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?

I guess what he meant is that the Romans "stole" the technology from other nations and made them popular.

And that concrete is the only real thing they created.

I mean, most of the stuff they got from the greeks.

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)

So then did they 'invent' crucifixion or did they just improve on the art of hanging one from a cross?
And how about all those wonderful weapons of warfare that the Romans employed. Were these stolen ideas as well? I thought it was them who developed the ballista as well as other lesser known siege weapons. See, now I'm going to have to go and read... I mean like actually pick up a book and put thought into something. Who caused this?

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.

Fair, but I'd personally enjoy more depth to it. A society that preys on itself has a different set of problems than one that preys on others... both can be construed as evil, but it's not the same issue at all. Actually, when I try to think of an example of each of those, I come up with a totalitarian dictatorship, which generally has no problem with sacrifice/oppression of its own people) versus colonial Britain, which treated it's own people fairly well but fairly often did some nasty things to other civilisations.

Unpredictable, long term consequences would be a nice addition to ethical choices, especially if other civilisations are affected/get these kinds of ethical choices as well. These would be best represented as events that may or may not occur in the distant future after making a particular ethical choice. Doing good can have unforeseen benefits, while doing evil can come back to bite you in the ass down the road...

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?

And in the 'modern' world, we have had the Japanese filling that role.

I don't think the comparison is entirely fair.

In what way?

I was not trying to be unfair, or cast an insult. Just making an observation.

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"...   

Pardon my crappy wording. I just meant that it wasn't quite in line with the reality... Japan makes a ton of breakthroughs, and other nations also have the same tendency to improve on the ideas of others. Rather than a single nation that takes that role, all of us do.

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.

Although there are some exceptions, "Evil" choices should generally be beneficial to your own race, whereras "Good" choices should be beneficial to all life, not just your own.

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 almost ignore the benefits/maluses of ethical choices. When i start a game i have already decided which side i'm on (mostly neutral so i can balance actual advantages from evil choices with losing money from good choices).

i don't want to discuss the irrationality of many of the choices. I think the problem is that evil choices should be more powerful and alluring. And for one evil choice you should need not one but two or three good choices to redeem yourself. Then, when you actually choose your allignement, evil should have a real big restriction. Which one? I can imagine, and it's logical to me in our historical experience, an evil civilization can't operate under a federation governement. So maybe, if you're evil, you'll have planets with improved PQ, bonuses for economy, military etc., but you won't ever have the advantages of being under a federation.

(and let's get rid of the 2500bc option to change your allignement! If you really want to change it you should wait for the random screens and then, after you find yourself in the right allignement, you should search for xeno ethics).

richard

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

Well tetleytea, what I do is ask what Teddy Rosevelt would do and I get a pretty good answer.

Duh

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.

The Romans made contributions in military and civics, but I don't particularly consider those as positive contributions to mankind. Only different. They CHANGED us a lot, but did they really IMPROVE us a lot? I would say no; not like the Greeks did. I would even argue they contributed significantly to the Dark Ages, which was negative.

The Romans did, however, give us the modern stadium. That is nice, even though the way they got there was deplorable.

I consider Roman Christianity neither good or bad, because I don't think you can say the Romans gave us Christianity. They kind of absorbed that just like they did the Greek inventions. The Apostle Paul and Emperor Constantine were key players in the spread of Christianity, and they were Roman citizens, though.

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.

Nah. The ethical choices should retain their current setup where the evil choice is beneficial... if you want to add that kind of element in, do it with uncertain mini events that are tied to those choices. For example, if you crackdown on disaffected youth, you could be planting the seeds of that planet's rebellion later on. You wouldn't have an guarantee that it would happen, but there would be a chance. Likewise, if you decided to get the warring insect races to have peace, you might get an unexpected fusion of insect soldiers during a war, increasing your soldiering.

This'd make good choices "Short term pain, long term game" with evil choices being the opposite.

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...

Pick what's beneficial for you in the colonization events and later research xeno ethnics to change to whatever alignment you wish to be. This is a game, not life, so don't waste time to discuss real life morality here. Let's play more!!!

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.