That was irksome... A cautionary tale.

Have you updated your game recently? There was a bug in the initial 1.5X patch that had all Metaverse games flagged as cheats. .068 fixed that but introduced a fog of war bug. .072 fixed that.

Yep, it's listed as a 1.50X game - that was the version with the cheat code bug in it I'm afraid.

Heartbreaking.
Moral of the story: check for updates more.

It's probably just as well that you didn't, you avoided the fog of war issue.

C'est la vie, I suppose.
BTW, Magnumaniac, those are some awesome scores on your games (puts my 'triumph' into perspective!). I only win on suicidal by generating maps with the fewest planets possible. Would you be willing to share your wisdom?

Question, where do you see what version your game has? Just to make sure it is installed.

There's a number in the bottom left corner of the main title screen, but I don't any difference between .068 and .072. They both read as 1.5X3.

Thanks for that information, but is there a way to find out? Whenever I click "update game" it takes me to stardock and says that stardock is updating. Not sure if that is actually updating the game or just stardock.

If you click on the Games icon in the top left corner, it will take you to the menu that will show you what you have installed, and what's available. Just expand the Galactic Civilizations folder under Purchased Games and you should be able to see plainly enough. There are seperate fields for Installed and Available. If you already have everything, you'll just see a line in the field that says Available, and your Installed will show that you have 1.5X.072. It's pretty straightforward really.

v.068 should have displayed as 1.5X2.

Abundant everything is the key to the high scores. It means you end up in long, drawn out wars later on against AIs with 100+ planets. That 529K game had a total of 636 habitable planets in the galaxy.

It's all about really micro-managing everything early on, because a small advantage you get in the first few turns of the game is multiplied many times over the course of the whole game. e.g. taking an extra turn to get your first colony ship to a PQ11 planet instead of settling a PQ10 that it is right next to pays off handsomely because of the +10% morale bonus for being a high quality planet - often meaning higher tax rate and pop growth.

Luck plays a part too - some maps will have, say 8 economy resources and only 2 influence on them while another one will be the other way round. The first will generally score higher, but the second is easier to win as you'll gain a lot of planets through culture flipping without even trying.

I usually ignore the AIs completely in the early game (unless there is one ripe for conquest nearby) and focus on development of my own empire - and more importantly, the economy. Once that is "in the green" I can safely say that I can handle anything they can throw at me. Usually end up way behind in tech by the end of the first year, but soon catch up by getting techs through invasion.

There's a lot of discussion about scoring and strategy over at the forums we use at: http://www.thegalacticcore.com/ - feel free to visit if you haven't already.

Thanks.

Or just don't post scores like me!

The reason i don't post is because i always get too bored to push for that final military victory. I never use other victory conditions because the game ends too quick and that's not why i play the game - i play it for the ships, the whole ships and nothing but the ships!

My games wind up taking so long that i have to save them then they will not show being able to be posted to metaverse go figure.