Really now... all the Roman's gave us was concrete? Hmmm, I think I might have to start a major class action lawsuit against all those scholar's who've taught me otherwise over the years.
You can't be serious about that one, can you?

The Romans were not terrbily good at the "quantum leap forward" breakthrough type of inventions; but what they were terribly good at was synthesizing the best ideas of those around them and turning them into practical — concrete, as it were — devices.

They were engineers supreme, which is no small thing. They tweaked and streamlined and adjusted other people's inventions and made them immensely more useful as a result. They saw the practical, widespread applications of ideas that other people used for narrow, specific purposes. They were able to look at a building technique that some other people might use to pretty up the walls of a temple and see how it could be used to improve roadways (n.b. — I pulled that example out of my ass; it's just the sort of thing that they would do, is all).

Being an Empire, they swept up the good ideas from a dozen different nations around the Mediterranean, smooshed them all together, made them better, and spread them back out across those nations again (they also did this with the Law; having one uniform, codifed system of justice across the entire Western world was almost as important in the long run as anything else the Romans ever did). They were able to take Good Idea A from someone on the shores of the Black Sea and combine it with Good Idea B from someone in Alexandria and combine them to make something that neither could ever have come up with on their own. They might not have originated many of those Good Ideas themselves, but that does not make their contributions any less valuable, or the conceptual framework required to make best use of so many different ideas any less creative.


(Oh, and besides concrete, I think it is arguable that the Roman arch was sufficiently distinct from what came before it as to constitute an invention in its own right, and a pretty damned important one at that)

I agree with the above stance. In addition, Good, Evil, all that stuff is, in my opinion, subjective. The main idea for any given culture, though, is that good has the good of others in mind, while evil puts own needs before others'.

If I genuinely believe I do a son a favour by cutting out his tongue when he's talking too much, this is not an evil act by my own standards. However, in most cultures, this would be seen as evil. It's all a matter of perspective.

Personally, I appreciate the little texts that Stardock provided. I find it makes each of the three choices defensible or at least understandable in some way. "I told you before, people are a renewable resource!" Got a point there. I would find it much less appealing if choices were more along the lines of:

"Starship bonus: Good (0%), Neutral (5%), Evil (11%). Please input choice."

You may or may not agree with what is defined as Good & Evil in the game. Don't take it personally. You may simply be open-minded or philosophical.

I always take the evil choices (Bonus!) then when I get to the ethics choice tech I take the ethics closely related to the majority of the civilizations on the board.

Who cares about choosing the right thing there? You can simply buy your way to being good(heh). I wonder how that works. Massive public brainwash...er...education program to change ethics?

I don't think the comparison is entirely fair.

My only real beef with the system of alignments and ethical choices is that taking the neutral choice doesn't move you toward neutral - it doesn't move your alignment leaning at all. A "good" faction can make nothing but neutral choices throughout the game and never be penalized for it, just as an evil faction gets no credit.



All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?   



I think it's called "No child Left Behind"...   

I just tske the choice that gives me a positive bonus so my ethical alignment is usually evil. I do like the Arnorian Battle armour for good ethics however.

I find myself agreeing with Neutral on that one as well. Sometimes I'll go with either the 'good' or 'neutral' choice depending on which one I agree with.

In addition, I think there's variation in the 'creatures on planet' events. I feel that if they are sentient creatures that originated there, I should leave them, but if they're biological war machines created by an ancient race, I have the perfect right to remove them.

Also, I don't see what ethical benefit comes from destroying the disintegration rifle factory instead of converting it.

One more: pirates offering to sell you starship technology. If they're really such nasty pirates, I think the good choice should be to fight the pirates and take them into custody. This would give you a starship bonus with some sort of penalty (most sensibly BC or population).

I just choose evil every time. My favorite is when I get to ruin the National Park so I can get 800bc.

Er...the pilium, the gladius, the hobnailed sandal, the legion (in the sense of standardized units able to operate as independent units-of-all-arms), the corvus, the scutum, and, not last and certainly not least, the career professional non-com. Oh, and regular pay for troops on campaign, allowing them to keep large professional arimies in the field for years.
Several of their neighbors were "significantly affected" by those developments.

I think evil choices should contain both a bigger positive and a negative. That way evil can gain a short term benefit, but because other races view their activities as an indication of the potential danger they represent, a little suffering on the diplomatic front.

So instead of say +30% to PQ, make it +45% to PQ and -5% to diplomacy.

I think that's a very good idea myself. It would better reflect how good always seems to triumph over evil in the end, both in fantasy and in the real world...

As they stand now though, I tend to base my choices on a mixture of the associated bonuses or penalties and also the personality of my race.

For example, if I'm playing the Dregans, Yor or Korx, I will always pick the benefical evil choice.

If I'm playing the Terrans, however, I tend to choose based primarily on what I think Star Trek's Federation would do, and secondarily on what the associated bonuses or penalties are. I tend to pick the good choice when the associated loss isn't that great (small loss of credits for space pirates' cargo event, etc...), and the neutral choice if there is either benefical (though not quite as so as the evil choice) (such as the event that allows you to employ pirates to improve your ships) or there is a serious penalty assosciated with the good choice (such as the event featuring the blatant Pokemon referance, in which a morale penalty is associated with the good choice).

I haven't played with the other races yet, who have different ethical codes to both the Terrans and the those three evil races...

Ethics are an interesting topic to explore in games. Perhaps even MORE interesting to explore in games than in real life, where the consequences are real and the decisions less clear cut and philosophical.