[geoschmo]

Well, the simplest way for multiplayer games is to record one loss for everyone that did better than you in the game. So for a 5 player game the ultimate winner would end up with four wins and zero losses, etc.

This would have the additional advantage of allowing players that exited the game early, a common occurance in a game such as this, to go ahead and record their losses without having to wait around weeks or months to do so. As each player leaves they will post a loss to each of the players still remaining in the game. They will not need to worry about wins as the players that left prior to them will have already reported their losses, giving that person the win.

Another benefit of this system would be for players that abandon a game in progress. If said game was a ladder game they would be required to post the losses when leaving the game, even if their empire is still alive in the game. Then we either leave the empire as an AI, or we could then come up with some quantifiable "save" statistic for players that take over these abandoned games.

Geoschmo