Craig, who are you playing as? The cost in xeno Ethics is directly related to your "moral compass" at that point in the game, that is, a "good" race that decides to be evil pays 10k, neutral 2.5k, and 0 for good; or flip all that for an "evil" race. A "neutral" moral compass pays 2500 to go either direction.
I wasn't aware of a difference. It just seems I always end up paying 10K to go evil and 2K for neutral. I never noticed a difference between races. I haven't played them all so I'll watch for that. Also, I've been playing DL lately so it could be something that changed in DA. Everyone sort of assumes that we're all talking about DA here, but some of us are still playing the original game.
For an all-labs strategy, being evil is the most sensible choice, followed in the distance by neutral. Good is never a good choice (ironically enough).
For *any* strategy being evil is the most sensible choice. The only reason I consider neutral is because I really like the instant terraforming, and they nerfed it in DA so basically, there's no reason to play anything but evil. That's lame.
As far as the alignment imbalance, the easy way to fix it is to give each one similar bonus levels in some area. Maybe good gets a 100% bonus in social production and 50% in research or something. Why they didn't do something like that from the get-go is a bit of a mystery to me. Having two of three playstyle options totally worthless is a real waste.
