Neutral Learning - do you?

It depends upon your gameplay style. For a while preferred neutral myself. More recently I've become enamored of Evil--those moral choice bonuses are pretty appetizing as well as the new weapons.

If memory serves me correct, discussion on the forums generally consideres neutral the most powerful, evil second, and good a distand third. I guess good guys really do finish last!

Heh, without doing my research on the Wonder, I went ahead and built the Temple of Righteousness. Then I found out it was worthless, since I was the only Good-aligned civilization left. The damn Yor, they never helped us at all, were greedy and selfish, and even after an alliance they started putting influence spacestations around my homeworld!

After I cut ties to them the other evil civ's attacked them - justifiably so, I thought, since they were planting those stations everywhere - and they begged for aid. I was willing to help, but they kept demanding like 5-10 discoveries to my one. I told 'em, you're on your own. If you ask me, they were more neutral or even Evil, but in this game they were supposed "Good" aligned. Bah.

If you ask me, you shouldn't be able to build spacestations outside your territory.

I personally find evil to be by far the most powerful alignment. You get:

No mercy invasion center (no invasion costs on specials)
Slave center (Improves ship building times)
Mind control (100% economic boost, despite the description)

For the economic or war oriented, these are indispensable. If I were research oriented then Neutral would have more appeal...

If you ask me, they were more neutral or even Evil, but in this game they were supposed "Good" aligned. Bah.

They're not quite "good", they're "semi-good", since they start halfway between pure good and neutral (alignment 75).

I personally find evil to be by far the most powerful alignment

I have to agree with Purge. Though the 10% morale bonus that neutral gets is pretty powerful as well. I think evil is slightly better than neutral. But both totally outweigh good. I think good gets the short end of the stick in GC2.

I think good gets the short end of the stick in GC2.

good gets the satisfaction of being good.

i think i may have even used that line before. this is part of why i don't play metaverse - i prefer to tweak the game to my liking using mods. the biggest advantage i see to playing good is the empathic tactical center. their extra defenses aren't much of a boon. they're bulking ane expensive, and all things considered it's not very costly to research the ultimate defenses.

i mod in extra influence features for good - an additional line of SB modules, an upgrade to the cultural exchange center. i also give them an added loyalty bonus, and an upgrade to the planetary defense improvement (50% boost instead of 25%). finally i finish off by upping the dipolomacy boost for concepts of righteousness (mostly to make it easier for the AI for forge alliances).

but it all seems to fall short IMO. perhaps a nice boost for good in DA should be a planet type that only good civs can colonize: hallowed planet or something - planets infused with a telepathic energy that harms non-good life forms.

random side note: i also like to mod different graphics for the neutrality leaning center, though there isn't one i like over others. i just don't like the ones used now. they look ominous and evil. i think the file name is pain center or something like that.

good gets the satisfaction of being good.

OH PLEASE, that satisfaction didn't help the Altarians when they were getting their butts kicked by the Drengin.  

PS:
Where can you mod the good/evil/neutral attribute bonuses?

Good is awsome. On a large map with bright AI (ten mind you) I can win in less than 150 turns without diplomatic victory. With Diplomacy on, I can win in 100 turns tops. That's why you pick good, the unstoppable cohilition of the five or six races that want to be your ally. Not to mention if you mod the game to include additional techs and stuff for all alignments, you can really make it balanced.

I hate playing as neutral because you don't get any ship parts, and a morale bonus doesn't protect you from Psionic Shredders or have any effect against dynamic shielding.

I generally select neutral because it allows me to focus less on research. Building a large number of research facilities does not fit with my strategy, and I do not want to gain a very significant research-advantage.

So, it allows me to focus on production and my economy (medium maps), and keep up with research without overpowering my enemies.

I play good. I find that the defense bonuses does help in surviving in a dangerous world. If you make the effort to aquire to do so, you can get +5% additional hit points, and +35% defense bonus.

I think good gets the short end of the stick in GC2.

I have to agree to that. Ethical decisions, both when colonizing planets and random events, don't provide very many practical options if you want to play good. Too many 'good' choices will pile on too penalties for you to remain competitive, let alone survive against the evil races.

In order to counter this, you have to research "Xeno Ethics" in order to prevent these ethical decisions. Evil, on the other hand, can benefit from every ethical decision it gets. Its even practical to play evil without ever researching "Xeno Ethics", instead rellying on the bonuses your ethical decisions provide.

Neutral is massively overpowered. The 15% morale bonus and immediately avaliable tiles with right terraforming tech are a huge advantage if you go neutral early. Extra trade is great and the neutral learning centres are a huge advantage over other races.

Good alignment is basically terrible.

Evil has some nice things but is no where near as powerful as neutral. The weapons are the biggest dissapointment imo. They just aren't cost effective, there small size means you can put a lot on a ship but having a very few amount of very powerful ships just isn't wothwhile.

Out of interest does anyone know what bonus the slave centre gives to military production?

Stardock really needs to work on this area they are no where near balanced. Frankly i'm fed up of having to choose neutral because I know it's by far the best choice.

Slave Center is a hard coded (not otherwise visible) 50% bonus to military production. It is applied after all bonuses. So it applies to your other bonuses as well.

Slave Center is a hard coded (not otherwise visible) 50% bonus to military production. It is applied after all bonuses. So it applies to your other bonuses as well.

Ok say your military production bonus is 30% then you finish the slave centre would your new bonus be a total of 45% or 80%?

Really? I find the neural centres help me become the most advanced race in the game very quickly, and I soon have a (although admitly small) fleet of super warships, who's defences and fire power out gun entire enemy fleets. Strangely, I manage to beat the other races after that....although to be fair, I normally only use normal research rate and "tough" difficult, although I'm working to get above that

I usually find myself taking the evil choices in the colonizing events, then I just wait till I have the money to buy what alignment I want before researching Xeno ethics. Which is either neutral or staying evil, so it never costs to much anyways.

Ok say your military production bonus is 30% then you finish the slave centre would your new bonus be a total of 45% or 80%?

If your military bonus is 30%, then your production is (130*1.5)=195% So applied to both your base 100% and your additive bonuses.

Typically bonuses are only additive, or 130+50=180%

As you can see, this makes it substantially more powerful than the typical bonus.

BTW I didn't do the hard legwork on this one. I think it was in a post by Mumblefratz originally.

Don't forget that neutral is also the best diplomatically. Evil races piss off good races and vise-versa. Neutral races have far less enemies. This is *very* important if you have a diplomacy centered play style.

I personally like the benefits I get with the neutral alignment. So yeah, I use neutral often. However, I do not believe it to be as powerful as the Evil alignment. So I agree with Mumble on this point.

Ok, so you get the satisfaction of playing a "Good" civ. Big deal, you don't get much else that's for sure. The good alignment could use some adjustment in my opinion, before I even consider trying to play a good civ.

If your military bonus is 30%, then your production is (130*1.5)=195% So applied to both your base 100% and your additive bonuses.

Wow, that looks very powerful i'll have to try it out. I still think neutrals way better though.

well i, for one, think that good should be penalized economically for "doing the right thing," or not choosing the most exploitative course of action.

if choosing to act righteously also happened to provide the biggest benefit to society, then there would be no moral dilemma, and all societies would choose it, good, neutral, or evil.

Good could really use something though. Right now good is a real handicap. Shouldn't your people be happier and more willing to work for the benefit of your society? I would hate to think that evil people find the same satisfaction out of their behavior as the good (although reality may differ with that viewpoint).

I mean I actually play the Torians and drive them all the way over to evil to get the bonuses out of alignment that I want!

Maybe an outright + to their diplomacy or their economy across the board?
Or shift the morale boost over to them?
Or at least a + to your scoring for us Metaverse players if you are willing to go through the pain of being good?

Just something...

Good could really use something though. Right now good is a real handicap. Shouldn't your people be happier and more willing to work for the benefit of your society? I would hate to think that evil people find the same satisfaction out of their behavior as the good (although reality may differ with that viewpoint).

I have wondered about this as well. Like the ethical choice event where you get the orbiting stations.
-----------------------------------------------
You can leave them alone and never use them(Good)

Use them with a strict leash (Neutral)

Hell, this is some new toy I can use to scorch my people with?! Huh, it will benefit our research?(Evil)
-----------------------------------------------

Good-If your goverment went with good you would be happy (especially if you were on that planet)

Neutral- really wouldn't have any opinion

Evil! the people would be angry about their thoughtless expense of life and have a deep inner hatred of your goverment.

Those are good points that you bring up JubJub and I am almost inclined to agree with you. However, I must contest it in the end.

The majority of the people don't know when governments do things that are good for them, and often times small "radical" groups will go out of their way and raise a huge stink, saying that even though it looks good... it is really Evil.

On that same line, when a government does do something that is absolutely wrong, they cover it up with tons of misinformation creating conspiracies that can never be really proven. Therefore, the majority of the people, are none the wiser.

So here we sit again... Government does good... no one really cares.
When Government does bad... They try real hard to make sure no one knows the truth.

I do think they should do something to allow the Good races to be, at the very least, competitive in certain areas, instead of rolled over by the Evil and Neutral alignments.

Tried building the slave centre on DA beta 2b and it didn't do a thing, no military production bonus at all. One to add to the bug list I think.

To balance the the alignments i'd like to see:

Good: More general goody type improvents, extra diplomacy, trade bonus perhaps social building production bonus. (haven't put too much thought into good improvements i'm not good inclined but they need the most work)

Neutral: Remove the free tiles with terraforming tech completely.

Evil. Make the weapons cost effective. I'd prefer the weapons to be a few steps ahead of what other alignments can have at that tech rate. eg an evil weapon discovered at phasors 1 would be the equivalent of phasors 5 most importantly cost effective.

Tried building the slave centre on DA beta 2b and it didn't do a thing, no military production bonus at all. One to add to the bug list I think.

It is easy to miss the effects in 1.4. Not sure if this is the problem or not...

It will not show in the planetary details screen, or anywhere else for that matter, but if you check the actual build time of the ships it should show there. Does it still look broken?