OK, that page severely needs both updates and amendments. Not that I work in documentation or anything...

That's true. And you'll continue to be the EoS presence on the MVC. I just thought maybe it would be a good political move to open a forum there.

My personal opinion is that they can visualize my middle finger. Players will likely have several games under their belts before considering outside sites beyond GC2. That means a _slow_ migration to the Galactic Core. It definitely wouldn't work for recruiting.

Nevertheless, maybe setting up shop there isn't a bad idea.

AFAIK the purple heart (wounded in action) is the only medal that doesn't show up in your posts. It is a pity because the purple heart is a pretty medal. It takes a man to admit a defeat as well as showing the perseverance to keep on trying. I've yet to play a DA game, so I really have no good advice for you. Actually, the MVC has really eaten up a *lot* of my time. I have a v1.4 game that I've started and I am damned sure going to finish it, but once that's done I'm not sure whether to do a v1.5 or go right to DA.

As far as getting to the Core, first you need to get registered which usually is a simple matter and only requires an email address. However, some folks get messed up for one reason or other and then it can take a bit to get straightened out.

I know that Evil is registered at the Core however I think one of the admins had to set it up by hand. If that's the case you may not know your own password. It should have been mailed to the email address that you used to set up the account. If there's any issue I'm sure we can get it straightened out. You can always go to the Core and read any public forum. You can also post to the Open Area which you should do if you have any kind of problem registering.

Mistralok is also registered although he's never posted anything so I'm not sure he's totally OK as well. Wheel is the only one not registered although it's clear that he has done a bit of lurking at the Core. It's good that folks know certain aspects of history. I'll be very happy to have some things I've posted be proven wrong.

Anyway, once folks are registered I'll make sure we get your private area set up. By default your emperor (Wheel) would be the moderator of the area. The only other people that could possibly read what's written in your private area are the 6 admins of the Core (I'm a moderator but not an admin so I couldn't even see that your private area existed). It's not their policy to go trolling through other empire's private area's however they *may* do so if there are reasonable suspicion's of rules violations (please read the posted site rules).

The privacy of your area would not be absolute but would be pretty reasonable. If you feel like bashing other folks in your own private area no one would complain or even notice, however serious infractions like displaying pornography would not be tolerated anywhere. In general, bashing other folks in the public areas is not something that is well tolerated either. I'm not suggesting that anyone would do anything like display pornography, I'm just trying to set reasonable expectations on the level of privacy of your private area.

Anyway, if you do decide to take us up on our offer, we will indeed welcome the EoS to the Core.

The rules sound easy to handle. Thanks for stopping by.

Like our empire states, we ARE playing for fun... and I had a great time getting my ass kicked! I'd thought about not posting my very first game due to a loss but then I realized that would be against what the EoS stands for, wouldn't it. I agree with you Mistralok in regards to the 'top three' empires. I don't honestly believe that people are posting 'all' of their Meta losses, and from the statistics standpoint I can understand why, but it doesn't make it legitimate in my eyes. You guys know why I never cared about the Meta, and unfortunately since my very first Meta game, I have to admit that it is kind of 'addicting' in a sense. I'm not there to be number one but if I were to make it, it would be honestly, by posting every humiliating defeat right alongside a victory. I did start a seventh Meta game set up the exact same way, only with the diff on cakewalk. I still don't know if I'm going to submit that one (an obvious win of course ) based on the difficulty level. To me it just doesn't feel 'fair' if you know what I mean, but that's only because I started all of this out on the normal difficulty. To back down the difficulty now would be a personal defeat, not a gaming defeat.
Good luck with that game Mistralok! Remember, at least for me, it isn't about winning or losing, it's about playing the game (and of course handing out a little bit of 'in your face'! ).

I don't want to discredit people that can truly destroy the AI. There are people that simply cannot lose strategy games. At the same time, if we checked the directories of many of these players, they'll have dozens of unfinished, unwinnable games.

That's why I want to see a Metaverse penalty for unfinished games. DNF and disqualification exist in every organized sport. They should exist in the Metaverse.

What does it prove, and to whom, when players can publicly post only their good games?

I agree with this completely. I've often wondered if people don't start a Meta game, save it, play it, and then check out the surrounding galaxy for the goodies. If the game takes a turn for the worse you can always quit without saving (provided you didn't save at any point from the first few turns)and then just go back in and 'revise' your strats accordingly. I'd thought about this myself last night after putting in about two hours and then the game just started to go very, very badly. I quit without save, restarted, and was able to 'get the jump' on the AI since I knew where things were from the start.
Believe me, I know there are WAY MORE players out there who put me to shame with their knowledge of this game and I don't want to take credit away from them either. But I can see how a 'handful' of people are probably in this for nothing but the scores and therefore would do whatever it takes to log a good one without sending up the cheat flag. Just my opinion.

Standards Bearers,

I should be close to finishing my first DA Metaverse game on one of those barbarous huge maps. I want to get the empire's opinion on whether I should post b/c there's some conflict between Standards, specifically Hedonism and Cheese-hating.

That's an overly ornate way of backing into a fairly simple question: Should I post a game that I finished after save-gaming my way around the pirates mega event?

I play the big maps b/c I really like them. I leave the mega events on b/c I really like many of them. But on a huge map, especially when you play with a sub-par video card, the pirates are just too much hassle (even if I'm pretty sure I could work through them at the cost of *ludicrous* amounts of clicking).

Aside from that unfortunate moment, the game has been very good fun for me, especially because I finally tried using an AI request for peace to demand tribute and scored big real estate. The only trick left is to hope my allies will finish off the AIs in the other alliance before I accidentally get an influence win.

The standard is fun. You sound like you had a great time. Saving and reloading for the pirate event means that Stardock should have an option to turn it on. I'm sure you're not the only one that wants to fight pirates. Post.

Thanks for the thumbs-ups, gents. There's a lot of typing over at the Core about "milking" scores, etc., and I have an unpredictable weakness for propriety despite being a scruffy barbarian at heart.

I find "milking" to have a large eye-of-the-beholder aspect. I developed several tendencies that I've seen called milking (like preferring overwhelming military superiority so I can swat down interference in my non-military muddling). But I got that way long before I thought more than 8 seconds about scores.

For all I know, I'm "milking" my game right now b/c I'm fixated on a diplo win but the AIs in my alliance are not being very quick about dispatching the remaining troublemakers (I gave up deliberate expansion a long game time ago).

This situation means I'm getting a slow but steady stream of culture-flipped worlds I don't exactly want and are harder to give away with the new diplo timeouts (which I like). I'm also steadily building fleets, but that's by intertia and not need, and I have no idea if your total firepower at end game is part of your score.