As you can see from the image, there are no differences between the neutral and evil options. Also, the 1% gain seems rather infinitesimal.

Yea this happens, sometimes neutral can even be better than evil - what's your point?

Are you saying evil should always pay off more? and here i was thinking crime dousn't pay hehehehe

Lets not mix games shall we.

Most of these events have percentages calculated randomly, which means that sometimes you end up with a meaningless choice, and sometimes with a choice that can make a difference for your whole empire.

As far as the neutral choice being better than the evil choice once in a while, I think this has always happened. I always assumed it was Brad's way of inducing us to read the choices more carefully and actually think about these things rather than just Pavlonianally clicking evil (or neutral, or good) every time we see the popup.

You're missing the point. There is no difference between the neutral and evil choices! LOL I could care less which is the better choice, as long as I have three options - not two.

Sometimes the choices have a huge gap in them (2% bonus for neutral and 16% bonus or evil have popped up in my games once in awhile.) I think I even had one once where the neutral was better than the evil (but not by much). It is just a random choice on a range of numbers.