Scoring

I dont know exacly, but I believe one of the bigest factors is how much better/worst you are compared to the other civilizations.

For example, if you have a extremely huge military while everyone is still strugling to build a few ships, you will get a lot of points. But if you have the same fleet, and the enemy have some similar to yours, you get much less points.

A much bigger factor than difficulty and map size (though map size indirectly enables much higher scores), is simply having high military rating, income, research, and population throughout the game. Some of the top players have honed it down to an art, and achieved scores in excess of 500,000 points.

In my experience, the easiest way to get a higher score is to have a much higher population and huge income than everyone else. On smaller map sizes (which I'm guessing your playing at with those scores) shoot for a population of around a trillion by the end of year 4. This is easier if you set planets to abundant, because there are more planets to get population on.

Also, try to win on Dec 22 of years 1, 4 or 9, as scores seem to drop off at years 2, 5, and 10 respectively. Time is a factor.

Also, any area you are trying for a large score in, try and have it large over time. Rush buying a bunch of military ships with leases in the last few turns doesn't really seem to effect the score. Try to have a lot of tech/military/social/economy throughout... whichever area you are trying to score higher in.

Pretty basic stuff, but there ya go.

Thanks for all of the input. I now have new strategies.

I've been confused (and/or ignorant) about scoring since this game came out. I can play what seems like the best I can do on huge masochistic. I build farms on almost every planet, tax at 65+ with 95% approval, great economy, build a good military and win with it. People are getting 4-6 times my scores of 75k. Maybe 30% I could image, or even double, but 350k+? I have no idea how I could get 4 times the score I'm getting.

I need to do something different and/or better but I have no idea what.

Speed absolutely matters. The quicker you can have high pop/econ/military/research the more points you will get. Anything before ~2227 is very valuable. Anything before 2229 is still pretty valuable. Past that, you can't increase your scores with anywhere near the efficiency of the early years.

Also, if you play Gig, Abundant all, you will see a dramatic increase in planets (for DL 460-475)...And thus points.

I have only completed four games. I always play gigantic universes. With those four games I am still close to 100k points because I always go for military victory and disable the others.

Of course, with my schedule, it takes me a month or so to finish a game. I don't play more than 2 hours every other day. Some of you, I swear, must play 6-12 hours a day continuously.

Absolutely - by the end of year 3 (at the latest) you want to have 300+ fully developed planets, and by the end of year 4 your military rating needs to be in the hundreds of thousands (as viewed in the 'timeline' tab of the F6 pages).

In the latest DA version a gigantic, abundant all I have started has over 830 habitable planets, and I'm looking to have 500+ of those in my control and fully developed by the end of year 3.

Finding the right break-point to stop the colony rush and switch to military conquest for new planets is the tricky part, and depends upon other aspects of your strategy. For example, I know Purge likes to get his military machine rolling early in the 2nd year, whereas I focus more on economy and social development until year 3 - the final results are very similar though.

As someone that has gotten over 500,000 for one game I can tell you that playing the game to win and playing the game to get a massive score are 2 different things.

If you want to improve your score then you ALWAYS want to end your game at the end of year 6. Never go beyond this, and never stop before this.

Once you win allow the enemy to keep one planet and then work on building up your score.

I can get 100,000 to 200,000 for winning a game, but if I keep playing after I win I can boost my score to over 400,000

Here are some hints:

Getting a high scores has little to do with skill at the game. It has everything to do with patience. I consider trying to get a high score a different game. That can be interesting, but it really is just about pushing your score up. I enjoyed learning how to do it, but honestly it was just prolonging my games for the points. Nothing more.

1) Finish the game as soon as possible. Leave 1 enemy with 1 planet, or a couple of enemies with 1 planet each.

2) Build 16 military starbases in a cluster with every defence and offensive military boost.

3) Build thousands of tiny ships with just 1 weapon and 1 defence on them, and then move these thousands of ships into the range of your military starbase cluster (depending on your computer this can take a lot of time as your system slows way down as you get thousands of ships built).

4) Make sure every planet in your empire has at least 20 Billion people on it.

5) Keep tech reasearch spending at 60% of your total spending (EVEN AFTER YOU HAVE RESEARCHED EVERYTHING.)

You have to do this as quickly as possible. You never ever want a game to go past year 7 as your score will take a heavy penalty. And NEVER end a game before year 5 or 6. Ending at the end of year 6 is your best choice.

I can now get a score over 400,000 every single time with any race or any super ability. The only thing that stops me is time. I simply don't have the time to do it, nor the patience.

In the last couple of years I actually read a book while playing because when I hit "end turn" it takes 5 to 10 minutes for my computer to move all my ships towards my military base cluster.

I can't tell you how boring it is.

As someone that has scored over 500,000 I personally think Metaverse scores have a lot more to do with your patience and the patience of your friends and loved ones than your skill at a strategy game.

I am not trying to say that people that get high scores aren't good players, but that getting high scores is a lot more about trying to get high scores than it is about winning games.

Personally, I think they should change the Metaverse so that you can NOT turn off Alliance, Influence, and Tech victories. This would prevent the harvesting of massive scores.

- Livonya

Well, I took the advice offered initially and my score jumped from the 3500-4000 range to over 11,000. still not nearly as big as most that I have seen, but the additional replies have given me a good understanding. Thanks again all of you for your help.

Difficulty isn't a factor???????? So you could play on cakewalk, and get an absolutely ridiculuos huge score on a gigantic map, win as quick as possible, and potentially be number 1 in the metaverse on cakewalk??? Difficulty should be a multiplier. In other words, the game should be set up so that it is definetely worth it to tackle higher difficulty levels. I guess the only reason to play on a higher difficulty level is to show other players your difficulty gauge.

Difficulty is a factor but it's not that strong a factor in the score.

Metaverse score always needs to be taken with a grain of salt at the very least. Certainly there are those that argue it means nothing and those that argue it means everything. The reality is clearly somewhere between these two extremes.

You can totally ignore the ranking implied by the metaverse and simply use it a listing of your own personal history of your progression in the game. I think it has value even if this is the only function it supplies. However, I am in the camp that believes that there is some level of correlation between the quality of game submitted (both in score and difficulty level) and the player's skill.

I also believe that between total score and difficulty level that being able to beat the game at a higher difficulty level is a better indication of the player's skill level than the total points someone gets.

In any case there is an element of unfairness and subjectivity in any scoring system. If boxing (or fencing) matches were fought to the death then they would perhaps be the only exceptions to this rule. Clearly, there are flaws and inequities in the Metaverse, but it's the best system that we happen to have at the moment.

IMO If there is any truth to what Livonya posted it seems that there are two different goals winning the game and scoring. It definatly seems as if the scoring can be manipulated and therefore it becomes it's own challenge.

I'm not sure I am making my point but I don't see anything wrong with both views. If you are using the metaverse as gauge to measure yourself against others, don't just look at the score, look at the level they are playing and then make your judgement. . .

I think the scoring system should be the most impacted by the difficulty level. In other words, the number one person should be on suicidal or obsence. Here is a question, if I played a game on suicidal and lost, would my gauge show suicidal?

See, here is the thing: you could invest tonns of time into chessing your score as mentioned above and get like 400,000 points on an easy difficulty level and become one of the top meteverse players. Then, you just play a bunch of games on suicidal, but lose those games left and right. Then, in addition to having one of the top scores, it looks like you are a winner on suicidal, the hardest difficulty level. Thats unless the only way you can get your difficulty gauge to reflect suicidal is to actually win a game on that setting. At any rate I think the scoring system is messed up!!!!!

I agree 100%

The most definitive breakdown of scoring is this....... You don't score, until you score.

   (one of my favorite quotes)

referring to sex??

In context, it actually refers to scoring goals in lacrosse (Quote from the lacrosse coach in American Pie) but its a wonderfully ambiguous bit of doublespeak that could reference many things.

I chuckle every time I think of it because it reminds me of those bland, meaningless statements politicians and CEO's always make that state the obvious...

"Only by moving forward can we get ahead"

Since I saw that movie, anytime I see the word "score" I think fondly of it and just wanted to share that wonderful feeling with everyone else

Exactly! There are multiple ways to do it too. I mostly agree with what Livonya wrote, but I also disagree with some of the things he wrote...I just took a different path to 500K is all. For instance, under DL, both of my 500K plus games had a total research score under 10K.





You can always just look at someones profile. I think you will find that most all of the big scorers are playing on the high difficulty levels. They have usually moved on to figuring out the scoring game because they have reached the point that they always win on Suicidal with anything but the worst of maps.