Krynn v. Korath Metaverse

This is an interesting idea. It fits in with some of the things that the Metaverse Council is trying to accomplish with the AltMeta. Certainly don't let me dissuade you, but it's doubtful that Stardock would be willing to dedicate resources to get something like this accomplished, at least at the moment. It's also something that I think we would like to sponsor in the AltMeta, however at the moment we're working on the implemtation of a bracket system for the AltMeta. I don't think this is something that the Metaverse Council is quite ready to take on.

Forgive my ignorance, but what exactly IS the metaverse council? I don't think I've ever seen anything credited to that as a group. I thought the Altmeta was just Kryo's little baby.

Well, and of course Stardock is working on 1.6 right now. I guess I was more throwing the idea out there so it could be bounced around, and then eventually a very specific (easy to implement) request could be made of Stardock, which then they might or might not listen to.

Does your "bracket" system keep track of wins by different races. I mean, that would still work for my first idea, just run a bot that gathers all of the race scores in a given time period. Then all it would take is 1) advertising the time period ahead of time so people are prepared, 2) having a page that posts the current relative scores of the two sides so people know who is winning, and 3) following up with a results page and declaration of victory when the whole thing is done.

If you guys are working on the AltMeta, does this mean you have access to Stardock's secure sockets? I mean, how are you pulling their data? How many HTML coders do you have?

Again, sorry, I hadn't really heard of this Council before.

I like the idea myself. It would probably have to be more along the lines of your first example of course. Maybe have set 'rules' where those games have to have specific settings in order to 'count'. I myself have yet to play a single game using anything other than a custom race and to be honest, I haven't wanted to try using a different major... I like the ones I create, even if they don't always stack up to the in game civs. How about allow a competition of a sorts using custom races only ( I know it deviates from your topic, sorry) as that could turn out to be even more interesting to see what the players come up with and then how they compare.

This is going to be an awfully long post.


The Metaverse Council (MVC) is a group of players that were appointed by their empires to represent them in metaverse related issues. There were a number of very long discussions about this here in the December/January timeframe. The goal of the MVC is to increase interest and participation in the metaverse. Clearly if you haven't heard of us then we really haven't done a very good job.

Another goal of the MVC is to represent all metaverse players and not just members of the 'founding' empires. These empires consist of The Galactic Diplomats, the High Command Hegemony, the B.C. Space Orca's and the Arrakis Imperium. We started the MVC in this manner simply so we could realistically get the MVC off the ground and running. The intent was to eventually move to a more democratically elected council. As an aside we're probably going to be looking to 'elect' another representative (or two) to the MVC within the next few weeks via a 'democratic election' held here on the GalCiv2 forums.

The current members of the MVC are myself and DethAdder representing the Diplomats, Syrrus K representing the Orca's, TheGreatEmperor representing the Arrakis Imperium and Quixen and MarshallONeil representing the High Command Hegemony. We have also elected a number of 'at large' representatives who are, MBM1215, GW Swicord, Macmatt and AlexAtticus. Also Kryo is an honorary lifetime member.

We recently lost two representatives who were Thagee (to the Lord of the Rings Online Beta) and Vukasika (to his PhD thesis). It's these recent loses that we will be looking to replace by democratic election.


No. The bracket system will divide games into classes based on galaxy size (Universal = Gigantic and Huge, Galactic = Large and Medium, and, Solar = Small and Tiny). There will also be a distinction made based on whether it's a military conquest victory (Military class) or any other victory type (Civil class). This results in six brackets consisting of:

Universal Military Class
Galactic Military Class
Solar Military Class
Universal Civil Class
Galactic Civil Class
Solar Civil Class

These are basically divided by how many points these types of games score. The idea is that people should be able to compete against those that play similar scoring games and that people shouldn't be forced to play gigantic military victories just to be able to compete. The intent is to have the top ten lists of each of the six brackets displayed with equal prominence as well as be able to click on more… to get complete rankings in each bracket. By the way, we'll be looking at 'unveiling' a rough (very rough) preliminary Beta of the AltMeta Brackets for folks to play with and comment on very shortly.


You're into an area that I don't fully understand but the AltMeta uses the RSS feeds (I think that's it). Kryo is the Architect of the AltMeta and is the only HTML coder that we 'have'.

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The major point of what we're trying to do is to work on things that are realistically achievable. That's why we're concentrating on the AltMeta as the vehicle because is something that we can do ourselves (or at least Kryo can) without requiring any resources from Stardock. There are a lot of things that we wish to take up. A game of the month and/or tournaments (as you're essentially proposing) is certainly something that’s been discussed. Also Metaverse Scenarios as proposed by Wheeloffire and the ability to post games that incorporate graphical Mods to the AltMeta as proposed by Macmatt are things we wish to include. The AltMeta Bracket system is pretty much taking up all our time at the moment as well as considering how we’ll move to a more democratically representative selection process.

The Galactic Core, is the home on the MVC and we have opens forums for all to read and participate in our discussions. The Galactic Core also hosts private forums for The Galactic Diplomats, the High Command Hegemony, The Colonial Fleet, The Empire of Standards, The Arrakis Imperium and the Hitchhiker’s of the Galaxy empires. The Galactic Core offers private forums to any and all empires and is a place that should be the second home (after these forums) of anyone interested in GalCiv2 in general and specifically the Metaverse. Anyone can read anything in any public forums, however registration (only requires you to give an email address) is required to post. I encourage any and all to stop by and check out the Core and the MVC.

I want to reiterate the offer to host *free* private forums for any and all empires out there. I guess we would require that the empire have at least two members (not much point in having a private forum for one member is there) but other than that there's no requirement.

Stop by The Galactic Core today.

Oh, um, well, I wasn't trying to insult you. I just hang out on these forums a lot while I'm at work, and I'm kind of between major trials right now so I have a little more dead time. The brackets sound like a good idea.



Always a good starting point.



No offense again, but it sounds like you are getting bogged down in the bureaucracy of bureaucracy. It is often tempting to pontificate and debate rather than actually commiting to firm decisions and taking actions... hence one of the advantages of monarchies. But I digress. The only thing that strikes me as a little... unfair? offensive? elitist? is why are only council memebers able to submit ideas and work towards improving the metaverse? I like that these forums are pretty much open to anyone. If the "Council" actually does the implementing of ideas, that makes sense, you are doing the work so you are making the administrative decisions. If all you do is add another layer of red tape that (inevitably) stifles ideas, I'm not sure I approve. Not that you need my approval. And please, take no offense.

Now that I have made enemies of my new found research comrade...



Yeah, that is kind of what I'm shooting for. Doing a series of 2-4 week long tournaments. There is a lot you can do. I just wanted to start with kind of a basic one. There can be four on fours, all sorts of tournaments really. You think the Yor are the best? Where, now we are hosting a tournament, help your cause by submitting Yor games for the next two weeks, that kind of thing.

Adding additional restrictions to submissions I don't think is possible, but as long as you conform to metaverse restrictions and we ignore cheat flag games I don't see a problem. The real problem is getting a the data crawler built, and that might not even be that hard. Then you just spice up the front end and figure out how to get people to link to your hard work.

I guess then I really have a question for Kryo. Is it possible for you to write a statbot that pulls only race scores for a selected range? Is it possible for you to share with me the underlying code that pulls the Meta data? I could write up the HTMl and everything myself, but I would need access that I don't think I have to get it to display any real data.

Hi. As a member of the Council, I really do not want it to descend into bureaucracy and will try to stop that happening.

As to the providing of ideas, if you or anyone else have any then please do not hesitate to provide them. The MVC was established with the idea of representing metaverse players and helping improving their experience, primarily through the AltMeta. That is why soon we will be trialling open elections of Councillors by members of this forum and the Core.

On another note, I have been in discussions with Cari to have the game create an XML every time you finish a game with all the endgame stats. This will hopefully in the future be used to create a mod metaverse (one of the Council's long-term aims), although it could also be used for scenarios, custom maps and challenges like Korath vs Krynn.

None taken.


Regrettably, some of this is inevitable, but we are actually making some real progress, it's just that if you don't stop by the Core you don't see much of it.


They aren't. Certainly the MVC is interested in everyone's ideas as well as willing to support those that wish to take on projects of their own. But there are significant problems that you begin to run into when you're trying to motivate the entire community into getting behind some particular issue or even get them to come to any kind of consensus. There's always a fringe of hare-brained ideas that sound good but realistically can never happen. Also these issues seem to hold the collective attention for a day or two then they’re quickly forgotten. I’ve seen a lot of talk on these forums and very little (if any) action. You point out the inevitable bureaucracy and that’s true but you also get a set of folks that have literally been working on these things I’ve brought up for months now. That kind of perseverance doesn’t happen in the open forum setting, at least I’ve not been able to motivate it.

The point of representative government is that it limits the bulk of the discussion to a manageable handful of folks that have a chance of reaching a consensus. There are many ideas that get proposed in these forums that are very reasonable, but they’re usually discussed as a good thing “someone” should do, they usually require some kind of effort by Stardock, and are never (as far as I've seen) thoroughly thought out to completion.

As I mentioned there are a lot of “good” ideas out there and we are working on them in a priority based on how much benefit we think they’ll be and how realistic it is to implement. Currently Kryo, is working on the AltMeta which is his own private project. He has been willing to take some input from the MVC on the basis that the opinion of the MVC is in some sense representative of the GalCiv2 Metaverse community. It’s literally impossible for a single person to work towards every reasonable idea that each and every metaverse player may come up with.

The MVC provides a prioritization of projects based on the consensus of 12 reasonably selected representatives. Also MVC approval gives some sense that there is wide approval for the project without having to take some kind of vote on the forums or look to some thread where someone has posted an idea and another couple of folks come along and say yeah I think that’s a good idea but you should add such and such. Of course the current representation of all metaverse players by the MVC is imperfect, but we’re working on improving that, that’s why we’ll be moving towards open elections.


As far as code that belongs to Kryo it's certainly his to share so that's totally up to him. However, Kryo has spent significant effort over literally months on the AltMeta Brackets, the MVC would respectfully request that this effort be completed and not be diluted.

Well whether we do the Tournament through some database that records wins and losses (WHICH MIND YOU WOULD BE AN AWESOME THING TO CREATE BECAUSE IT WOULD ALLOW MORE TOURNAMENTS IN THE FUTURE) or through a gentlemens word that he won't post false information. You can count me in on a Krynn vs. Korath tournament.

as far as Stormbringers idea


I like the Major Races and my custom races so I would definitly join some seperate tournaments with you, but I don't see any significant way to record a database of tournament information. If you do figure one out though, that would be rad.    

P.S. I would suggest asking Kyro to put up a PERMANENT post asking for suggestions on things that the MVC is capable of.

Actually there is a stickied thread in the metaverse section of the forums Metaverse Council Suggestion Box The MVC is all about trying to find out what players want from the Meta and doing what's within our power to reasonably implement. We can't do any of this without the support and suggestions from the players. So feel free to stop by the suggestion box or click the banner below to go to our forum at The Core.

I feel stupid now. Considering I check these forums once a day.

Thanks for the tip. I will check it out.

Nothing to feel stupid about.

The intent of the Council is to represent all metaverse players. As I mentioned getting the council started from the beginning was very difficult. The primary difficulty is in getting people to agree on what seems like the simplest of issues and then to stay focused on the idea until you can actually bring it to fruition. The easiest part is coming up with a good idea to begin with.

There have been many great ideas. They get discussed. Most people like the idea. Within days the concept is forgotten. In the end nothing changes.

There are many difficulties in actually getting things done. Trying to come to agreement that's pretty universal takes time. Everyone has their own pet ideas. Presenting and refining these ideas, gaining a consensus of opinion, actually listening to someone’s concerns and adjusting your ideas to accommodate the greatest number of other people’s ideas takes a lot of time. That's what the council has been doing. Any vote that the council takes requires 70% approval. The reason for this is that we want to be doing things that have pretty much universal appeal.

There's a lot more to the AltMeta changes then just brackets. There will be the ability to graph each individual character's games based on a half dozen criteria. There will be an entirely new display format. There will be new medals and a way to import them to non-native sites. Beyond these immediate changes the ideas of acceptance of graphical mods and scenarios and tournaments are all something we want to do. But before we go crazy and try to do everything we at least want to finish one thing. That one thing is the AltMeta Brackets. We fully intend to be focused on the brackets until we actually accomplish them. If we try to do too much and jump around from one thing to the next we'll end up accomplishing nothing. If we can actually show that we can finish one thing then we will have demonstrated we can pretty much do anything.

Anyone that missed the discussions related to the formation of the Metaverse Council should read through the following threads. Also the council has a couple of forums over on the Core, everyone is free to stop by and provide input, and I encourage everyone to do so.

Is anyone else out there???

Ideas for a Constitution

The Galactic Core

Ah, well sorry I misunderstood your first post Mumble. Again, my mistake. I apologize to the council for any problem.

And I don't want to take Kryo's time away from "official" business.

I've looked through the high scores, and Stardock already sorts things by both date and race (if you choose) which means the functionality is there. It may not be appropriate for me to get a copy, but I think I could do everything myself if I just had the information to access the meta data from Stardock's servers myself. I used to work in IT, and do work in IP legal work now, so I understand that is dangerous information to pass around, and I understand if Stardock and/or Kryo don't want a random player to have it.

If it is not a big deal... I don't plan on diluting any of their trademarks or copyrights, on the contrary I want to enhance them, my point is I think I can implement my idea on my own if I just get the base code Kryo uses to access the meta data. I have a web development and programming background... the biggest issue is how long it will take me once (if) I get the information I need.

Anyway, I guess officially I want to ask for tournaments. Although that already seems to be on your list. I'll ask Kryo what he thinks about the code when he's back around.

Take care.

GREAT IDEA WYNDSTAR!!! I hope that he works something out, because that just might settle the people who are demanding multiplayer down for a bit. If it doesn't work we can always take score by hand with a promise of honesty, and then use Excel to database it ourselves. We could record every aspect including both the race picked and alternate race scores military, research, etc. Let's go with your idea first.

Yes! This is a great idea.

Wyndstar, over in our HCH forum we have our own little council to assist Quixen and MarshallONeil in bringing ideas and suggestions to the MVC. I really think you would be invaluable in this endeavour, it would be ideal to have your insight and ideas brought to the fore, of course if you are interested that is.

It is still in it's infancy but really worth checking out.

There is no problem. As I said the fact that the MVC is trying to do something shouldn't prohibit others from trying to improve things as well. I can't expect each individuals priorities to exactly align with those the council has chosen. If you have an idea that you think should get done now and even though the MVC may support the idea but not 'right now' it's certainly reasonable for you to do what you can without the council. This can cause conflict but if something good gets accomplished that's the most important thing. If said accomplishment didn't come from the MVC then that's no big deal. But you can also see that we do need to stick to a task until it's complete. Also that the tasks that receive top priority are those that require no effort expended by Stardock.

Macmatt has been in communication with Cari about the saving of a game xml file that can be used to 'submit' mod games to some as of yet unspecified alternative site. This is a project that Macmatt (and assumedly Cari) has been working on for awhile. Macmatt can probably give more details but as far as I know Stardock is willing to put this change into the game but *will not* include such games in the official metaverse.

This is certainly a natural addition that we would like to include into the AltMeta. It's also a feature that could be used to support the Metaverse Scenarios that Wheeloffire was such a proponent of as well as tournaments or games of the month. However, we really do run the risk of dilution of effort if someone were to come up with one site that supported a 'mod' metaverse a different site that supported tournaments and then third site being the AltMeta.

Besides dilution of effort, there would be actual competition between these three sites. Clearly, each of those three seperate sites would have far less appeal then having all these things in one place.

I have no authority to try and prohibit folks from trying to better the metaverse or the GalCiv2 community, but I would request that folks give us the chance to try and accomplish our goals without competing with us. We are open to any and all suggestions. However, we can't instantly drop what we've spent many long hours, days and months on because someone else has a another good idea, particularly when it's a good idea that's already on our agenda. We intend to finish what we start and then move on to the next thing.

I suggest that the greatest likelyhood of folks getting their own particular priorities accomplished is to work with us. When the entire community can demonstrate that we can stand united in our requests then it will be far more likely for Stardock to take those requests seriously. Otherwise, you're just talking about the desire's of a few folks that happen to respond to an idea proposed in a single thread.

One of the sayings that I came up with when initially forming the council is "there are hundreds of good ideas that have a handfull of folks supporting them but what we need are a handfull of good ideas that have hundreds of folks supporting them". This is perhape trite but very true.

Certainly, Kryo would be the one to answer these questions, however I'm sure that he would be the first one to stress that the AltMeta is a personal project of his and is in no way authorized by Stardock. I would also suggest that if you're volunteering to provide software development effort, that the best use of this effort would be to work with (or for) Kryo and to help us finish the AltMeta Brackets and then we can move on to these many other good ideas (such as tournaments) that we have.

I don't know if this is a reasonable thing to do. Sometimes too many cooks just spoil the broth but if Kryo can use the help then the MVC would be all for this kind of arraignment. Clearly, Kryo is the sole person to make this decision and his decision would be final.

Does anyone know when Kryo is going to be back around?

Kryo mentioned that Brad told him to take 4 days off, but knowing Kryo he probably won't be gone that long. In fact if I'm not mistaken he's on the forums at this very moment.

[edit] Well he was online when I started typing my response but he was off by the time I finished. Anyway, I doubt he can stay away all that long. [/edit]

The GC2 and Sins forums open automatically whenever I start up Firefox, so that doesn't mean much. But yeah, pretty much everyone took a four-day weekend


As to a special altmeta page for this tournament, I'm all for things to promote activity here and in the wider community. However the altmeta is blind to races for the most part--the metaverse RSS feeds on which it depends only list the race for customs, otherwise that information is blank. It might be possible if you edited the .customracexml files to put Krynn/Korath in the custom slot, but that may cause a cheat flag due to the presence of extra natural abilities on the 'custom' race.

We appreciate your work in the community for this, Kyro.

It's a shame we cant do it this way, though I think the current way is a bearable alternative.