Suspected problem in alignment bonus in scoring

Could the discrepancy in score be caused just by the alignments of the ai? It might be interesting to add a test case where you play evil against all evil enemies.

What do you mean by your first statement, IceMole?

Well, I was wondering if the scores in the second games might have been lower because of the ai being set to good rather than having anything to do with the opposing alignment bonus.

Ice if that were the case wouldn't that also affect where you end up going good. What I surmise has happened is a failure in transposition of a negative somewhere in the program when you are evil and the ai's saintly ie 0-100 is -100.
100 - 0 is 100.

It's probably not all that visible when the ai's are all set to default. because you have 1 chaotic evil, and 1 evil only. Mine were all set to saintly.

The bonus or whatever determined by the numbers should be the same. But programing wise, you've got to transpose the negative number to a positive before putting it into the formula. If indeed, it isn't happening in this case and thus is acting as a penalty.

Actually my first game you are referring to I think is with default ai allignment.

What I am thinking is that the problem might be situational rather than numerical. It seems to me that evil ai civs are slower to make friends and quicker to start wars. I also understand that maintaining economic and military dominance over the other civs results in a higher score (isn't this how players are getting such high scores on low difficulty?). So if all of the ai civs are evil, they will end up fighting among themselves, hurting their economies. If all of the ai civs are good, they will like all of the other ais, stay at peace more and generally keep pace economically with the player. If all this is true, we might see a patern like this:

1. Player Good, Enemies Good - Lower Score

2. Player Good, Enemies Evil - Higher Score

3. Player Evil, Enemies Good - Lower Score

4. Player Evil, Enemies Evil - Higher Score

On the other hand, if there is a bug with the opposing alignment bonus, 2 and 3 would be true while 1 and 4 would give scores somewhere in between (no bonus or penalty).

From what Ray has posted here, you have only shown cases 2 and 3 to be true. Therefore, I suggest testing case 1 and/or 4.

While I agree in general with your reasoning Pontius, alignment bonuses would have to be worth a 50% bonus/penalty to cause Ray's second game to be half the value of his first in otherwise similar conditions. I find it hard to believe that it could be worth that much.

Consider the following example. Using 100 as a base balanced multiplier for example. Remember Ray got the bonus the first time, and it is our hypothesis he got it accidently subtracted rather than added the second. 100 + 33% is 133, 100-33% is 67 Algebra X + .33X is 1.33x X-.33x is .67x or his second game ended up half as big of score as his first with a 33% difference. Remember by our logic, Ray got the bonus the first time, he got negative (due to a bad modifier the second)

Also in my game Stock allignments the first time I got no bonus the first time so using 100 as it's base 100 -33 is about 66 or 2/3 in ratio. of what I posted.
So you see it only has to be worth 33% to produce the results indicated not 50. Also, it might not even be worth quite that much. We may have got less points due to other reasons. But the effect is definitely there be it 33 or 20 or whatever.

Also, our theory is right in line with what frogboy posted as to his scoring. He said there is a bonus for having an alignment different from the ai's and a slight penalty for having an alignment the same as the ai's. More different consistently throughout the game up to a point=more bonus.

Your theory is not in line with what he posted. Not saying it is wrong, just not consistant with what we've been told. That's what we're going on.

One extra note. Of course this wouldn't be the first time Frogboy said it was supposed to score one way and it actually scored another way.

Oops! That's a pretty silly mistake for me to make when I'm trying to pass myself off as mathematically competent. :notsure:

I still say 20-33% seems rather high for what Frogboy described as a relatively small adjustment.



On the other hand, that's a good point...

But unless you have more data than Ray gave in his initial post, I think it would be premature to dismiss other possible explanations.

To throw another wrench in the works, what happens if the AIs are Neutral? Is there no bonus at all?

You get a bonus from being different in alignment with the AIs so unless you play Neutral yourself, you will get a small bonus.

But would being evil be better, or good? It appears if the AI is neutral, it would be better to play as evil. :notsure:

Well in a sense yes, as you would not have the problem of Good AIs hunting you down just because you are evil.

There is definitely a heavy alignment issue to the score. My score varies from 3k to 10k depending on the AI alignemnt. My alignment makes very little change. That's why I don't like the change of alignment random event. It lowers my score! Some of that is justified. A game with all pure evil is much harder than a game with all pure good. Not sure if it is intentional or not.

Paul.

~SDC~

No where did I dismiss anything. It is quite possible that what you posted IS ACTUALLY what's going on.

Well, I did an all evil game, empires evil im pure evil(never
choose a pick that wasnt totally evil, EVER)

Otherwise i was semi lazy about scoring, did manage to grab
every wonder but one, but otherwise stopped at 10 trillion in
2196 or so, no major milking.

Simple cultural flip, no wars at all. The all evil bonus is
VERY healthy, representing at least a 30% pure bonus to score
over mixed align.

I imagine when frogboy was talking about being of the opposite
alignment he meant as a further bonus.

all evil playing good would be worth the most
followed by all evil as evil then neutral
then mixed variations of that until all good as good
being worth the least.

The opposite align bonus appears to be fairly
insignifigant with respect to the align bonus of the
empires. Anyway, this solves a big mystery for me why
some odd crippling games were worth so much more then
others. All evil is the answer.

The simple one line tip for maximizing score, play
against all evil empires = _big_ boost in score.

[Message Edited]

For a note on my last crippling game against all evil
empires.

I didnt build a single military ship(on purpose, I got
some incidently as a timed coincidence when flipping
an alien world)

I never payed a bribe, I was never at war, I never
built a starbase for cultural purposes and I didn't
even bother to take over any minors.

I built one production starbase in my home system to
speed wonder production for some wonders that the ai
had no hope of building before me and other then two
reloads due to CTD I never reloaded the game.

I completed all but 1 wonder(most through purchases)
and never felt threatened.

I still feel the score is all out of propertion with
my masochistic games where they score less and are
100s if not 1000s of times harder.

Bleh. I don't think this is a good thing. The AI should be balanced such that a Good opponent is worth just as much as an Evil opponent... sure, maybe they don't do as many unprovoked wars and the like if you aren't Evil yourself, but they should still be as challenging in a different way - trying to overcome you through trade and culture and alliances and the like. It's kind of stupid for one alignment to be worth so much more than another.

Not that it really matters when I can't register on this site to download patches and use the Metaverse, because my serial number only seems to work for installing and patching the game itself...

Re: bug underfood

I agree in theory but in practice all evil is more
difficult then mixed or all good. Though regardless
I think the bonus is a tad excessive, specially at
crippling where it hardly seems to matter what the Ai
is, its crippling inability to stay out of debt through
massively bad trades inhibits it from being anything
but a paper tiger, good or evil.

How do you stay out of wars without a military?

Im obviously doing something that keeps me out of wars
im just not entirely sure what that something is.

Im not even setting up trade routes, I built zero
freighters.

I don't encourage the AI's to fight each other at all
no bribing to start wars on my part.

I will give you my best 3 guesses.

1. The evil empires spend to much time at war with
each other to bother with me, perhaps in part but
this cant do it alone.

2. My massive size intimidates the hell out of them.
In number of systems controlled I very easily am 4
times larger then the next Ai by the time frigate
techs come along.

3. My constant tech/wonder trading makes the AI's like
me(I consider this to be the most likely contender)
I trade constantly, and often an AI will become poor
due to my trades and have a bank account of only 40
credits or so. I still trade the tech for the measly
20 credits it will offer up figuring its better I get
those 20 credits then some other AI. Perhaps I receive
good will on the part of the AI as the balance of the
value for that tech. As techs are very valuable at
crippling this can easily translate into a lot of
good will keeping me out of war.

I agree with Staffa. The scoring just doesn't differentiate between difficulty as much as I want it to.

My Maso Gigantic and Crippling Gigantic were worlds apart in the effort I expended to win them but the scores are similar.

The theory out there is that a big economy or influence scares AIs as well.

For crippling games, I don't need military if I have a very good colonising start. If I needed to knock off an AI or two, frigates will suffice. Once the job is done, there is no need to build any other ships even if the AIs have Overlords flying around.