I understand where you're coming from, and mostly agree with your points, Nyx. However...(another long post, sorry)
I think the issue with maintenance is still a little murky. I'd agree that 0% maintenance was probably not intended and is somewhat exploitive. What's a fair amount then, the 5% you can get not counting culture modifications? If so, can you then take 115% on maintenance to get 10% and reduce that by another 5% by picking merchants to net yourself 1000 points in race creation?
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I have no problem with the AI surrendering, because in a high-score contest, you're not competing against the AI, you're competing against the other humans in the contest.
I guess the problem I have with the AI surrendering is that is does so based on the difference in score. If there aren't any rules against it, I'll find myself building more ships than I need in a certain turn, simply because I know it'll inflate my score, and the AI will capitulate. This can give me an unfair advantage when comparing results against players who aren't aware of the quirk in the AI. I mean, I found myself not wanting to colonize a planet I would normally colonize right away because if I did, I'd lose the 3k pts from the ship and that would drop my score below the 10x threshold! I'm not really concerned about making it fair for the AI, it's going to lose anyway.
In the buildup stages, there's no point for me to build anything that isn't as effective as possible in getting a higher score. I feel like it's a little exploitive being able to just dump tons of organic armor and organic weapons on hulls and not having them cost any more in minerals than one with just a master computer. I don't actually need these ships/bases I'm building, they're purely for score.
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It is a moderately thin line, but you should all be able to recognize it. We expect anyone who considers themselves a champion at a game to be able to make that call.
I guess what I'm getting at is I find this to be a little... well, arrogant. The tone implies that there's a line that should be clearly drawn, and if you don't see it, you're a 'cheater' not a 'champion'. No hard feelings here, but while most would agree on the infinite retrofit being a cheat, I think you'd see a lot of different opinions on things like maintenance, taking advantage of AI, and the like. That's mainly why I brought up the issues in the first place, to see what people thought and hopefully generate some discussion on the matter. Thanks for taking the time to weigh in.
-Drake