Ventran players, what Settings do you use?

Military victory is the highest. I think the order is Military, Alliance, Culture, Technology.

~SDC~

'Rare' habitability is most common among experienced players. You get a higher score for playing on the bigger levels, but they take a long time if there are a lot of habitable planets.
Tiny and Small galaxies don't score much so they're not good if you're trying to claw your way up the metaverse. They're fairly easy if you can build a military early and expand fast. Medium and Large galaxies tend to be the hardest. Huge and Gigantic are too slow-paced for some people, but score the best and aren't too hard, since the AI is usually slow to act over long distances.
The Tight Clusters setting is, on average, slightly easier than the alternatives (the AI is poor at extending its range over large gaps in space), but it doesn't matter much.

~SDC~

I personally pick a gigantic galaxy with abundant planets and loose clusters. My games tend to take quite a bit of time because of that and I should probably consider making the clusters tighter or the planets less abundant, but that's not a high priority. I find the loose clusters allow me to leapfrog over AIs and grab systems on the other side of them as well. I am not sure if the abundant pick hurts or helps me in any way, I'll have to try the other extreame and see. As for scoreing do either cluster size or habitability hurt or help the score directly?

I am still messing with settings, currently I am chosing huge with occasional(or whatever the middle choice is) planets. Still though I tend to get overrun with influence quickly and lose any colonies.

So military victory is the best? I never had one of those, I even tried to be an evil basterd with all the military techs with normal AI and I got clobbered each time. However, I am now doing genius level AI using my Terran Trade Alliance and do very well assuming I have breathing room and do not get raped in the beginning of the game. You know thos torians who are supposed to be chaotic good? They are complete bastards, not any better then the evil races IMHO. About the only safe neighbor is the Altarians (assumimg I am good).

Military victories don't have to be literally military - it just means you end up controlling every star in the galaxy. So you could do that through culture-flipping all of them.

Or, at least every star that is left intact if you get my drift

I seem to use a medium/large with common planets and loose clusters, not sure what tight clusters do. I've mainly done research victories, but I'm now going for alliances to increase my score.

Military, Gigantic, Maso is the big point magnet and almost guarantees you will hit the 60k cap to get the metaverse score up there fast. Rare habitability means less time per game so more games and more scores. Tight clusters means less chance of having the AI culture flip you on maso so tight is a little easier than loose in my opinion.

Playing to max our points is OK but don't forget to just have fun so you end up playing more often.

That is true with version 1.20. But with version 1.49 (Altarian Prophecy), you can reach the 60K with other settings.

You may be a veteran player and not want to rank up points, too.
The most entertaining way of playing galciv for me is all opponents set to incredible, default alignment or maybe a few more evils to make it harder to get allies, alliance victory to avoid end game tedium, medium map, uncommon or common yellow stars, random cluters (change that setting for variety).
It's hard, and not worth many points.

I think it's lot's-o-fun to have all the aliens set on a random good/evil every game,so u never know who/how to trust/trade with...huge or large size...
and rare to uncommen life planets,allows me to
role-play a little bit,'cause we not found a good one
yet...:)...maso just no fun for me,but that's just me,
main thing enjoy the game the way u play...right?
Aloha

It's the most important thing! If you're playing the game and not having fun, you won't play anymore...

Play where you are comfortable!

I like tiny/rare for quick games.

I play AP (Altarian Prophecy). I pick Huge/Rare/Tight clusters.

I pick Populist Government, Diplomacy +50% and trade routes+2.

I play at maso(all incredible AI) and it's quite easy to hit the 60K mark on those settings. Large map will also score 60k if you know how to tweak the score up abit.

For Honor and Justice!http://guardians.galciv.org/index1.html

I typically play large, abundant, maso on the expansion setting. My scores for some reson never get out of the 30's.

My tech and military scores are usually low. It will say i have researched 1 tech when i have researched many. It will say i have destoyed 1 enemy ship when I have laid waste to dozens.

My society and economy score tend to be higher.

Whatever is used to calculate scores need tweaking. When i totally dominate a game on the maso level, abundant planets, and get a 30k score, and it is the same score as when i have a rough go of it-something is wrong.

And I have 2 alias-one is Zoshan and one is xietor. Annoying. I am going to try and have the xietor removed. I only post scores under Zoshan and I am currently 94th.

Which version are you using? I have the AP beta and get 60K for a large/rare/tight/maso/military conquest. Otherwise you have to play gigantic maps.

There is a bug in 1.20 where it only counts since the new/load. It doesn't track the stats over the current instance you are playing. (If you load the game up after school and resume playing, the stats only count from when you loaded.)

How much does this affect the score?

As far as I could tell, it didn't at all.

I go for the Tiny/Tight/Maso
Populist Party
Planet Quality +7
Soldiering +20

Sometimes I switch the Political Party I'm usin'.