High Score showdown

oshox · March 1, 2003, 07:49

So what's your highest score? I know you wanna show it off

Mine: 3395

Game Setup-
Difficulty- Impossible
Players- 6
Galaxy Age- Organic Rich (personal pref)
Galaxy Size- Huge
Tech. Level- Average

My Race- Custom
Aquatic, Telepathic, Creative
Low-G, -10 Ground Combat, -10 Spying (Had 110% score)

I had fun. This game was when I found the 100 ship maximum in battles. Psilons got jipped because of that one.

vmxa1 · March 1, 2003, 14:37

Ok since you asked:

Race -6 Repulsive -2 Ship Attack -2 Ground Combat
Huge universe (173 colonies)
PreWarp tech Organic Rich Antaran On
340% (24 picks left)
Start 1 system, one planet

Time 499 turns 781 pts
5385 pop 5385 pts (? not housed)
6 players elim 300 pts
tech 262 pts
154 captured 154 pts
antarian 250 pts
100 orion 100 pts

score 7155*340 24327 pts

Kaptain Ken · March 2, 2003, 10:57

vmxa1,

You continue to amaze me, I can see that I have a long way to go. I failed badly in my all tech by t200 try, must pop boom better. Now have another difficult target.

Ken

vmxa1 · March 2, 2003, 14:55

Cranking up a high score is not hard at all.
It comes down to having all the planets but one colonized. You have to leave one to continue the game.
You need a huge map of course and the max players,
Then use as few traits as you feel you can get away with, using only negative picks is best.
Next try to conquer all the races, but one. This can be a real problem as some may be hard to reach. The first priority to to get to them. You may need to help some to keep them from get stomped. If you do not get all, then you lose 50 points each.
Timing the pop build push is also requires some practice. If you start to soon you may expose yourself to counter attacks, if you wait it will take too long to get all the pop up and the time will cost you points.
You need to get all the pop boosting tech including planet building.
Make all those artificial planets.
Once you are in control, set planets to have all workers on housing until they are maxed out and buy all pop boosting tech.
At some point the wait for extra pop is not profitable, so end the game by attacking the anties.
I have not done it in a lon time as it is very very time consuming. Do not build all the structures on planets once you have the races under control, it just makes more worj for you.

Kaptain Ken · March 3, 2003, 17:28

vmxa1,

Thanks for all the information, some of it I knew, buts its good to have it all in one post. Think I need a long weekend to try for any serious high score, usually want to start the next game and end it with the antatians too soon.

Ken

vmxa1 · March 3, 2003, 19:27

Yeah the boring part as I said is once you have gotten all the AI's but one planet. Now you have to colonize all of those planets. For me I will have only gotten a few systems and then the systems that have other races. So that means maybe 10-12 systems. Now you have about 90 or more planets to colonize and create. That is a long ime with nothing to do.
By the way my real name is Ken as was my father and is my son's.

bakalov · March 4, 2003, 06:24

Hehe, mine is nearly 30000 without recapturing population :-) As we all know using this (bug?) one can make his highscore as big as he wants :-)

vmxa1 · March 4, 2003, 13:43

As you can see by my low capture that I did not use any tricks such as giving the planet back and conquering it again. 154 is pretty low for a huge map with max players.
The only way to increase my score is to have more planets in the map and that is a very low shot. I had 173 colonies, no more were available and all were full but a few pop points. 173 is the second most I have every seen, I am not sure what the upper limit is, but it is not much higher.
If you try to get a higher capture (without exploit), you risk not get all races conquered. IOW you could allow one race to get bigger, by not attacking early, but they may kill someone else, that you have not been able to reach.
6000 more points requires about 150 more 40 pop planets, I am dubious that that is possible. It would also lead to a much longer game and you will lose points for the time factor and need even more pop to offset that lose.

bakalov · March 5, 2003, 03:51

Start an advanced game and by turn 200 you must have all tech. Even you can give some worlds to the psilon to make him research faster. Then destroy and rebuild all planets that are smaller than "large", or are toxic. You can make exception for the huge toxic. In my game I had 180 colonies * ~37 pop average
and this is ~6660 from pop. This is about 1300 pop more than yours * 3.4 = 4420 more pts.

I think I have games with 180+ colonies, can't remember how much exactly.

BTW am I wrong, or you missed some antaran tech? I always play to get all 8 of them. First 4 from capturing antarian ships - even the smallest ships have these, and then capture Orion to get the rest 4 ... This does not make any difference, but ....

vmxa1 · March 5, 2003, 04:43

I am too lazy to bother capturing ships, I have not done that in years. I only capture them by accident with Loknar.
I can not image how much extra time would be required to destroy so many planets, then create artifical planets and then pop them out.
I would think that would add a lot of time to a run and I know it would add a lot of work.
One thing is for sure, I do not intent to do it again. It nearly made my cry at teh end as it was.

Kaptain Ken · March 5, 2003, 16:17

You guys have talked me out of playing for a high score, reading what you have to do to get there is way beyond what I consider to be fun. As I have said, to me playing is all about having fun, being a perfectionist is too much like work. Thank-you bakalov and vmxa1 for the info, I am still learning from you guys so hope you continue to hang around these old threads.

vmxa1 · March 5, 2003, 19:31

Yeah hundreds of turns getting housing to boom is not fun IMO. The game will have to go to around 700 turns or more, that is a lot of clicking, especially when nothing is going for so much of that time. All the races are gone, but one, no combat, no research, fun huh?

vmxa1 · March 5, 2003, 19:33

Oh and really nasty if you found that one or more systems had a artifical planet that you failed to notice or one or more planets some how were on trade, instead of housing. How about if you messed up and forgot to do all the terraforming, etc etc.

Iasius · March 5, 2003, 21:01

I'm not sure how many people know this, but if you want to make an easier high score, select just Lithovore which gives you enough boost early game and when you get evolutionary mutation you switch to cybernetik and then switch that off. That way you can get 340%.
I think that's kind of an exploit though.

bakalov · March 6, 2003, 03:00

Hm, this works only in the pre-patch version. Also you could change creative into uncreative ......

vmxa1 · March 6, 2003, 03:40

You are correct it would be cheating. No exploits no editors for me.

Kaptain Ken · March 6, 2003, 16:44

Everybody should play v1.31 as its much better. Cheating to get a high score defeats the purpose of seeing how well you can do, so why bother. You guys have raised the bar so high that I doubt many will even try anymore.

vmxa1 · March 6, 2003, 18:15

The only reason I ever made a run was because I found a web site that had listed all the top ten runs. They were like 3800 to 7000 and I thought, dang I have done about that without any special attempts, so lets see what can be done. I got tips here and there and made a few runs. The last one wore me out and even though I know a few things that could bump it up, I have not had the heart to do it. Maybe in 5-6 months I will feel up to it.

Iasius · March 6, 2003, 19:26

Quote:

Originally posted by bakalov
Hm, this works only in the pre-patch version. Also you could change creative into uncreative ......

I'm not sure which 1.31 you're using but it still works in my 1.31.

vmxa1 · March 6, 2003, 20:59

I doubt that very seriously. How could you remove a 10 point pick when you only get 4 for Mutation?
Remember you need to keep all your minus picks.
I don't think the version will impact that. 1.31 or 1.3 did fix some holes where you could change pick at the mutation, but not all. I do not remember off the top of my head which one.

bakalov · March 7, 2003, 03:31

In mine when I try to do this it pops a dialogue which says "Lithovore and Cybernetic are mutually exclusive."

vmxa1 · March 7, 2003, 04:34

Yup.
Anyway he was trying to use that as a boost to get a flying start in the High Score run, but turning it off at the Mutation in an attempt to raise the mulitpler.
That is not going to work as Lith is 10 picks and you only have 4 extra from the Mutation.
I tried this with taking only lith to start and no negatives. At mutation, I could not drop Lith.
What you could do is to take your -10 and use 4 picks for something like Warlord or +1 prod or R. Then at mutation remove which ever one you took. I suspect that some form of this cold be done. Racial traits can not be changed. Things like LHW, RHW, AHW, Sub. Aqua, Creative, etc. I mean how can you undo them? Plus R/P/F should be fine and may spying or combat stuff.
Those are applied each turn and are not intrinsic.

Iasius · March 7, 2003, 13:09

BTW if I select -10 picks at start and only 18 positive I can select subterranean when I get evolution.
I reinstalled Orion2 from CD and downloaded the patch again and it still works to switch from lithovore to cybernetik to nothing.

vmxa1 · March 7, 2003, 13:42

Quote:

Originally posted by Iasius
BTW if I select -10 picks at start and only 18 positive I can select subterranean when I get evolution.
I reinstalled Orion2 from CD and downloaded the patch again and it still works to switch from lithovore to cybernetik to nothing.

I do not know what game you have, but that is not possible.
Cyber is excluded from Lith, plain and simple at any time. You flat can not select both at once. The help for both says they are mutally exclusive. If you pick one the other is no longer bright, IOW non selectable. No matter how many picks you have.
Further you can not deselect Lith in the middle of the game at Mutation, regardless of how many picks you have. I had 20 picks and could not drop it.
Yes you can add Sub or Aqua or many others at mutation, if you have enough picks. This is allowed as that trait canbe applied at any point in the game. You can see that when you capture Sakkra and send one to your world. Boom you are not getting the Sub boost.

Kaptain Ken · March 7, 2003, 15:05

Did Moo2 come out with different language versions, and if so could that be the difference? My english language version acts just like vmxa1 describes.

Iasius · March 7, 2003, 16:04

I bought my version while I lived in the US so that's not the reason. I asked a friend of mine to test this on his (german) version of moo2 and he could change from lithovore to cybernetik, too.
I can't change from creative to uncreative though (maybe because in my test game I had -10 picks up to that point and only then switched some of those of to test it).

vmxa1 · March 7, 2003, 18:05

Iasius what is the date on your EXE and the size?
At start up time when you select the new game does it say 1.31 below that panel? I would suspect not.
I can not address other language version, but as you can imagine, changing racial traits in mid game should not be allowed. Fundamental things such as what you eat.

Iasius · March 7, 2003, 18:12

Orion95.exe
Date: Wednesday, 3/27/1997 2:11:00pm
Size: 1,564,160
It's definately 1.31...

vmxa1 · March 8, 2003, 02:53

Yup that seems right. Post a sav just before you get mutation. I have three CD's and none behave that way.

Kaptain Ken · March 9, 2003, 11:13

I will have to test this again, just another reason to play. Not that I need a reason.