The sheer variety (or overly complex probabilities in scoring) makes it even more challenging for anyone trying to figure out this chaos.

I can only respect (envy might be a better word!) people for finding the optimal ways of scoring perpetually better than competitors - until a "maximum" is discovered; if that's any possible.

Metaverse away, boys. Too bad I-mod' MMV is still experiencing silly server troubles, though.

Congrats Random!    I'm sure if you had played another game year, you would have got 1 million, but at that point 1 year for 15k doesnt seem like its worth it.  Next game I expect you will break 1 milion.

Sentient species taste better...

Believe me, I would have run this game out to 20 yrs if it had a shot of going over 1m. Unfortunately yr 7 netted me only 13k and yr8 only 5k. If thats not hitting the wall, I don't know what is

Growth in all resource allocation games tends to be exponential because your growth rate is dependent on how much "stuff" you have. Get more "stuff" and you grow faster. That is in fact the classical definition of exponential growth. You start off early in a deep resource hole but as you accumulate more planets, more mining resources and technological bonuses then growth accelerates.

Typically the game's scoring potential is pretty much fixed by the end of the second year if not earlier. You can see this when you get to the point that you can win the game and you begin checking the score at the end of each game year. The first time you do this forms your baseline. The next time you do this you get a value of how much the additional year was worth.

Say as an example that at the first score check your score was 300K and then 1 year later you check and the score is 600K so that first additional year was worth an additional 300K points. Then the year after that you check again and you'll find that year was probably worth only 150K points. Each year the additional gain from an extra year approximately halves. So you can get another 75K and another 37K and another 18K then 9K, etc. By then it becomes pretty obvious. If you haven't made a million by then are you really going to do another year for 4.5K and another for 2.2K, etc.?

Depends how close you are and how badly you want it. 

It's an infinite sum dictated by the initial conditions. For example the following sequence asymptotically approaches 960K no matter how many years you extend the game or how 'badly' you may want it to reach 1 million. If you're on this curve then you're simply not going to make it, you need to be on a higher initial curve to have a chance. It's all dictated by that critical first year.

320K year 2 + 320K =

640K year 3 + 160K =

800K year 4 + 80K =

880K year 5 + 40K=

920K year 6 + 20K =

940K year 7 + 10K =

950K year 8 + 5K =

955K year 9 + 2.5K =

957.5K year 10 + 1.25K =

958.75K year 11 ... (I'd probably give up at year 7)

Diminishing returns force everyone to give up sooner or later and you accomplish little by that last year. Why denigrate an otherwise great game by beating a dead horse right at the end?

Other people can view things any way that they want but I've always viewed extending the game as "allowing your game to reach its full potential". No one achieves a 1 million point game by accident.

No, but how long you're going to continue depends on how badly you want it, regardless of what the score turns out to be.

I never said wanting it badly enough would get you there; just that it determines how much longer you'll stick it out.

If it weren't for Mumblefratz, we wouldn't have ever found out that there is, indeed, a clear correlation between Turns, Years & Points.

ZYW's might be fun and yet, there's always that creepy doubt that suddenly pops-in when you think you may just be on your ways to beat your best rankings.

Here's the formula to me; Win or Lose. I might score less, but it doesn't make me any less efficient than listed Millionaires.

I prefer conditions to results while they both last, you might say.

In the meantime - Modding simply complicates the whole reasoning(s) to near infinitesimal figures, however strange that may seem to Metaverse compatible gameplays, uncheated and fair.

Back to XW06A.

This is what I was getting at. If that year 8 score would have put me over 990k, I probably would have tried to weasel my way over million even if it took 10-12 yrs. As it was, due to diminishing returns it looked like it was literally impossible to breach 7 figures, so I pulled the plug.

As long as the subject has come up, Mumble, I'll throw this out...In your example above the yr-on-yr score increase was 50% of the previous yrs increase. The larger games that I have completed consistantly show this number to be in the 50-55% range. However, in this most recent game the yr on yr increase was less than 50% - first time I'd seen that. Any idea what the determining factor might be?

The 50% mark is just a rule of thumb and is just an approximation. It depends on what is going on in the game. Once your population and income top out then there are no more dramatic gains left to be got in those categories and pretty much the only thing left is to continue spitting out ships for your military score but the support of those very ships cut into your ability to produce more ships at the same rate.

Basically if you can keep one or more of the four components of score dramatically increasing then the rate of decrease is less, but once you're no longer able to dramatically increase *any* of four components of score then you get to that level of halving (or more) per turn. Perhaps in those games where the decline was less you were somehow able to keep levels of growth higher for a bit longer.

It's not overly scientific it's just a matter of taking all of what that particular game will give you and to realize when it's time to call it quits. I think you'll see most of the 1 million point games in the 6-8 year range because that's when it's most effective to quit. When you've scored many hundreds of thousands of points who in their right mind is going to hold out for another 1 or 2K unless those few points are all you need to break some arbitrary goal like 1 million. Even then I doubt anyone would feel overly proud of a 20 year 1 million point game. Why bother? There's nothing shabby about a 950K game, just learn from it and try to better it the next time, don't try and turn it into something that it's not.

How did you get to have "Journeyman(4)" on your membership status, Mumble? If you know some of the details, of course.

Cuz, Neilo & i were having a discussion the other day on how to introduce some kind of banner-types (such as what StarDock staff has) but for Members.

Anyway it used to be that the GalCiv2 site had an independent forum ranking system along with forum stats associated with the metaverse. Other sites, most notably WinCustomize, also had a forum ranking system in place although I don't believe that they had a similar forum stats function. On WinCustomize the forum rank was used to determine whether folks could directly submit skins or whether they needed to have them "approved" before they could be downloaded by others. I'm not totally sure of the exact details but at least on WC the individual forum ranks had a functional meaning and use.

On the GalCiv2 site they used to have ranks that were quasi game related. There really wasn't all that much that forum ranks allowed you to do other than at the rank of Diplomat and above you had access to a special area. This area is still in existence today although it hasn't been used in a long time. You can actually see remnants of it yourself by going to https://www.galciv2.com/Council/Forums.aspx.

Anyway the GalCiv2 forum ranks used to be Citizen, Veteran, Diplomat, Ambassador, Governor, Avatar although there may be another rank or two between Governor and Avatar. These ranks may also have to do with the early system of users being moderators. Kryo came up through this system until he simply became a SD employee and he could certainly add more detail to all of this. I used to be an Ambassador which correlates to the Journeyman (4) rank.

As far as how one received rank I think it was essentially assigned from above, possibly from folks like Brad and Cari or more likely from Kryo with perhaps Brad/Cari/Zoomba's approval. I got most of my rank from the days of the Metaverse Council, however these days a new unified system is in place that is common to all sites although interestingly enough your forum rank (like karma) does not translate from one site to the next. Basically they still use forum rank for it's original purpose on WC but elsewhere it hardly makes any sense. They only difference that I can tell is that when I give karma it defaults to giving 4 points although I can change that from 1 point up to my forum rank of 4. Prior to the forum upgrades Neilo had been promoted to veteran which translates to Apprentice (2) and he can give 2 points of karma.

Other than giving karma there seems to be no funtional use for forum ranks anymore.

Good info mate. The uselessness of the ranks, and the banners that the Stardockians have got, got us thinking that perhaps there could be something for all members across all sites that could show ones "rank" for lack of a better term.

Since rank is basically useless now, it's not constant across all the sites as you mention, and nor is karma, it is very difficult to know about the persons you are conversing with in various threads.

The SD banners are about the only constant form throughout the entire SD web and if there were something similar, be it tied to ranks or not, that all members could have it would make identifying others and their levels of and interests in, their various native sites and areas of expertise, far easier for all.

Even if the banners were as generic as what site a member may consider their "default" site (SINS GC2 WC JU and accompanying icons), or perhaps as informative as "Modder", "Blogger", or "Skinner".Maybe a combonation of the two?

It would make discussions easier i think if we are able to easily identify what a persons interest in SD lies in and what site they are posting from.

Though i am way off topic from this thread so I'll make another thread pertaining to this for discussion.

I created another thread in Ot for this discussion to migrate to so as not to take over this thread.

Member rank and Stardockian banners.

I just found this thread...sorry for my late arrival! I don't know how to post a screenie of my million plus scores. I think I have three of them now. If someone would like to do it for me?

I keep ranting, and I'm sure some people are sick of hearing me say it, lol, but I think TA has as much or more scoring potential as DA. All of my million plus games were TA v2.02 and I didn't build a starbase array or use an upgrade strategy in any of these games. I may have to break down and actually build a starbase array in my next game just to see what the score potential is using one. BTW, I wish to thank Mumble for his help several months back when I had a bunch of questions related to scoring. I could never had broken that million point barrier without his insights.

Something VERY interesting happened to me last night on my last million point game. At year seven it scored 1,050,350. I played out another year because I wanted a last plot point...I expected to add another 5k points with that year. However, at the end of year 8 the score had regressed to 1,048,000....I had actually slipped backwards. Has anyone else seen retrograde point progression if you go out far enough?