Metaverse Scores

Military victories apparently give the best scores, since they're supposedly harder to achieve.

The official multipliers to base score are militaryx10, alliancex9, culturalx8, techx7.

From experience, it looks more like military = 2 x tech.

Isn't score supposed to be based on difficulty and map size also? I have been looking at the scores over the past few days of the 3 Empires in the battle for 10th and it seems that the weighting is just about all towards the victory type.

Looking at the top player scores it also shows a bias towards Military wins rather than Difficulty or map size. Military wins at Beginner on a Tiny map are worth roughly half those of Military Wins at Masochistic on a Tiny map and a quarter of a Military win at Masochistic on a Gigantic map, despite Beginner being only level 3 and Masochistic level 10.

To me this shows a heavy bias towards smaller, faster easier games. So what is the exact rational behind the Metaverse scores? As Dark Assasin said in the first post how do you maximise Metaverse scores, and does it give the proper weightings?

To get the best game scores, turn off all victory conditions and win a military victory. Whether you blast all the aliens to bits or culture flip all the major aliens' planets still counts as a military victory - just make sure to turn off that culture and tech victory and don't make alliances.

To get higher scores, research all the tech. In my experience this adds 20% or so to your score. In addition to this there seems to bonuses for population, society, and economy. I have found that getting all the resources at the end adds some points although I am not sure how much and it may be because the resources boost the above-mentioned, military, economy, tech, morale (population), and so forth.

As far as the metaverse, my experience is that there are two broad approaches. One is "quality" and one is "quanitity" and players can mix strategies. I guess i am a "mixer" LOL.

The "quality approach" to reach the highest per game score is to play as difficult as you can play well on the largest map. Some wins on the gigantic painful or masochistic maps are yielding 25k game scores! Anyone who can get a 25k score really knows how to play. Anyone who can win on masochistic, especially the bigger maps, knows how to play. I have never come close to that (my high game is about 16k) - so much for the "quality" of my game. LOL.

In the "quanitity approach", the metaverse rewards frequent game submissions. So cranking out 6 to 10k games on Tiny/Small will get the metaverse score up there even on beginner games. Look at the ultimate king of crankers, EBZeroMatrix, who is top three but doesn't play painful, masochistic, or even challenging games. And you won't see EBZeroMatrix play large maps because they take more time. EBZ can play a tiny/beginner game in 20 minutes that still takes me 2 hours so I am not sure I will ever be a crankster either. I have heard of no other player who can complete a game in 20 minutes. It boggles my mind.

In summary, the player strategies that work best depend on the skill level of the AI and map size. The best quality game strategy guide is the Orion guide at http://www.orionsector.com/pages/galciv/downloads/The_Unofficial_GalCiv_Strategy_Guide_v1_0 and EBZ's Gal Civ Cranking Guide is at http://ebzeromatrix.tripod.com/

IIRC the metaverse score uses the summary of scores as the numerator divided by the square root of the number of games submitted. Algebraically, you can see there is a reward for not only the whopper 20 to 25k games but also a reward for submitting dozens of games over a short period (cranking). Also IIRC, each submission period is divided into a one month block and scores beyond 1 month incurr some degredation. However the degredation is not dramatic and those who have been playing since April are harder to catch than newbies like me.

I think it is fun to play both the quality games and then if you get overwhelmed by moving hundreds of constructors and think, "Is this game ever going to end?", then play the speed game that EBZ perfected. Go back and forth. One of the best things about Gal Civ is the 10 levels of difficulty, the adjustments of habitable planets and star density, and the good v. evil moral choices that open up different parts of the tech tree. There are sooooo many combinations and different strategies for each. Just keep it fun. Hope this helps.

Rick

Because that is exactly the way it is. Map size can heavily modify score, but difficulty is not a really big consideration. To pull a very small random military victory sample from different version 1.05 players out of the hat:

Beginner Gigantic 15K
Painful Tiny 11.1K
Painful Gigantic 16.7K
Crippling Tiny 8.1K
Crippling Gigantic 16.8K

Notice that the tiny crip scores 3K less than the tiny painful, even though crip is a harder level. Also note that the gigantic beginner game pulls in 15K, a very small difference in comparison to the MUCH harder gigantic painful and gigantic crip at 16.7 and 16.8K. Then there is a very large swing factor even across map sizes at the same difficulty levels. The two painful games compare at 11.1K on tiny to 16.7K on gigantic, about a 3/2 ratio. The two crip games rate at 8.1K on tiny and 16.8K on gigantic, over 2 to 1 ratio.

Sure, five little examples are a joke, but anyone can start plucking out scores and find these are not far off the mark in determining a pattern. I have been scouring hundreds of player records and have scrolled by thousands if v1.05 or 1.09 games, so I think I have a pretty good feel of how things work. I would make a guess that the combined tech tree bonus, wonder/trade good bonus, and possible alignment bonus are wild cards that can really throw scores out of proportion so that military victory and map size are predominate factors, while difficulty is of much less importance. Only the keepers of the Meta know for sure how scoring truly works, and they are not talking too much about it in public lately.
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Thats exactly what I was noticing, Gerakken. Difficulty seems to have very little effect on the score. I started noticing in my results as the higher I went the lower my scores became. Very strange, its like being at University and getting more credit for doing my brothers 3rd grade homework.
I will try and finish the tech tree, I have never gotten anywhere near the end I don't think, the furthest was 4D Wormholes and a Tech Win score of 11% or something like that.

I read somewhere that the alignment has a bearing on the score too. Would want to make sure all games checked out had the same.

Someone told me that being good gave a higher score? How does that figure in? Or is this true.

B

There is one thing I neglected to mention yesterday over here. Even though the easier games score well to their more difficult counterparts that take longer, the majority of top players still play harder levels. The top 250 report had a toughness rating of over 6.5. If everyone on that list were playing along on normal and below, it would have been 5.0 or lower. So, despite the temptation, going low ball to crank out faster, but slightly less scoring games, is not the predominant practice in the top ranks.

Late edit: Good can score better to evil ones if the evil game is a rushed conquest, as rushing to battleships or dreads to kill them all tends to score less. The reason? Good games tend to be drawn out longer. The tech tree is more developed, so is planetary infrastructure. But an evil game can score equally well if time is taken in that games to develop the empire.
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if you want to maximize your scores, check out the cranking guide (GCCG???) EBZeroMatrix (the post is on the first page here someplace). Now to get even more points added on to his strat, you can change the allignment of the AI to all evil, and make yourself as good as possible. Using ZeroMatrix guide and then chaning the allignment, i was able to get 11k points on a tiny map against beginner computers in a game that took no more than 40 minutes. As apposed to my gigantic painful game that took 15 hours, where i only got 19k points. Ill take the quick fast games as opposed to the long, hard games.

Thanks Black Shade, I may try that. What happens if you are evil and the you make all the AI pure good? Do you still benefit? Anyone know what sort of point bump you get?

I get 10k on tiny, beginner, pure evil so I am guessing the alignment change is why you got 11k and that is about a 10% bump. Maybe we can test that. LOL.

It is interesting, learning new ways to pancake block the computer, and get a decent metaverse score, but mostly to have fun.

I look forward to going back to larger maps in the future and playing at higher AI levels but for now, cranking is pretty fun. I just wish I could play faster than 2 hours (my goal is an hour) but before cranking, all my games were 2 days. LOL. I might have to turn off the stereo, get really lucky on my crash-to-desktop problems, and not take as many breaks to do a 60 minute game. LOL. Thanks EBZ and also thanks also to the Orion Guide folks both linked to in post #4 above.

Rick

Whoops, I just found Black Shade's post on EBZ's thread http://www.galciv.com/forum.asp?BID=GF&id=87200#87434 & I think it answers my question.

Rick

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#21 by Citizen Black_Shade - 8/17/2003 6:39:03 PM

ok.... great guide, very helpful. Now im not sure if this is different in 1.09, but in 1.05, allignment adds a whole crapload of points. I cant get the bonus for evil for some reason, but if i set all the computer's to pure evil, and i take ever good choice to get to chaotic good, it adds about 3k points to my score. Doing this same thing with evil and having AI be all pure good only added another 1k (not sure why). But the extra 3k points adds up to a whole lot considering the speed of these games...

that is the only thing stopping me from playing this game all day... stupid CTD

I was getting around 8K games on normal difficulty going evil, and and around 10k going good. In both cases I'd researched the complete tech tree - so it seems as thought there may be some reward for being good. I also think a lot depends on the planets you get - as population seems to have a perhaps significant impact. If cranking, watch the cash - I also think that too much cash may trigger anomalous scores.

Alex


~SDC~

I agree with the above about playing good v. pure evil AI. I played 3 tiny evil and got around 10k. I just finihsed 1 tiny good and did nothing different but play good vs. all pure evil AI and got > 12k. This is roughly a 20% improvement in mpts, all else being roughly equal. Simply amazing. LOL.

Rick

I just got an anomalous score with a vanilla 1.05. No mods or anything. I did have about 10K in cash at the end though. But it was because I made such good trade deals with the computers I was getting about 1000/turn off the research trades. Had all 7 players giving between 100 and 250/turn * 20+ turns. I was raking it in faster than I could spend it. I need this score fixed or someone will have to walk the plank.

B

Try resubmitting, B. It may just be a glitch in transmission.

I've had hundreds of thousands of BCs before and they submit fine. Don't think that is a trigger.

I will never ever understand the way this game scores, I have admitted total hopelessness on the matter. :notsure:

Just last month I was boggling over submitting 6-8k games and getting less than 1k added to my metaverse score, yet just a few minutes ago I submitted a 13k score and got about 8k added


*shrug* Whatever...

Ahh..the infamous month block! I agree, the Metaverse seems to do an unbelievable amount of calculation to come up with a score. I'm beginning to think when I hit the "Submit" button that it's actually not downloading info, but doing a complex calculation on what score to give me based on time of day, position of moon, Mars, Pluto, and my mouse. LOL

Oh, well...I just play the games and see what score I get. As a wise man once said,

"Ours is not to reason why, ours is to get drunk and play GC." - Theoden of Rohan

I think this is a great feature. It helps to bring balance to the metaverse, using a system of diminishing returns to those who would flood the metaverse with scores.

If you listen to what the metaverse is saying to you, you will find that scores should flow through you evenly and calmly. The metaverse does not take kindly to being pounded into submission by an avalanch of submitted scores. This will only lead to anger and frustration.

LOL

Feel the Metaverse...let it guide your actions!

w00t !!


You guys are great LOL