So, if you guys want Good to actually gain something with each choice, are you willing to give up the option of having everyone as allies? If so, then play neutral. If not, then you're overpowering good and destroying game balance.

While I agree with most of your post, I have to strongly disagree with this part. I normally play neutral for the tech bonuses and have rarely had problems allying with any civilization I want to. I agree its easier to ally when you are good but neutral ends up letting me ally with both the good and evil races equally, making it far easier to win diplomatically if I so choose. I think good does need some sort of boost, though what exactly I dont know. Maybe an improvement in all production by some percentage to represent the happier and more creative people you have working for you would do it.

CMON! Being a good civ has crummy benifits if you research the xeno ethics. Evil and neutral are the best paths to follow.

Those who live by the sword, Die by the sword.

Will you turn the other cheek?

I guess it comes down to your style of play. If you are part of the "want it now generation" and or want to reap the immediate benefit of some evil scheme to further your cause.... Evil is the route to take. No cuddling the Energizer bunny here... you snatch him up, rip him apart and use his motors, batteries and gears to build a diabolical weapon to devastate your opponent whilst you sleep easily at night on his soft pink fur. Personally, this route fascinates me. I have played the long drawn out games and I really hate them. I want to destroy my adversaries as quickly as possible, therefore, its open season on lil pink bunnies!

I do not believe the game should be altered. Balance in this case, does not seem logical to me. Every race should have strong points and weak points, such is life. None of them should be identical. Some races should be stronger than others just a fact of life... A minnow is not a shark and vice versa... although they both swim and breathe in water and are both fish. Also each race plays differently... or at least should if you do not alter their starting abilities. I have found that some like a challenge, not the same old mundane, dry, dull routine.

With this I must admit, I admire those who play on the good side. To me it appears to be more difficult to achieve a victory, or at the very least, takes longer. Caused by your own decisions. For those of you.... I salute you. For the rest, including myself at this time, Fire up the grill and grab the beer... We have some Varmints to kill !!!!!

@Quixen

Good post.

Evil rocks in this game.

Aww, c'mon, good isn't that pathetic! Folk like you more; neutrals treat you as one of their own, and the goodies really like you. The evils dislike you... but, while I've often made alliances with an evil race as good, I've yet to ally with a good race as evil.
Oh yeah, and... fundamentalists. Hate those guys. It seemed things were going fine in one game I recall, then, kaboom! A bunch of my folk suddenly went "peace and love" on me. Oh, sure, I could have re-conquered them... if the Torians hadn't decided the time was ripe to crush me. Trigger happy lil' toads...
Or how about the one lousy trade route the United Planets informed me I was allowed to have... as the Dominion of Korx, no less? How are we supposed to deliver bags of glass to all the children of the galaxy with one trade route?!
Evil can be great, but if the weight is in the hands of good, it can be tough. Especially if those hands are Torian.

All you get is other CIVs to like you? Thats alot to get, its one way of winning. The more allies you have, the easier it is to win. Think about all of the trade routes, not to mention protection you get from your allies. The evil races will think twice about attacking you if you have strong allies to back you up.

HA! I never need other civs to help me. TRADE ROUTES HA!, trade routes only bring in medeocre amounts of cash, and it's not like you lose trade routes because your evil. And if I ever needed an ally i'd ally with the drengin or yor or korx, (Hell all of the above) oh the korx they get several more trade routes than other civs, so even more trading, and evil civs are always more powreful than any one good civ so i've got a hell of an alliance. "It's one way of winning", all a diplomatic victory is is kissing other civs ass. Also good focusus on long term victory, actually diplomatic is far from a victory, because it's only fending off the inevitible.

Oh yeah, and... fundamentalists. Hate those guys.

I'm with ya there, the only time the fundamentalists appered were on a gigantic, abundant galaxy so it didn't matter the planets they took over, but one of them had a precuser mine, and my omega research center, and tech capital (but it was right close to one of my main industrial worlds so I got it back almoat as soon as the fundamentalists took it over).

Hell and if anyone screwed with me i'd just get the old psyonic beam and cut a bloody swath through their civ!

Good gets a big advantage because more races seems to be good then bad which gives you more allies meaning less people potentially attacking you. Though, the side I join depends more on logistics for me. If my neighbors are evil I am going evil because if I don't they are going to kill me (this is in suicidal). Strategic alliances is the single most important thing that keeps me alive so I can eventually rule the universe.

I usually play good. In fact, in most games I play the good side. When I play D&D I always play good characters. The reason is personal. I really hate evil in real life and I feel uncomfortable pretending to be evil even in a game.

What that means is I'll go for a diplomatic victory in most games. I'm even nice to minor races. I give them free techs and free starships to turn them into willing client governments. I'm like the Federation in Star Trek. I want everyone to like me.

My current game, I set it up to have 2 neutral (Arcean and the insects), 2 evil (Yor and Drengin), and 2 good (Altarians and me). I made 3 "good" choices and 1 "neutral" choice (I couldn't take a -38% production bonus!!!), so I was leaning good, though just barely.

Even after I researched Xeno Ethics and chose "good", the Altarians at best have me at "warm", but that was only after some really good gifts when they were at war. Most of the game they were "Cool" with me. So I don't buy that good civilizations immediately start liking you.

The DRENGINS of all races were "Warm" with me after I had chosen "good"! The only reason we're at war right now is because the Drengins attacked the Arceans, who I was allied with. Of course, my plan was to take out the Drengins after the Yor anyway, but I wanted to research some Drengin-specific techs first.

Anyway, to the original point, I'm not seeing a "good guy club", at least not in the one game where I intentionally went good (I normally make evil choices and then research Xeno Ethics to go neutral).

Because women want the good boy.

Wait a minute, no they don't. I must ponder this further ...

Actually, the few times I've played good (I'm usually neutral) I've often ended up being attacked by good / neutral races because I neglected my fleet too much. Most unfortunate.

I didn't read all these, but i think the problem is the drawbacks of evil are in-significant in GC2. Lets see evil suffers these :
1) good guys don't like you. -> who cares...lol
2) trade can suffer. -> trade is pathetic for money generation, so no real loss
3) planets can rebel into fundamentalists. -> invade them the next turn, big deal


I think the solution is beefing up these drawbacks and adding some new ones. It would be neat that if you turned the natives to slaves that they flip and maybe go to your arch enemy, (and get the ships in orbit).

I think trade is the biggest problem. In GC1 going evil could really work against you because trade was so powerfull, in GC2 it just isn't worth it on larger galaxies.

I've seen no real evidence of any good coming from being good. I generally play the Drath which start out leaning good so that I can take some of the evil planet quality choices and end up being neutral to get the free terraforming, the Neutrality Learning Centers and "cheaper" ship upgrades. However, I've ended up being good a number of times.

If you're good, the good races are apparently more friendly to you but the only result of this seems to be that they come to you expecting help more often. But when you're being attacked by an overwhelming Drengin or Yor and you ask the Torian to attack the Drengin (or Yor) their response is that they're too powerful to attack (They may however give you an obsolete fighter or two on the other side of the galaxy with a speed of 5 or 6, I usually obsolete them and take the 50bc). Finally, after a crash tech investment in weapons and the planetary invasion branch, and after putting my economic development on hold for the 30 to 40 turns it took to beat down the Drengin, both the Torian and the Iconian declare war on the Drengin and sneak in to take planets that I spent fleets to get to and was poised to invade. With friends like these who needs enemies?

Anyway, I think it's time to give evil a try. I had read on some other thread that the Mind Control Center actually gives a 100% economic bonus instead of causing planets in revolt to flip, I intend to find out.

I just thought of something. If your good and since good get really sucktastic bonus's once you've killed off the evil civs, that's when you're supposed to (well what I would do unless i'm going for diplomatic victory every time) stab all your allys in the back, that wouldn't go well, and if there are neutural civs wouldn't it be easy for them to give everyone a kick in the ass. Take that and shove it down your preaching maw!

*Sigh*

Another person pointing out that Good aren't the best for taking a military victory... Is anybody really suprised by that?

How to win with Good:

1. Ally with all Good or Neutral Civs (should be pretty easy)

2. Wipe out the Evil Civs (wait for them to declare war on you, so that your allies join in, it shouldn't be hard to provoke them)

3. Victory (probably much more quickly than it would have been if you went Evil and tried to kill everyone)

In my current game I started with a 'Good' race and during the colony rush I chose the *evil* selection at every moral dilemma (about 7-8 IIRC). After the rush, on a large galaxy, I researched Xeno Ethics and chose the Good path, since my race was still leaning good (altho approaching Neutral).

So I get all the benfits of the evil choices on those planets and still get the Good benefits from the Tech.

Cheers,
Reaver

Why be Good? Because it is *GOOD*.

"Evil will always triumph, because Good is dumb."

Now, what are the real rewards of good and evil? With Evil, you risk everyone attacking you. With good, you gain a lot of potential allies.

Well, not really, i am in a game right now with mostly evil races. I have planty of evil freinds!

It seems to be very easy to win a diplomatic victory as good. If I can get my military built up enough (to deter any aggressors which includes other good races) it's often possible to win without firing a shot.

I always liked the defense techs. Get some large ships with good defense matched to my enemy and I can walk all over them even if they're technically much more powerful then me. Those techs eventually become obsolete, but there's a period when they can make a real difference.

Trade isn't huge, but at least for me it's often the missing piece needed to keep me from bottoming out my economy during the tail end of the colony rush. If my economy bottoms out for more then a couple turns it seems like I might as well just give up then and there.

Other then that I guess there isn't much in the way of benefit for being good other then roleplay if you're into that.

It seems to me quite ridiculous that your morality is determined (as far as I can see) entirely by a few pop up screens rather than how you actually play the game. Something like this is one thing in an RPG, but in GC2 it never really sat well with me. It just seems like one of those trendy features that gets tacked on to every game nowadays.

I've been playing on hardest difficultly level with the following restrictions (to make a very challenging game):

1. cannot build a spin control center
2. no tech trading
3. only evil opponents
4. MUST DECLARE YOURSELF GOOD

So far I haven't been able to beat it (though I only tried a couple times).

Something like this is one thing in an RPG

Makes me remeber Star Wars: KOTOR... ah the memories, using the force to scare an old guy so he actually COULDN'T talk even if he wanted to... ah it's good to be evil... because good is dumb.

Also why the hell would you want to go for diplomatic victory, here's the easist way to win diplomatic, reaseach alliance first, then give every one 500b and get an alliance with them, wow isn't that an incentive to play good.

I never pay people to ally with me, I wait for relations to improve naturally.

Good is not dumb.

Just look at 98% of the movies ever released.

Read some history.

Good is just misuderstood.

Nobody's mentioned the defence bonuses from good, probably because they suck so much.

It's a nice idea, but poorly implemented. Both evil weapons and good defences are the equivalent of several steps down the tech tree. However, weapons techs are *considerably* more expensive, so those superpowered evil weapons are much more of an advantage.

Here's the comparion of how many research points you need to spend to reach an equivalent tech, weapon vs defence in each case
Shields - 20000 vs 2000
Mass Drivers - 28000 vs 1700
Missiles - 9400 vs 5000

The comparisons get worse the larger the hulls you typically use because the hull size dependency for the good defences is higher than the typical for the tree whereas for the evil weapons it's the same. For example, unless you're hell bent on reaching Doom Ray, you might as well stop at the Psionic Beam since it's a match for anything else in the tech tree.

Good is not dumb.

Yes it is, it's a quote from Spaceballs, and if Spaceballs is wrong then I don't want to be right.

Good is also stupid but who's checking?