specific information on what they are busy working on that'd be even better. We (the customers) voted overwhelmingly when they had the poll that we'd rather they take more time and g

As a general rule, for a hard colony rush you want to be building a colony ship every turn. For more restrained approach (which is usually used when you've got a definite follow-up in mind I believe), you need one colony ship every two turns. Better players can achieve those benchmarks basically regardless of the starting position they get, but personally I cntrl-n until I get a precursor mine if I'm playing on suicidal. That is even more helpful with the increased upkeep expense for building

My pleasure, glad you found it helpful :) And please feel free to use the quote. I hope you have success trying higher difficulty level games. I've never had a Minor declare war on me before. That, were it not such a frustrating loss, would be rather hilarious. If you are having too much trouble with the drath, you could consider leaving them out of your games. If you want to keep them in for the satisfaction of beating them, you may want to try making sure the Altarians are also in, then

I appreciate the time and effort you had to put into that. You've got some interesting ideas as to how to play the Korx as well. Your choice of screenshots and explanations help to make very clear the way you are approaching the game. Ultimately, though, I think the approach you've taken in your model game is a bit unorthodox, and I am not sure if I personally would recommend it to the beginner. I also do not feel that early game strategy would translate well to levels Masochistic and up (pa

You're absolutely right. I was mistaken when I said that it was a Super Project. I just went back and double checked and it was in fact a normal building that you could build any number of, so the Cathederals of Valor are in fact very cool. Thanks for the correction.

Agreed, it would be nice if they stood out a little more or there were a way to search for them.

Sorry for the lack of clarity there. A new feature in TA is tournaments. These are pre-set scenarios from stardock where the only variables are difficulty level, race customization (though the player base race is set), bonus squares and anomalies. Players all play the same scenario and there is a leaderboard on the metaverse (currently Wyndstar is 1st and 2nd and I'm 5th). The standard metaverse is not currently enabled for TA. Sandbox games in TA have roughly normal scoring. Tou

If the scoring difference is only in tournaments and not in standard metaverse games, then this is a complete non-issue. My personal experience with TA in the tournament was that I submitted a rather sloppy 2 year win and scored about 22,000. That seemed a touch low, but more maybe 20-25% rather than 3 times. I did not attempt much score grinding at all other than building the spin control center and docking my ten best ships there for maybe 15 turns. If they have cut out the known

On a similar note, there is one thing that Wyndstar has mentioned in a couple of threads I think is troubling and that the Metaverse League may be in position to help with. He's said that his scores (and Wyndstar, please correct me if I am wrong) in the TA tournament have been running much lower than they would in DA, with set-ups that ordinarily would score 150,000-200,000 scoring 40,000-50,000. If that is an accurate reflection of how scores will run with TA, then a player would be doing his

First, let me say that I think the expansion is wonderful and overall Stardock has done a great job balancing the new tech trees (better than I'd thought possible at this stage actually). Thank you to Stardock for making a great game better. I agree with nearly everything Wyndstar brought up. I'd been hoping you'd post something like this actually. Personally, if I could change one thing, I think it would be to make the Thalan viable. Right now, they are simply terrible. Every othe