Featauril

Join Date 02/2006

Personal Grief : Ethics and Random Events

One of the things I liked most from Galciv1 was the random events that let you choose your morality. You had to be repeatedly evil to access the really nasty techs, and repeatably good to access the sweet good techs. In Galciv 2, we gained something more : we have more tangible, real benefits from our chosen ethics. However, we also lose something

Random events stop as soon as you choose a morality. This alone often makes me wait a long time before I research Xeno ethics. It's a very disapointing part of the game : I would like the random events to continue till the end like in Galciv 1.

However, the way the ethic system works now that'd be useless. What happens if you choose the good way in a particular random when you already chose evil as your civilization morality? or neutral?

This brings me to another point : It's no longer a journey to get to ultimate evil or pure good, or even balanced neutrality : It's simply whichever first three random events you chose, plus a technology. It removes much of the fun of the process, in my opinion.

Anyone else thinks like me?

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Me. I'd also like a greater variety of events, or an editor to add in my own (trying to learn how to add in my own right now, atm).

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I agree. Xeno Ethics should be a diplomacy modifier, but not affect individual moral choices. When options are given to you your alignment should still shift back and forth which determines how those you govern or in your sphere of influence react to you.

Imagine for a moment you have minor races in your sector, then you do something totally unethical which makes them suddenly fear you- they might react by suddenly launching an attack as a preemptive measure.

Xeno Ethics are ethics that all Galactic races agree on, much like Universal Language, but just as each race speaks it's own language as well, they logicly have their own scale by which to measure their inclination to follow the 'rules'

These random events are very fun and add color to the game. I too wish there were several hundred more of them.

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I think selling your extra population as slaves would be a good add on to the diplomacy options. Selling your population would make you more evil. Any alignment could buy slaves, good races would presumably free them and integrate them into their society.

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I really like that "free them and integrate them into their society." That would be really cool.

I also think there should be a ton more random events. Even in the shorter matches I play, I will see the same event three, maybe four or five times. They do not seem like they would be very hard to add in- some flavor text, then the ranges for the bonuses and maladictions for each choice.

What would be really cool would be if the events continued after you picked your alignment, and say, choosing Evil when you are Good (but really, who picks Good?) would shift you away from your element. This would provide Economic, Production, Research, etc etc problems. Choosing ten Evil choices would cause, say, a 50% drop in income and a 65% drop in ship production speed. To make it even more interesting, the opposite choices would be pumped. Instead of getting 160 Bc for trashing an ancient nature preserve, you would get 320 Bc. A Neutral would get a 1.5 mod to both, and Evil and Good would get a 2x mod for their antithesis.

And the Good results need to be better, just for the Ethics bit. Because I have seen nobody (well, like two people) who choose Good.

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It would indeed be cool to have a more nuanced system. Xeno Ethics could provide, as others have mentioned, a significant modifier but ideally it shouldn't be possible to "buy" an alignment.

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Mystikmind

Join Date 06/2004

+20

The problem is that the developers don't wan't you to be able to swing one way and then the other to gain all the alignment specific techs/advantages.

It would give players a nice advantage over the AI to benefit from different alignments.... It would be nice though, ?

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I personally just dont like that you can buy your way into the good/bad books. Why don't your actions simply dictate whether you are considered Good / Neutral / Evil. This just makes me desire to play evil throughout to get all the strong boni, then buy whatever ethic I actually want to play as, as soon as all the planets are colonised.

I agree with SkaxCo as well, there need to be more positive results to Good choices too.

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It seems to me that the "evil" option is always more benefical , also. To some degree that makes sense, as exploitation of others = greater benefit to you. What I would like to see is not only the continuation of random events but that they can affect you after researching xeno ethics, and could be tailor made to whatever you choose.

Example: You are the Yor, you research Ethics, you align with Evil. Now, at the next random event, instead of Good = -10 morale, neutral = nothing, and "Theres gold in them thar hills (336 bc) if you pick evil it should be the opposite. Choosing "good" would actually be more beneficial to you, while choosing the evil you are already aligned with would be little help or even detrimental. Also, your slider should continue to shift. If you are evil, but drift too close to neutral or good, you lose your evil benefits, or possibly even get negative modifiers. That would add a little more depth to "ethical choices" in my opinion.

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Mystikmind

Join Date 06/2004

+20

It seems to me that the "evil" option is always more benefical ,

Making the 'good' alignment faster at science could greate some balance?

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Making the 'good' alignment faster at science could greate some balance?

But why would good be better at science.

Oh and there is an advantage, if you go good you get more points.

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DivineWrath

Join Date 05/2006

+135

... choosing Evil when you are Good (but really, who picks Good?)

*raises hand*

Random events stop as soon as you choose a morality. This alone often makes me wait a long time before I research Xeno ethics.

I tend to research Xeno Ethics asap, if for no other reason than to stop getting random events. I almost always play as good. Unfortunately, almost all random events punish good for making the 'good' decision, while at the same time, rewarding 'evil' decision. Without "Xeno Ethics", I would be forced to pick either evil to survive, or be good and cripple my civilization.

I'm not sure if the devs thought things through when they added the current random events system to the game. Aside from researching "Xeno Ethics", there is nothing you can do to protect yourself from the negative effects of random events when playing as good.

I would really like to be able talk to one of the devs, and ask "what were you thinking?". I would also like to help them fix the problems with random events, if I were given a chance.

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Hi!

I would really like to be able talk to one of the devs, and ask "what were you thinking?".

Me too. Not only because good events suck, but because they made main evil civ's so strong. In most my games good civs are the first victims, to either evil or me, because at the start they're so weak. Iconians haven't built a single warship despite I've been conquering their planets for more than two months. Most of the time it's the same with Torians, and quite often with Humans and Thalans, and for a change, Korx. So how going good helps a player, when most civ's that would help them, are gone before mid-game? And those "dreaded" minors that split from evil civs: I've seen that happen in two or three games of ~20 I've played. Maybe that's because I by default turn minors off, but that shouldn't help evil civs. If minors are off, then they should be hit by other events more frequently, to make them pay for random events' short-time benefits.

BR, Iztok

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Mystikmind

Join Date 06/2004

+20

But why would good be better at science.

Scientific advancement is historically always far superior in 'good' civilisations.

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I hate to borrow from Star Wars, but honestly, the alignment system in GC feels a lot like the Force: Evil is not stronger, but it's quicker, easier, more seductive. Or at least, it should be: Good needs some slightly better benefits at the end.

I agree on the random events thing, though: they should continue through the end. I'd say that if you fall too far away from your alignment, you lose all the alignment benefits and have to research Xeno Ethics all over again as well as taking a significant hit to your reputation and Influence: Rome becoming decadent or something like that. Not sure how that would work, though.

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I agree that the current system needs some change. Maybe there should be inherent morale, loyalty, or influence penalties for choosing evil options. After all, I'm pretty sure that if the people were infected with a disease and instead of curing them you decided to harvest their blood for a beverage, they wouldn't be very happy with you.

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Mystikmind

Join Date 06/2004

+20

After all, I'm pretty sure that if the people were infected with a disease and instead of curing them you decided to harvest their blood for a beverage, they wouldn't be very happy with you.

hmmm well if your in charge of humans, then yes, but if your in charge of Drengin, well perhaps to them, these kinds of things are acceptable?

That gives me an idea... perhaps each race can have certain benefits if you persue that races natural alignment,,, then if you deviate from a races natural alignment, then will you get morale and loyalty penalties. Sound good?

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DivineWrath

Join Date 05/2006

+135

That gives me an idea... perhaps each race can have certain benefits if you persue that races natural alignment,,, then if you deviate from a races natural alignment, then will you get morale and loyalty penalties. Sound good?

Not a bad idea. The effort to change, ethnically, an evil species such as the Drengin to something like the Altarians would be immense. There of course would be both supporters and resistors for any drastic changes.

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Now for something slightly different.
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As I've mentioned before, one of the problems I have about this game is the fact the random events punish players who play good. It looks like the devs took 5 seconds to think and decided that to be good, one must make sacrifices until you destroy yourself.

The question is, why does every random event must favor evil? Can't we have a fuffly creature event where the good guys go "how cute!" and evil goes "My god!"?

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Fluffy Creatures

Sir, we've discovered a very large number of cute, and cuddly creatures on (Planet Name). They are very friendly, and when you look into their eyes, you start to feel warm inside. We believe that with a little effort, we would make them pets that would help make our people happy.

Good Option: Proceed. Make sure everyone learns how to keep good care of them. Happy fuzzy things make for happy people. (+10 Morale)

Neutral Option: As much good as it would to have more pets, our people still need some living room. Have the creatures be transfered somewhere else. (+10 Planet Quality)

Evil Option: My God, they're... too cute. Shoot them! After watching the British film "Monty Python and the Holy Grail", I've learned that you can't trust cute and fuzzy things, or else you might get your head bitten off. (-10 Morale)

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Mystikmind

Join Date 06/2004

+20

i see good and evil choices as having both good and bad consequences. So the fact that good choices always have nothing but bad side effects is dumb, equally so for evil choices.

At the very least, good choices could result in morale bonuses for that planet?

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i see good and evil choices as having both good and bad consequences. So the fact that good choices always have nothing but bad side effects is dumb, equally so for evil choices.

Yes, I'd make one of the top priorities of changes to the game to be making good a viable option. As it now stands, it only really helps the Altarians, because they receive aid from other good civs (if there even are any of them) in the event of war. But how does it help the Iconians, Torians, or Drath? It only hurts them. I like to role-play, so when I play good races, I prefer to go with good options. But I'm often forced to go neutral just to avoid the penalties and to get the neutral bonuses. The only really effective good bonuses are defenses, and those are only good for one line of defense (I don't remember whether it's against beam or mass-drivers, but against missiles, I know that the good defenses, telepathic, are pathetic!). At the very least, the defenses that a good alignment opens up should be much better than they are at the present time. Defenses can be very powerful, so this alone could help the good alignment quite a lot.

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Hi!

Yes, I'd make one of the top priorities of changes to the game to be making good a viable option.

IMO citizen of good races are proud to be on the right side, so the proper bonus for them should be an increase in approval. Not morale (you got 15% of it when researched Xeno Ethics), but direct 5% increase to approval. The easiest way to incorporate that would be the general increase of bonus for high quality planet, from 0% for planets below class 10 to 5% and for others from 10% to 15%.

This increase looks small, but regarding the way the planetary approval is calculated, it would make quite a difference, esp. on really populous planets.

Just my 2 cents.

BR, Iztok

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i see good and evil choices as having both good and bad consequences. So the fact that good choices always have nothing but bad side effects is dumb, equally so for evil choices.

This made sense in GC1, when being good was just plain stronger than being evil, especially in diplomacy. If you were good, then good civs loved you, neutral civs liked you, and evil civs disliked you. If you were evil, then everyone disliked you. So evil got the bonuses from events, but good had lots of easy allies. In the expansion pack, good and evil got unique technologies and ships, but IMO at least, good got much better stuff. And there wasn't a Xeno Ethics tech, so you never got locked into an alignment. I liked the way it worked in GC1 better, although neutral needed unique bonuses, and Paladin ships were totally overpowered.

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