It's a Close Game This Time - Who will get best high score?

This round we have 4 players who are close to getting high score:

1Stora Enso Ltd. 43,210
2 Fun-Factory GmbH 42,732
3 One-Stroke LLC 42,712
4 RedViper GbR 42,400

For the last few days the players in 2-4th place have been gaining on Stora Enso each day. If things continue as they are going, Stora Enso will lose his first place position in a week or two. As far as I can see this game can still be won by any of these four players.

These are the changes in High-score since yesterday. Red Viper, Fun-Factory, and One-Stroke tend to get more points daily than Stora Enso. I've been tracking my closing rate with Stora Enso and if things go as they have been going this last week, I'll overtake him in 10-14 days. So, I predict I'll finish this round ahead of him. I don't know about Red Viper and Fun-Factory though. Some days I get more points than they do and some days I don't. So in that way it's very much up in the air.

850 Stora Enso Ltd.
911 One-Stroke LLC
883 Fun-Factory GmbH
922 RedViper GbR
825 BERKEI LASTING INDUSTRIES GmbH
781 USA Ltd
868 preetz GbR
774 The Phoenix Club GbR

I know the research hampers ROI. It's 3 squares that aren't productive and it costs a few million per WU to maintain the buildings. All said, my current research probably reduces my ROI by about 15%. I don't really expect to win this round, I expect to come in second to Red Viper while Stora Enso comes in third.

I'm excited because after a long time of losing to Stora Enso, I'll best him. Now I'm frustrated that I'm being bested by Red Viper.

Yes it's too early to count the chickens, but it's not too early to make predictions.

Scoring is different now than it was in the past. I agree that in the past a player could win with a good vendor score and good manufacturing score and a mediocre ROI. Now ROI is king and vendor/manufacturing score take a back seat. Sure you need to do well in V/M but I get roughly 5th place each round, and I do nothing special for V/M. ROI on the other hand is the one where the most variability is introduced for each player, and the one where the front runners can not score in the top 5, ever.

So, what's the point of QL? It's good in making ROI.

Zitat von barmcake

I predict Germany will win the World Cup.

I predict Spain will win.

Back on topic.

Today I passed Stora Enso in high score. I wasn't sure it was going to happen this round. I was steadily gaining on him but the rate of gain was steadily decreasing. Lucky for me, it looks like he couldn't get to his computer for a while, and was unable to keep selling the stratospheric level of goods he was selling. Now that I've passed him, I think it is very unlikely that he'll be able to regain the lead. My style of play means that each day I get a very good score even if I can't come to the computer each day. This style leaves me vulnerable to players who can log in two times a day every day for two months, but I doubt there are many players who can keep up that sort of schedule. I certainly couldn't.

I predict now that I will win this round. Red Viper is still in good position to win it, but has not been able to gain much ground on average over the last few weeks. Yes, he's within 100 points of the lead, but it's hard to consistently gain a lot of points. Red Viper gained 23 points on me yesterday, but I gained 28 points on him today. So although it's not hard to make 10 or 20 points in a day over the leader, it's really hard to get consistent gains of even 8 or 10 points per day.

\o/

Thanks Berkei.

Maybe there is less importance to QL than I had thought...

Red Viper, I saw what's been happening the last few days, and I see how you will win, and I will get second place. I had thought you had low ROI for a long time despite having a low company value because you didn't have the research or capability to make a lot of money. Now I see that you were making less money for a long time so you would have a lower company value and the ability to make large gains in ROI for the last few weeks of the game. Well played.

It's funny how quickly predictions can turn out all wrong, and plans can be proven to be inferior.

Next round I will forgo research and make a run at high score from the start. It never seemed imperative before to stop QL research in favor of increased chances to win the game. Now that there are few rounds left, it changes things. I would consider stopping my QL research this round except for three things. 1st, tearing down a level 7 research facility would hurt my company value and ROI so greatly that I'd loose more points than I could gain from the following days of lower building maintenance costs. 2nd, I still can't make QL 100 LPKW. 3rd, I'd still get second place even if I didn't have the first two problems.