Good, Bad or Neutral???

The eagle never lost so much time as when he submitted to learn from the crow.

I think what Cam's trying to say is "if you're kickin' butt with the way you're doing it, then it's working for you...why try to do it like others?"

I could be wrong, but...

lol, well, i usually barly win, the last game i played i got massicured by 2 good civs...would being good be eazyer? how about neutral?? which has the most advantages???

In extremely basic terms military-wise:

Evil = weapons

Good = defense

Neutral is neither

In DA, defense is very good the way the combat system works, so Good actually gets a neat little bonus with those weird defense types.

Why not try to accumulate a record of wins in each alignment?

Are you seeking true mastery, grasshopper?

drrider

Good is best on small maps where there's not a lot of planets and 5 planets is a very high percentage of total planets. Neutral is best on large maps with lots of low quality planets.

Evil is bad because you have to build it's benefits you get nothing for free. Xeno Ethics is expensive by the time you've researched it your 5000bcs are up, you need the boost of Good and Neutral.

Which is why the TOP 10 players are mostly evil. A +100% to your economy is like the most unfair thing in the world (plus the free invasions, plus the bonus on military - which is difficult to use because you can't use the 99% civ setting but still...).
Than there is the weapons (evil beam is a bit more expensive but way ahead of its time) - plus as it takes a while to built up for evil most of the civs do not even have proper defense if you are not too fast in militarizing!


Consider a good game one to two levels more difficult than an evil one. I've only started evil civs recently - I played my first evil game and I got BORED it was so easy. Now I moved up difficulty it's fine again.
And all the evil ethic choices bonuses - the free starbase upgrades...
The good wonders are very dubious (+20 defense: hahaha - Drath get +50 for nothing)
and the surrender center doesn't seem to work that well).


Also the bad kids on the block (Drengin) are suddenly your buddies - I love that no more uphill attacks in an early war!


Short:
-->Evil is easy cheesy
-->Good is bad to play (but good to master the game)
-->neutral has its charms (NLCs, morale, tiles, but...)

By the way: If you want to play good, misbehave in early game anyway (on ethic events) - makes you more popular with everyone and the 10,000 BC penalty is laughable, because you can pay it off at 10BC per round - and usually the game is over before you pay it all.

Playing for score is different from normal play.

On the turn you research Xeno Ethics from good or neutral you get:
Maintence fee paid on five most populous colonies(Great on small galaxies)
10% approval bonus

And a few turns later you can research soil enhancement and get that bonus getting a morale bonus, and increasing the pop caps on PQs below 8.

On the turn you research Xeno Ethics and choose evil you get:
Nothing

The free starbase upgrade isn't so hot because well starbases really don't do anything. Getting significant funds from tourism are random event dependent and income from trade is also relying on events and your opponents.

The only way evil would be better is if you could research xeno ethics and build a MCC on basically the 5000bcs you start the game with(and random events giving you some more cash). It's possible that the benefits of a MCC center are so great that they would allow you to recover from the economic hole in a stronger end position even though good and neutral recover from the hole much, much sooner.

You have to research all the way down to Concept of Malice to be able to build MCC center and you have to devote economic resources to build it.

Of course, it's always better to choose the evil option in your ethics picks, so evil does help you economically 10bcs a turn.

i lov military conquest so evil has its charms, but on v1.5 of DL(not DA) the evil civs,(with exeption to the korx) are really weak and NEVER expand, so from this, id assume that good would be better so i could get some good alliances...does any1 no all the advantages each ethnic allignment gets on v1.5??

pretty much varies for me with the race im playing and the kind of game im going for. sometimes i go for an influence win so weapons arent massiveily important. other times i go for the all out conquer and kick bu** option so some beasts of war go down a treat with the evil tools.

it just really depends on your style of play for any particular game i think

hmm, really good points, i suppose u hav 2 very by game 2, if good civs are the mejority it would be a good idea to align with them as opposed 2 evil...k, ty every1 for ur help. *cough*every1gojointheyautjaclan*cough*...sorry, sore throat...haha

I'm sure this isn't a new concept, but it's something I thought of last night...

Do gigantic galaxy, set everything to "random", and select your favorite race (or your own custom race). Now...select the appropriate alignment via your playstyle.

For Example:

If you like playing the Drengin Empire, play them warlike and Empirical, and always select "Evil" options on events. If you like playing Terrans, select Federalists, play them primarily defensive and expansionist, and always select "Good" options on events.

Forget size of the map, the sort of adversaries, etc. Play the race how they're presented, regardless of what's out there. Could be fun. Could be hazardous. Would be interesting, though.

^^^ That actually sounds like fun. I am going to try that now. God I would hate too many habitable planets though... Talk about a logistics nightmare!

Some factors to consider when determining your alignment:

1) Your playstyle (evil if you're going for military, neutral/good if you're going for influence, good if you go for diplomatic) and the unique advantages/buildings of each alignment

2) Your neighbours: it may pay off to have the most common alignment if you can use the positive impact on your foreign relations

3) The ethical choices: choosing the evil path gives you some quick immediate advantages

But yes, overall I'd say evil turns out to be easier in most circumstances.

I haven't tried Evil yet. That Mind Control Center is messed up... it says something in the description, doesn't do that, and instead gives you a massive advantage of a totally different flavor. And the Psionic Beam is the 5th strongest weapon available. Only the 3 final weapons and the Positronic Torpedo 2 can beat it, and they need you to do a ton of research.

Anyway, I've hardly ever seen any ethical events, so I've played Good a bit.

The Good-only defenses rock. Telepathic Defense nerfs out Psionic Missile and gives you a 5% civ-wide defense bonus as well. Arnorian Battle Armor gives you a 5% civ-wide Hitpoints bonus and remains the best Armor until you get Adamantium 2. I haven't tried out Subspace Rebounders and Dynamic Shielding yet because the AI isn't pursuing beam weaponry so far, but I know those techs also give you a civ-wide 5% Defense bonus.

As for the loyalty bonus, it doesn't appear to work. The 60 bc per turn money that Good spares you from not having to maintain 5 Initial Colonies is OK, not really great though. And the teamwork thing doesn't really have much effect either.

Neutral has no special military equipment, but the Neutrality Learning Centers make up for that. Provided you have the economy to fund your research, you can easily get awesome weapons and defenses on the normal tech tree in not that much time. Problem is, however, that each NLC appears to be painstakingly difficult to build - as if you're building a Trade Good every time.

The 10% Approval bonus is great - more money for the same approval rate. And free terraforming saves tons of precious time and effort, so this is useful for more planets. Neutral Shipping is useful if you want to make a trade array, but otherwise not. I don't know too much about the advantage-boost that Neutral civs supposedly get during invasions against non-Neutrals.

From what I've heard, evil civs get some pretty nice military bonuses, but they're more prone to get ganged up on by the other civs. Good civs get a defense bo.nus and have an easier time making alliances, plus it's easier for them to rally others to their cause should they be attacked. (This happened to me once, actually... I was playing as the Korath, and I decided to attack an ethically weak civ that was "good." The entire universe turned on me.)

Neutral civs have nothing bad, but nothing good either. I think a good idea is to design races based on what alignment you eventually want them to be.