Good TG contest map available

[Drake]

I basically wanted to make this available because a good map can give a player a big advantage for the contest.

Even though I spent more time than any sane person would getting a great map, I'd rather it be about skill in the game than endurance in restarting over and over after the first 15 turns or so.

SO, if you're interested in playing, feel free to use the map to help get those top scores. With potential ringworlds included, it has nearly 500 planets in a small, spiral galaxy, and I'm guessing a realistic max on this one to be around 300M including your ships.

Good luck & hope to see more people playing!

-Drake

PS: sign up at http://www.twingalaxies.com/cgi-perl...hampionship.pl

[geoschmo]

Very Noble of you Sir Drake.

I still haven't got the timing down for the ringworlds (RINGWORLDS! ) , but 500 planets is quite a bit more than any system that I have ended up with in my games, including building them out of asteroid fields.

Consider your challange accepted.

[Drake]

You'll have to create 48 ringworlds and make about 150 planets out of asteroids to get near the 500 figure. I'm pretty sure that's about as many as you can reasonable expect to get in a game. Even if you do generate a 39 system quadrant, chances are pretty high you'll wind up with at least one black hole or nebulae. Without a good map, I don't think it'd even be possible for someone to reach the score of 278.7M that I finished with on this one.

As for actually getting those ringworlds built, I found that I got a much quicker start by demanding the AI give up and surrender to my fearsome empire. Just as using troops to take over the AI HWs is more effective than just glassing them all, threats and diplomacy (after putting a chokehold on their economy) works better than troops. If I'd had to use troops, I might not have gotten a score half as high.

-Drake

[geoschmo]

278, wow.

My top score so far is about 57Mil. I too learned early on that troops were not the most efficient way to conquer the ai. In fact in all of my latest attempts, I can pretty much have the quadrant to myself by turn 35 at the latest.

What I have been trying to figure out lately is how to get these darn ringworlds built and still have time to have anything built on them.

Don't tell me, I want to figure it out myself.

[geoschmo]

Here's an example of how slap-happy a 2 week long game will make you. (Drake and Tomgs will know what I mean if noone else does.)

Towards the end of one game I got bored shuttling around population from one planet to another so I decided to do a little "galactic graphitti".

Attached is a pic of the galactic map at the end of the game. Re-aranged the warp points some...

[ColdSteel]

You're one sick puppy.