uncertain, long term rewards for ethical decisions

Your in the right direction, but a little off track.

taking your example, the underwater domes - respecting them or other natives would result in a planetary defence bonus (remember starwars). Also it should be a gradual population and scientific bonus over time as these underwater inhabitants gradually integrate into your civilisation.

The consequence of dumping them would most likely be a moral and patriotic penalty for that planet. Remember, throughout history, evil choices usually only come unstuck because of the 'human' element. In which case, such a race as the Drengin empire would suffer no consequences of dumping the underwater pukes!

My idea was less about the specific values and more about the idea that you aren't necessarily going to know the consequences... right now, its more a mathematics challenge (albiet very fuzzy math) than an issue of ideology.

My idea was less about the specific values and more about the idea that you aren't necessarily going to know the consequences... right now, its more a mathematics challenge (albiet very fuzzy math) than an issue of ideology.

Ic, ic. Your talking about 'luck'.

Still, ethics choices is somthing that indeed does have very predictable outcomes. Your ethical choices in game are also designed to be this way but certainly do not bring the kind of long term consequenses which match well with 'realism'.

Well something needs to be doned, as for me, there seems to be no great consequences no matter which ethical choice I pick. Its more like a little mini game to distract you from the full game, I wish it had bigger impact.

Atleast the choices should be more sincere, IE. Good choice "save people" Evil choice "kill 1 billion people, gain 1000BC" or something like that. Gaining 200bc from evil ethical choise can hardly be called beneficial

i agree, as it is i usually take the evil choices when they benefit me, and the good choices when they benefit me the other portion of the time, then i choose nuetral alignment, which i already am... the choices need to have a greater impact on the game, IMO, i like the idea of the possibility of mini events specific too moral decisions that have a certain percentage chance of happening, keep you on your toes leastways

No, ethical choices shouldn't be entirely predictable in their consequences. How many times throughout history has a bad decision come back to haunt the society that made it and assumed they could get away from it? How many times has a seemingly counterproductive decision had unexpected benefits? A good example is enforcing environmental standards actually having an INCREASE in an economy instead of the predicted decrease, since efficiency increased in the responsible industries and new spin off industries being created.

They could also, in the case of good aligned ones, be a lifesaver if they were coded to come in during a time of need. For example, if the player took the "save everyone, no matter the cost" in the "evacuate an exploding alien moon" event, there could be a chance that, when the player is getting attacked by a superior force, the aliens that had been saved would decide to return the favour and come to your aid in the form of a bunch of advanced warship that you recieve.

And, in the reverse, if you'd put them to work in your factories, they could start an armed rebellion that shuts down that planet's social and military production the moment you start a war someone.

No, ethical choices shouldn't be entirely predictable in their consequences. How many times throughout history has a bad decision come back to haunt the society that made it and assumed they could get away from it?

I cannot think of any times where this happened in history that wasn't initiated by stupidity or arrogance? So take away the stupidity and arrogance, and the result is that these people would be capable of predicting the result accurately every time!

If this gets done, it should also be possible for the player choosing the good choice to get further penalized or for the player choosing the evil choice to get a later bonus.

For example with the underwater domes, the inhabitant may have been on the verge of becoming a minor civ and a player that chose the good option may lose the planet. They may also have been hiding a precurser (sp?) artifact that could only be found by 'throwing out the pukes'.

I cannot think of any times where this happened in history that wasn't initiated by stupidity or arrogance? So take away the stupidity and arrogance, and the result is that these people would be capable of predicting the result accurately every time!

Seriously, that's probably the biggest pile of cow dung I've ever heard.

It is almost impossible to accurately predict the outcome of global or even large-scale regional effects of such decisions 'almost every time'.

We're talking about so many variables on so many different levels of the social spetrum in a vast and generally diverse group of peoples... and the simple fact that people may think one way before an event, but the reality of that event changes their perspective 100%. In talking about stupidity and arrogance, and I'm assuming you are intending to refer only to the leaders, the ones who make the decisions. Well, the stupidity and arrogance of the people under their authority and those within other govt's or areas who might be affected must also be considered. Then there are opportunists and the potential for them to take advantage of the situation whereas there might be no way of telling that they would consdier it for lack of knowledge and intel about their situations as well.

So, yeah, you wanna talk about arrogance, 'physician, heal thyself.' (/flame off)

In essence, I agree with the original post. Things have a way of coming back to bite you in the derrierre. You can't always know the outcome of every situation.

Also, when dealing with these situations in GalCiv2, and DA, I find that the benefits and detriments don't come close to comparing. There is almost always a choice that stands above all others and the alignment influence of that choice is almost always negligible unless you are specifically going for one end of the spectrum or the other, which tends to only save you some cash if/when you end up making that decision with Ethics.

So all in all, more needs to be done with the minor planetary events that require an alignment-based decision (IMO). It would be best if the side of the decision that is most in tune with your Race's current alignment would also have an additional benefit. If it is an evil race, taking an evil action would be seen as benevolent to the society and required of the ruler.

Seriously, that's probably the biggest pile of cow dung I've ever heard.

Excuse me... do you realise were talking about a civilisations 'ethical' choices at a comparable level to choices presented in the game?
Because it dousn't sound like you realise that in your so called 'flame on' claptrap.

I don't agree with his tone (no reason to flame, folks), but I do agree with his reasoning. Even the mightiest civilisations can never predict events 100%. Its simple chaos theory... the further into the future you try to predict, the more your errors are compounded. On top of that, the "stupidity and arrogance" you mention is usually awarded after the fact by historians and pundits.

When anyone, entire societies included, tries to make a decision, they're usually doing a cost/benefit analysis on data that's based on assumptions, probability, and statistical trends. These are not foolproof, and in many cases simply fail to predict consequennces that may seem obvious in hindsight. Often, those "stupid and arrogant" decisions that historians like to point out were less the cause of incompetence and overconfidence and more an issue of a factor no one thought to check, or that was (reasonably) assumed to be inconsequential, or any other of hundreds of different excuses, all of them valid. Sometimes the right decision, based on the information they had or could reasonably gather, turned out to be absolutely disasterous for them.

Bottom line, no one can predict the future, under any circumstances. All we've got are best guesses.

(and, as far as "removing stupidity and arrogance", well, good luck!)

@ mindlar:

Ohh, I like that. Good thought... though I'd hope they'd be comparitively weaker to the other kinds of events. IE, a little unexpected bonus or unexpected penalty for a player that isn't going to cripple or reward them substantially, but will still make them cringe or rub their hands with glee.

@ Foley

Well, an evil civ doing something good would be viewed skeptically (minimal change in alignment), but a good one doing an evil act gets a huge stain on it's reputation. Would it be worth it to model that inequality? I don't think so... at least, not without both making the decisions more influential and giving the good races something extra to make up for it.

I don't agree with his tone (no reason to flame, folks), but I do agree with his reasoning. Even the mightiest civilisations can never predict events 100%. Its simple chaos theory... the further into the future you try to predict, the more your errors are compounded. On top of that, the "stupidity and arrogance" you mention is usually awarded after the fact by historians and pundits.

I think your trying to make a simple issur far more complicated than it is.

I am talking about much more basic 'black, white, neutral' ethical decisions. The game gives you 3 very basic options, this is what i am basing my argument on. So in other words in a historical sense, any civilisation that has made a clear cut non ambiguous evil chioce, should have been able to predict the results 100% correctly with the removal of arrogance and stupidity.

And I'm saying you are absolutely wrong, because any action has consequences down the road, and there is NO way, at all, in any context, EVER to be certain of what is coming to any degree, with less and less chance of a correct prediction the more complicated the system is. Civilisations and politics are very, very complicated systems, built on top of the real world, which itself is an even more obscenely complicated system.

And the decisions being clearly differentiated in terms of good and evil doesn't change that a whit. They're no less predictable, just easily classified from a specific moral viewpoint.

I've already covered the influence of arrogance and stupidity. Those are terms usually used in hindsight, they're inevitable, and they aren't half the reason predictions don't come true. Historians might have (or claim to have) all the facts, but the people who made the decisions made them on limited information.

To top it all off, uncertain and long term mini-events tied to the decisions would be extremely interesting, and lead to more involving choices on the part of the player.

So its realistic, AND its a fun addition to a strategy game.

And I'm saying you are absolutely wrong, because any action has consequences down the road, and there is NO way, at all, in any context, EVER to be certain of what is coming to any degree

Now your just clutching at straws.


Isac newton would turn in his grave if he heard your statement. Imagine if 'what goes up must come down' was suddenly an 'uncertain' thing because according to you '

any action has consequences down the road, and there is NO way, at all, in any context, EVER to be certain of what is coming to any degree

Oops i cheated... yes physics is certain of course, i'm guessing your not arguing against that right?

Anyway, basic ethical choices are easily predictable. Heres an evil ethical choice - America decides to kill all muslems.... i do not think it would be to difficult to predict what would happen if they tried that???

Okay, dude. No offense, but you obviously don't know what you're talking about. Three things:

*Newton indeed stated the universe was entirely deterministic. Theoretically, if you knew about every tiny piece of matter and energy in the universe, and had a big enough computer, you'd be able to flawlessly predict the future. However, there is NO way to know every piece of the universe because a)observing something changes it, however minutely (and my next point shows why even a minute change can have huge effects) and the computer needed to store and process this information would have to be larger and more complex than the universe itself. You can't comprehend a larger system with a smaller one.

*Chaos theory. Any iterative system, ie, the world, compounds ANY error in the initial data increasingly. Even an incredibly tiny change can have a huge effect. If you were to place weather sensors on every square meter of the planet, and had a computer model to predict weather from that data, it'd be spot on... if it was measuring just a short while ahead. However, its predictions would become useless over time because the differences in between those sensors would throw off the system a little bit, at first, and then a WHOLE lot.

*We aren't talking about newtonian physics. The world is NOT strictly deterministic according to quantum theory (the prime reason that Einstein rejected it). Quantum mechanics has a whole lot of crazy stuff with probability... Neils Bohr, it's creator, famously said "If you think you understand quantum physics, you don't understand quantum physics".

Even if that probabilistic model ultimately ends up to have deterministic underpinnings, do you really think a system that complex could be modelled to any reasonable scale? Merely simulating a single living cell is something that we haven't managed to do, and even that simulation would require a lot of abstraction unless you wanted to also simulate the quarks, gluons, and other sub-sub-atomic particles. And there's probably a level below that, too...

So, for all practical purposes, physics is not certain or predictable and never will be. Arguing otherwise betrays a lack of knowledge of advanced physics.

And, finally, your deal with the ethical question: no, we wouldn't know the results. Maybe the US government would destroy itself to stop such a move, maybe the middle east would end up fighting viciously and turning the tables, maybe the rest of the world, the US's allies included, would move to counter it. And those are just SOME of the BIG possibilities. Can you predict which streets the president would be burned in effigy? Which fights the USMC would win or lose, and by how much? Which words would come from the tongue of a diplomat? How would those words be inflected? Would someone take offense? Would the translators mistranslate a crucial word?

Make all the predictions you want, you have no guarantees of accuracy. If you think you can predict all of that, then I would busy yourself with pyschiatric treatment, because its not possible.

Wow. Didn't mean to start the flame wars here.

My tone was wrong. My bad, I admit it, I apologize, but you guys are continuing my mistake and it's becoming more of a personal disagreement than an issue with the game, which doesn't help game design.

Irrespective of being able to determine an outcome 100% of the time with 100% accuracy, even Mystikmind capitulates that it must be done without arrogance or stupidity, which I think we can all agree that few leaders have lived without, and even fewer still of the masses (as masses) of those governed live without.

THe point I'm trying to make here is that you simply cannot remove those factors from the equation. Even if you could remove them from the leadership standpoint, you can't predict them or negate their effects from the standpoint of the masses and the crazy mob mentality stuff that they might do.

So irrespective of the argument, even under the terms set forth by Mystik (as the dissenting opinon) this is still a mechanic in need of reconsideration.

Things for consideration:
1- Long term effects of ethical decisions (aside from ethical choice from tech).
2- Ethical choices that cause more consideration on the part of the player based on the benefits of those choices.
3- As a side option, increasing the benefits of becoming a 'good' race when ethics is chosen resulting in a defacto long term reprocussion for these event ethics (and the choice between short term benefit vs long term gain) decisions when Xeno Ethics is researched. Unfortunately, this has the potential to be unbalancing though, and no one is required to research Xeno Ethics and it's gameplay influence for evil (as the short term best gain) is negligible.

Did I miss anything?


(PS - Star, the USMC doesn't lose fights.)

Okay, dude. No offense, but you obviously don't know what you're talking about. Three things:

Normally starstriker gives me a good argument in other posts, normally respecting other peoples opinion. A bit of a let down to see this post.

Starstriker... the rest of your post is too long! apologies but i cannot read ALL that.
Well not today anyhow. I will see if i can find time next week to come and have a good read... seriously though, that is a BIG post.

I don't think that could be considered a flame, or disrespectful of an opinion. I have done neither of these things. The facts you stated were simply incorrect. When you used newtons deterministic universe as an argument, that betrayed an ignorance of a *lot* of physics work that has gone on since his. Simply put, newtons models are good for a lot of generalities, but the universe is not deterministic. At least, not according to quantum physics.

Also, my post wasn't that long. If you're going to debate something like this, that is so heavy on theory, it's only fair that you read other people's reponses, even if you have to skim over them to do so.

@ Robert

Oh, yeah, my bad. I forgot... they just pull out after the mission is "accomplished".

(BTW, just kidding about. I've got a great deal of respect for the USMC, even though it's not my country's military!)

I don't think that could be considered a flame, or disrespectful of an opinion.

What planet are you on?? uh, um you said...

Okay, dude. No offense, but you obviously don't know what you're talking about.

sure you put in the lame disclaimer 'no offence' but that just dousn't stack up when you tell somone they don't know what their talking about.

If on the other hand you had said it like this... "Okay, dude. No offense, but you obviously don't know what you're talking about, in my opinion". then that would be completely acceptable.

Aside from that, you give good logical arguments which are fun and challenging to debate, a shame you dissrespect my arguments while you do it.

I look forward to reading your large post more carefully next week

"In my opinion" is no less a lame disclaimer than "no offense" is, and certainly can't justify a statement that the other cannot. Not that it needs to, since "you don't know what you're talking about" isn't nearly comparable as a "flame" as such classic (and 'original') statements as "You idiot!" or "Why are you saying retarded things, noob!?", or the even more obnoxious "WTF U N00B!". (Coincidentally, those are all things almost exclusively said by retarded people) You're seriously overreacting to what was, at worst, a minor (and unintentional) slight.

And I meant what I said... with all due respect, your facts were wrong.

(Coincidentally, those are all things almost exclusively said by retarded people)

@starstriker1
Now why in the world would you single out the mentally challenged in a discussion about the long term effects of ethical decisions?

Okay, dude. No offense, but you obviously don't know what you're talking about.

@Mystikmind
After reading his posts, the above quote is a given opinion.

As for the OP...

However, it might be more interesting (and perhaps more rewarding) if your ethical decisions occasionally came back to reward you or bite you in the ass for good and evil choices, respectively. Mini-events that are not guaranteed to happen, but can vindicate or make you regret your past decisions.

I agree it would be rather interesting. Coding this would be the real pain in the ass. Since we would not know the future, the possibilities of how a decision would affect us would be endless. For game purposes and to add variety, maybe only incorporate 5 different ways it could affect the game. In effect, you would add 5 more (ethical bonuses / negatives) per ethical event in the game. Then, on top of that, you would have to have some way of 1.) randomizing the event and 2.) randomizing the timing of said event. A good idea that I do like very much. Just very doubtful whether it will ever be added due to the complexities and size issues that would be encountered during programming.

And I meant what I said... with all due respect, your facts were wrong.

Ok i read your long post carefully. I see what your problem is... your thinking about the limitlesness of cause and effect over time etc etc.

Look at it this way... first you have a cause - an ethical descision then an effect, an effect which i am saying is predictable. But then you want to extend it to introduce other possible variables which can occur and influence the effect resulting in unpredictable outcomes.

That is of course true except for the concept of 'human nature'. Like i said in a previous post here

The consequence of dumping them would most likely be a moral and patriotic penalty for that planet. Remember, throughout history, evil choices usually only come unstuck because of the 'human' element. In which case, such a race as the Drengin empire would suffer no consequences of dumping the underwater pukes!

When it comes to ethical choices, human nature is the balancing and predictable force which will always bring things around to a predictable outcome despite other unpredictable events that may or may not occur.
Such things as arrogance and stupidity will distort ones ability to predict ethical descisions because such influences directly interfere with ones perception of human nature and this is exactly why the big ethical mistakes of the past were made.

Human nature is notoriously UNpredictable, and still doesn't account for the impossible problem of predicting the future to any useful extent... certainly not for predicting the consequence of an action several years down the road! Lets take the "solar slammer" event (thats what it's called, right?) If you were to cover the sky with them, the geographical, political, and humanitarian consequences could not be guessed at. Do they cause a previously unknown environmental phenomena? Do small, grassroots political groups support the research they bring about or worry about the potential for disaster? In the case of a disaster, who gets killed? Some beggar, or the guy who would have brought around universal peace?

Human nature is only one of the factors involved, but even that is hopelessly unpredictable. One of the things my Psychology 104 class taught me is to be wary of "common sense" pyschology. Consider: a man is away from his wife. How will this effect his relationship? Two pieces of common wisdom may come to mind: "Absence makes the heart grow fonder" and "Out of sight, out of mind". Common sense is giving two entirely contradictory answers to the question! Any attempted system of predicting human behaviour is doomed to fail... humans are complex organisms notoriously capable of stirring things up with little effort. Do you think anyone could have predicted that that person would Assassinate Franz Ferdinand and kick off the first world war? No... at least, no one who wasn't close to the person involved.

For the sake of argument, though, lets assume the impossible task of creating a perfectly accurate model of human behaviour is completed. Every action of a person, regardless of their personality, past experiences, age, ethnic group, opinions, friends, location, or political allegiance, can be accounted for. That still doesn't cover enough variables. Leaving aside the incredible number of different, minute inputs that are tossed into the human brain every second, you have the movement of individual air molecules, light coming from the chaotic fusion reaction of the local star, quantum uncertainty in vacuum energy...

Even your simplistic decision->carry out decision->predictable effect hypothesis has too much margin of error to be predictable. Consider this very simple scenario: you want to launch a rock 3 kilometers to hit a 1x1m target. The rock is roughyl spherical, wind in the trajectory is low, and your launching device is the (theoretical) perfect catapult, that will launch the rock at a very specific velocity at a very specific angle... no margin for error. Given all that, it's simple newtonian physics, right?

Nope.

Newtonian physics ALWAYS rely on assumptions. That rock is "roughly" a sphere, so it is assumed to have the properties of a sphere, and the corresponding air resistance effects, even though the slight discrepencies in that description will have an effect on how it collides with air molecules. The wind is "low", so wind effects are assumed to be nonexistent, when in fact the air is a mix of tiny, slowmoving crossbreezes. No matter HOW small the margin of error is, it's there, and by chaos theory, it will have large effects given sufficient time. You could very well miss that shot.

Now, given that: if we cannot predict the effects, down to the molecule, quark, neuron, and photon, of our tiniest actions and even our decisions, how are we supposed to predict them for larger ones? Cities? Continents? Civilisations? The margin of error and lack of information gets worse at each step, and as I've already explained, even the smallest error will have HUGE consequences. That stray photon could mean the life or death of a person, eventually...

Bottom line: NO system could be created that could perfectly predict all actions and consequences. No system can reasonably approximate it. The closest one would get is the ethical version of the weather forecast: accurate for a short while, but after a week, its utterly useless. Even that trivial thing would require an immense expenditure of time, energy, and an incredibly complex system for taking input, processing it, and producing an output, which no one would realistically do for such a small payoff.

That leaves us with a horribly inaccurate system based on statistics, averages, past experience, and intuition.

Given that, it is entirely reasonable that a massive, spacefarring civilisation consisting of billions of individuals and with a rapidly changing internal economy, politics, culture, as well as an extremely complex foreign affairs portfolio, would not be able to perfectly predict the consequences of it's actions. It could only base its decisions on idealogy and best guesses.

Given that, it is entirely reasonable that a massive, spacefarring civilisation consisting of billions of individuals and with a rapidly changing internal economy, politics, culture, as well as an extremely complex foreign affairs portfolio, would not be able to perfectly predict the consequences of it's actions. It could only base its decisions on idealogy and best guesses.

Human nature is unpredictable on an individual basis. But within a civilisation basis, it is predictable.

If presented with an ambiguous ethical dilema as is your example, the result is not predictable. I already said before, that my argument is based on basic non ambiguous black and white ethical descisions.