Yeah.  Imageshack likes people to register their domains so they can get more advertising hits and such.  Most major domains are already registered, but some might not be listed yet.  I used a direct link, so it might not show up.

Here's the forum code...

Can you see it or is it still showing a frog image?

It's a type of ZYW that I introduced among some controversy.  You set up ARC and options for a regular gigantic map, but choose scarce planets and set relations to cool so you can declare war at will.  All labs, CTRL-N until you get a Library and at least one other tech bonus tile.

The object is to end the game on Dec 22 2226 instead of April 8.  During the game, you do everything you can to max out your military score while disregarding your economy.  You trade all techs for whatever you can get, even trading away your diplomatic techs along the way.  A sort of scorched earth strategy that wouldn't work well if you took it into year 1.

I don't have the details anymore, but I could probably remember them as I get back into the game.  I'll be happy to post what I remember as I get time so we can all be on a level playing field.  The problem with the strat is that the game becomes tedious and the fun gets sucked out of it.  Instead of running a game in a matter of hours, you run it for a couple of days.  The score goes to around double that of a regular ZWY, but it takes way longer to finish.

 

Motti, notwithstanding your full year zero games, I believe Neilo was referring specifically to the "spend 3x the cash you have until you meet the AIs" part of it, which is not quite contingent on a planned end date-although sooner is normally better!

Yup, i have never played out a full year ZYW. To me, the goal was always to finish the game at it's earliest point, April 8th.
I may look up some of the old strats to see about doing a full year ZYW, just to see what scores are there for me, but i know very little about the way its played. I assume spore as usual but is it against one AI or all 9?

Yeah.  You backed me in the ZYW thread though.  Thanks.  In the end , KP included it.

Anyway, the games were against all 9 AIs.  No spore.  I borrowed heavily from DeathAdder's tricks and named it the ZY-Death in his honor.  SCC and a mini mil starbase array with tiny 1/1 fighters (or maybe 2/1) were in there as I recall.  Nothing like a regular gigantic map though.

If our old forums backup is still accessible, it should all be in there.

 

On my current game, I did some tech trading for planets, but only in the classical style.  No homeworlds and the bulk of it was done without the SCC.  I did build the SCC later since it was an available tech, but I didn't focus on it.  The fighters under it were ones I traded for.  Most of my mil level was from trading techs for fighters and landing them for the standard planet boost.  I don't think the SCC really helped me much anyway since the fighters were small or tiny early ones.

I didn't even build a single fighter of my own until the Arceans declared war on me.  I'm not used to the AI declaring on me so it was a welcome change.  I built some medium and huge missile ships to wipe their fighters out and used transports that I mostly traded for.  I think I built 4 or 5 transports of my own and used something like a dozen or so traded ones.  

I still have one of my own transports in reserve.  I was building up to for a final assault on their last planet when my influence flipped them.  My warships then went home to sit under the SCC.

I'm trying to ally with the Drengin.  I gave them my econ and tech treaties and I have theirs.  I also have tech treaties from everyone and econ from the Yor and all minors.  The good and neutral races didn't go for econ treaties with me.

So far, the best I can get are friendly relations with the Drengin and Yor.  The others aren't particularly happy to have me around.  Besides me, the Torians and Krynn are the strongest races.  All are doing fairly well except for the Iconians and Drengin.  They're parked next to each other and I guess their production is focused on each other.  The Iconians keep popping up and asking me for help, but I take their money each time instead.  Silly Iconians.

Everyone is at war with everyone else for the most part.  There have been a few peace treaties showing up on the screen here and there and I get in there to bribe them to go back to war when I can.

I'm building tiny colony ships like crazy and the fighters and scouts I traded for early have mostly been converted to colony ships as well.  Still going all labs and each planet has at least 1 lab on it to drive production.  My tech level is screaming.

Another thing I forgot about was the warp slowdown when in Yor space.  It was a tad frustrating running my warships through there while chasing Arceans and pirates only to be dropped to a speed of 3.  My survey ship also went through there within range of a pirate.  Of course, their speed was also dropped to 3, so they didn't get me.

 

On the 700% tiles question you had up there, I only saw one other library on my last game besides the one I had on my homeworld.  In my current game, I've only seen the one on my homeworld so far.  Of course, there are boatloads of planets out there and I've only taken 1 other homeworld so far.  I came across a 700% production tile, though.  I built a Market Center on it.  That still feels odd.

Quite so!

Dropped in my no cheese, no scc colonize and invade game. I perhaps only colonized a quarter of the available planets, and that doesn't include the extreme worlds either. little dissapointed in the score, but this was a balanced build, no all lab or anything else, no array....nuthin. So...well i don't know, i'm not even sure we have a frame of reference for what a non cheese game will achieve.
In any case, the point was this game was extremely fun, in fact if i had got this score 5 years ago, rest assured i would have been ecstatic!

Great to play the game the old way for a change.

 

I do have a giga 9AI ZYW i was working on, but im not getting something right. If you recall Motti, what scores did those gaes you did net you? I did one, but it failed....i'll mess with it a little, but i won't be putting serious time into it, the "old" style is just much more enjoyable now!

Nice game Neilo!    

Yep, we all would have been happy with that score back in the day.  In fact, any win on suicidal was gold.  

You only colonized 1/4 of the map?  Maybe I should have stopped at that point too.  I didn't have the discipline to stop colonizing once the ball got rolling.  It's not easy for me to turn that switch off in my head.  

My best score was a bit over 198k before I retired the game.  Looking back at the ZYW thread, I don't suppose I need to post what I remember for SaintMina.  She has a 200k+ Giga ZYW posted.  

I agree that the classical style of playing is a lot more fun.  The game's personality comes out nicely.

 

In my current game, I'm about ready to focus my economy on war.  As long as I don't open up too many fronts at once, I should be able to take them all out easily.  I could probably win if I declared on everyone, but it would take a while and I'd have to play a back and forth game before I rolled over them.  The Torians are strongest, so I'll take them out and just run my fleets clockwise around the map. 

 

Success!    

I've finally allied with the Drengin!  Break out the bubbly!

 

Relations went from friendly to close as soon as I started attacking the good and neutral races.  I went for the alliance and got some money in trade.  I've never gotten an alliance before.

And now, some mopping up ensues.  

 

Congrats!

How far along are you?  I've always been curious how early they will ally, but I've never gone through the trouble (because it really is a lot of trouble).

Thanks SS.  It was Year 3, but I might have been able to get an alliance earlier.  I was building up and didn't know that attacking the other races would help relations with the Drengin.  I gifted Xeno Ethics to them and the Yor early on in the hopes that I'd get an alliance easily.  I guess it takes a lot for that to happen, especially if you're not maxing out your mil score.

It might have been the mil buildup that gave me close relations too.  I'm not sure.  I had dedicated my economy to huge warships with as much attack as I could get.  My mil levels probably almost doubled when I started the final war.  Attacking the strongest AI would have made me look stronger too, since his fleets were taking a pounding.  I lost a tad over half of my huge missile ships, but the Torians lost a lot more.  

 

I had forgotten about the AI's tendency to react to the Human player.  They all had built huge missile ships similar to mine, but with a higher missile defense than I had.  I then built huge death ray ships to mix in with the missile fleets and they built beam and missile defenses.   

A tactic i used to use, not sure how long ago even, DL maybe, was to gift the AI a whole line of weapons, lets say Beam. Gift them every beam tech, inc Doom Ray and they will use it, you obviously make sure you teched out the corresponding defenses.
What you had to do was to keep your ships ATT level less than theirs, but load up on defenses...that way they never counter since they think they have the upper hand. As long as you had the miniaturization advantage you could easily out defend the AI, and wear them down.

Another thing to do, no matter what weapon line your using, max out another one, and just before your about to declare war, upgrade your ships and switch weapons. Whatever way you were heading and had the AI reacting to, is now pointless and all the ships they built, just toys....

 

Iv'e been playing a new game, and it's a slow one too. giga abundant all, but with tech speed set to slow and no minors. WOW....i'd never played it like this before and let me tell you, i won't again. I think i'm in year 5 already, i have about 300 planets and still have the Korx and the Yor to deal with.

This far into the game, i'm still colonizing (the extreme worlds) still trying to max out my resource starbases and build out my planets. One thing that is very clear in a slow speed tech game, your econ matters, alot!

The MCC made a massive impact on this game, as did finally getting my planets to build stock exchanges. Being a low tech game meant having an econ so you can outnumber the AI, since you can't outgun him. Getting weapons tech off the AI is hard at best, but this game it was murder, so i had to rush buy many..many ships equipped with Laser V just to take on one fleet.

 

It's made for an interesting game, one where getting to the next tech in the line actually means something and often, is enough to prompt an upgrade or new class of ship. Very different style of game, it's enjoyable, but very slow.....

Score wise, well i doubt this thing breaks about 70K, its so very slow, iv'e never had a mil advantage, thought it is close, this will be a game scored on econ more than anything else.

 

Yeah, I wound up doing something similar but not as intricate.  I built combination ships and at the end, all guns. 

I was hoping that having an alliance would mean that I could end the game by killing everyone else off except my ally, but I had to take the Drengin out too. 

 

Your game seems like it could take a lot more patience than I might have.  I suppose it can also be seen as epic though.

I'll take a break from GalCiv2 for a bit.  We had some storm damage and I'm not finished with everything. 

The immediately important repairs are done, but there's some finishing and cleanup left.  The local lumberyard was out of the type of fencing that my neighborhood uses, so I had to go to another city.  Lot's of folks around here had damage and there was a run on supplies.  I found what I needed though.

 

I almost forgot.  My game...

 

 

Sorry to hear about the damage mate, hope nothing serious, you are both fine i assume?

nice game! your getting good scores, you using any ZYW/Mumbler tactics still though?
Yea, this game im doing is draggin on and on, and i know it won't score well, but its fun and that was the point coming back to the game. As fun its been, especially the techs meaning something, i won't play on these setting again though, i'm up for suggestions as to what style to play next????

 

Finished up my slow tech game...not much else to say about it, it scored pretty well 100k+, for slow tech rate i thought that was good, i don't think i had a warship till year 1!

Now onto something different...

 

Motti, okay, that jives with what I'd heard.  Thanks, though. 

There was an ancient post I ran across quite some time ago suggesting that the score multipliers were actually higher for lower tech speeds...I've never done any research into it, though, seeing as it was so long ago, and everyone's pretty much used Very Fast for score, that I kind of assumed it had been patched out.

Could you post up your final score and your component scores (social/mil/econ/research) for me, Neilo?  I'd appreciate it.

Edit: Just your component scores, then.  For some reason the image wasn't showing before.

Double edit: Oh, and the end date, if you please.  Kind of need to know the number of turns.