Oh and there was...

Lucky me the Yor had just researched the evil tech that would allow them to build the No Mercy Invasion Center and the MCC. I picked that (and anything else they didn't nail down) from them at one hefty price of some techs that they wouldn't get to use (extreme world techs) in the fight. I took my top 2 productive worlds (Thala being one of them) and built those two buildings. My economy rightened itself and the tide of Thalans washed over the Yor.

After about 5 months of constant war, the Yor were no more.

Back to the topic of Ethics...Even without the MCC for my Evil-Thalans, their evil techs made for one decent military (albeit poor a one), both on the ground and in space. Their ground-game however still didn't match the Yor. I had allocated points for the Yor to be one sick ground troop...and I had forgotten that going into the fight lol. But this is all TA stuff, so I digress.

Well late game am having a lot of luck with the good alignment. My fleet is none existant and I been surrendered too by the Thalans and the Yor and now I have the second largest empire. I am not sure if one alignment is better than the other they just require different game play.

Duh

Ah, surrenders. In my current game, I'm playing the Korath. I started near the upper corner, with the Thalan to the left of me, the Yor to the right, and the Drath and Korx to the south. I almost immediately felt cramped and started gassing the Thalan worlds until all the good civs had a secret meeting and decided to declare open war on me: The Iconians, the Drath, and the Altarians. Two turns later, the Drath surrender to me, and two turns after that, the Altarians surrendered to me. I was playing evil.

Of course, in the game before that, the Torians built the building that encourages races to surrender to them, and they ended up with half the map. On Immense.

Good is pathetically weak and only worth considering in the event that you're surrounded by other good races and want to nab a diplomatic victory. I really don't understand what Stardock was thinking when it balanced this game's ethical alignments out; in every single solitary choice given to you in the game, you are penalized for being good and rewarded for being evil. There is no balance in any sense of the term between the two extremes. Evil gives you an incredibly powerful economy building alongside free starbase enhancements (Which applies to ALL starbases, so even if you're not a fan of military starbases like me it's still useful for economy starbases and mining starbases) in ADDITION to that Slave building that boosts your industry, though the name slips my mind at the moment. What do good get? A building that lets them get money from other good races' tourism income and boosts the chance that other races (Usually good) that are getting slaughtered (Usually by evil races, because evil is invariably better in this game) will surrender to you. Boosts the chance they surrender to you. Seriously, who the hell thought that could compare to a +100% civ wide bonus to economy building?

Don't even get me started on the multi-choice events that pop up. "Hiya mister player! Do you want to A: Lose 10% of your planet's quality for being good, B: Lose money for being neutral, or C: Get a 40% bonus to your planet's quality for being evil?" GOSH LET ME THINK ABOUT THAT A MOMENT.

If they rebalanced good ethical choices to be based around gaining higher morale, loyalty, influence, and maybe planet quality and nerfed evil ethical choices to be based around getting more money, higher ship quality, maybe some better economy choices, or whatever, then they might be more balanced. As of right now, there is utterly no point to being good except if you're in some kind of nightmare world where you're surrounded by the Altarians, Drath, Iconians and the Torians.

Too me, this is the part that makes no sense at all. An extra +100% economy building that only operates on the one planet is pretty helpful. Add in the other (supposedly main) effect and it's pretty darn helpful. A building that gives you empire-wide +100% economy is absolutely silly. I can only think that Brad is himself suffering from the effects of some kind of Drengin mind-control technology.

I think that Evil being powerful in Dark Avatar makes a lot of sense. After all, the game is all about the galaxy going to hell in a handbasket. Conversely, the balance should firmly (but not overwhelmingly) shift to Good in Twilight. Neutral for DL, Evil for DA, Good for TA. Makes some kind of story sense. Good should win in the end.

Good players need more skill in the colony rush otherwise thier Kroath spit rosts.

I have only once played Evil; they tend to get into more wars with EVERYONE.

Oh my god, don't give me that. Lore should have absolutely no say in balance. None. I don't care if it "makes sense," especially when you consider how absurdly subjective that is anyway. If you want to balance things, you have to actually give an incentive for pursuing a given thing. "Good should win in the end" does not make for an interesting or balanced game, and for that matter neither does "Evil should win", as it is now. If you want good to be balanced with evil, then you need to actually give an advantage to being good. There is none right now. None. Any insignificant advantages that it does give you ("Gosh, my diplomatic ability with other good races will go up if I ally with good? SHWING!") is utterly and completely overshadowed by the absurdly more powerful evil and, to a lesser extent, neutral ethical choices.

If I had my way, (And mind you this is just off the top of my head) I'd make selecting good when you research Xeno Ethics do the following:

Gain a diplomatic bonus. PERIOD, none of that "with other good races" crap.
Gain a trading bonus. PERIOD, no strings attached.
Gain access to special defensive technologies (IE the ones ingame right now).
Gain a special soldiering bonus that only applies when YOUR planets are invaded.
Loyalty Bonus.
Some kind of galactic achievement building that boosts civ-wide morale.
Temple of Getting-Other-Shmucks-To-Surrender-To-You is changed so that ALL other civs will ALWAYS surrender to the civilization who controls this building.

And hell, maybe some other things that I haven't thought of yet.

Oh, and of course I'd see about rebalancing the absurd multi-choice ethical events. Just as an example, I'll talk about the Astroid Showers event, taken from https://www.galciv.wikia.com/wiki/Random_event

Current, retarded event:



My rebalanced edition:



"But Honshu, why would a world care much about Loyalty or Influence? It's not like another civ is gunna try to culture flip it." You're right about that, but I see a penalty to morale as making good the same kind of no-brainer option that evil used to be; hence, I think an Influence penalty would be more appropriate. The idea here is to actually make being good an option, not a handicap. Specifically, an option that boosts your people's morale, loyalty, and planety quality. You know, cultivating the land and all that jazz, taking care of your people and making sure they feel groovy. Things ordinarily associated with good and caring rulers.

And before I go to bed, another one:

Current, retarded event:



My rebalanced edition:



Anywho, that's my two cents worth. Time for bed.

Good civilisations would quickly end up with an ecstatic populace, methinks. Though... they are living in a utopian society.

You should never underestimate the defensive bonus given to good civs though. 30% extra defence, plus more if your civ has some inherent defensive abilities, will make fleets geared towards defensive technologies near impenetrable. Except against psionic weapons, which is a problem... that I shall ignore.

I don't think I play one alignment more then the others, I just go with whatever best compliments whatever civilisation I'm playing as.

Honshu, I think perhaps retarded is an awful and unfortunate word to use here, but I like your overall idea - give certain kinds of bonuses and penalties to all three choices.

Going evil in GalCiv could often turn the tide against you, depending on the other civs around you - I lost at least one game because I went evil, and had a few other turn a few degrees harder.

Turning evil in GalCiv 2 doesn't have quite the same sting.

Neutrality Learning Centers are available early in the game and basically double the research capability of a neutral player once the research academy's are upgraded. This confers a significant advantage by mid-game. If you don't exploit it the evil races will use their bonuses to overwhelm you in the end game.

Honshu:

By that same token, everything in the game ought to be exactly the same. Civ differences ought to be obliterated for the purpose of complete balance!

Of course, that's an exaggeration, but so is the conclusion that choosing Good is that much harder and doesn't have anything going for it. The event choices are weirdly balanced, but as long as you balance slightly Good before you choose Ethics, then you don't need to sacrifice all that many of the goodies the Evil guys receive. If there's a significant number of other powerful Good Civs in the game, and you're not aiming for a Conquest victory, then choosing Good is actually more beneficial than inciting attack by choosing Evil. It's not always a foregone conclusion.

The game's Civ choices aren't balanced. Some Civs are dogs and some Civs are powerful. I don't see why a slight favoring of Evil isn't justifiable in a dark release. Certainly, in many other games, you don't even get the choice - you're simply the hero, never a villain. What's wrong with skewing to Evil slightly?

Honshu really hit the nail on the head. Whats good about coexisting with something that thinks 5yo suzy is a snack. kill them all. Lets be honest its only the crazies that support peta. Come on if you have a dog that tore up a little kid for whatever reason. You put the animal down. Animals are not people. As far as the economy hit. Thats just stupid. The designers think that the snake trade takes 5% of the economy. Thats foolish. And as far as evil... My dog bit a neighbor girl I had him put down that day. Lets see a dogs life over a hurt child... that is selfish and evil. I choose to put him down.

Duh

I share Honshu's frustration with the present imbalance away from "good" toward "evil." I have played many games, mostly as good, but also quite a few as evil and some as neutral. Playing evil in the TA beta has impressed upon me just how much advantage there is to the "evil" choices I have been ignoring. I can understand that SD has been busy with other aspects of gameplay and balance, but I hope that this neglected aspect of the game will be addressed, hopefully sometime before GC3!

I can see a problem with having the ethical choices balanced (some helping good, others helping evil), in that a player could just choose the most advantageous one each time (regardless of alignment) and then simply "purchase" his desired alignment when Xeno ethics is researched. I wonder if perhaps that entire final choice ought to be eliminated. You would have to really consider your choices, since when Xeno Ethics was researched, you would be committed to good/neutral/evil according to your previous choices. Perhaps, also, some of the advantages could be scaled by percentage according to how "good" or "evil" you were. (I'm not sure how Neutral would fit in this. But actually, I don't think there is such a thing as "morally neutral" anyway, just more or less good/evil!)

Just some thoughts. At any rate, I do hope that this aspect of the game will receive some TLC in the future. Until then, I may just play as "evil," remind myself that no one is actually being enslaved, tortured and killed, and in my mind compose some alternate "good" explanation of the choice. It is, after all, still just a game!

Unless, of course, the people at Stardock are highly advanced alien research scientists, using us in an experiment in which we control some alternate reality situation that involves billions of real beings living according to the way we play each game. In which case, I want my money back, please.   

Because this isn't a game about heroes?



I'd chose the dog.
1) People suck.
2) Kids suck.
3) Dog does more for me than stupid girl does for me.

Completely absurd. Look at what Starcraft accomplished and never try to make that ridiculous point again. Granted, games where the sides are not different from eachother are the easiest to balance, but that hardly means balancing different ethical alignments is beyond the developers. Let's never mind that I never even suggested doing away with their differences, merely actually making some tangible benefit to being good in the first place.



Oh. Is that so? The top characters in the metaverse seem to disagree with you.

http://metaverse.galciv2.com/index.aspx?g=player&id=9403

http://metaverse.galciv2.com/index.aspx?g=player&id=9462

http://metaverse.galciv2.com/index.aspx?g=player&id=7913

http://metaverse.galciv2.com/index.aspx?g=player&id=7599

http://metaverse.galciv2.com/index.aspx?g=player&id=16760

http://metaverse.galciv2.com/index.aspx?g=player&id=15147

And from the list of "Top Tournament" players as of January 18th, we have in first place:

http://metaverse.galciv2.com/index.aspx?g=player&id=9187

Noticing a trend here? You cannot say with a straight face that good is anything but retarded in this game in the face of such insurmountable physical evidence. The stats speak for themselves: Good is the worst choice by far. Practically no one going for score goes good, and those that do seem to always seem to have an inferior score to someone playing evil. Why is that, I wonder?



Hold on right there. No, they are not weirdly balanced, they are not balanced. The difference between the two is that weirdly balanced has an insinuation that there exists balance within it, but that balance was brought about in an unusual way. There is nothing balanced between the good and evil ethic choices. Neutral is invariably just an option for people who don't want to lose good status but still don't want to shoot themselves in the foot like they do when they pick half the good options in this game.

Let's be very clear here: Balance exists when there are multiple paths to a specific end (In this case, victory ingame) and all of them are equally viable. Balance exists whenever one has to think for a moment about the pros and cons of being evil vs being good. Balance exists when nearly the entire metaverse community doesn't pick evil solely because good is dumb. Starballs references aside, good is completely and utterly retarded in this game. The one tangible benefit it gives is a theoretically easier time at a diplomatic victory (And even then only in my previous described nightmare world where you have nothing but goody-two-shoe races everywhere), but people seem to be voting very clearly with their records: Good is not as viable as evil is.



Do you even understand what you just said? You just acknowledged that good guys get screwed out of the deals that evil guys get and that the only reason you'd even consider picking good options is so that you can skirt slightly-to-the-left of the Morality Meter so you can pick good without having to give up your left kidney. Do you actually think that's an indication of balance?



Congratulations, you just reiterated the single scenario in which being good is even a viable option that I already spoke on. Yes, wonderful, there is one case in which good is actually an option. Unfortunately, unusual situations do not make things balanced, and this is no exception.



Because then there is no choice. Do you understand what I'm trying to say? If you make a game wherein there is very nearly no tangible benefit to being good, then everyone is going to be evil or neutral unless they're playing for fun or intentionally trying to handicap themselves. That is not a choice. That is the illusion of choice. If you actually are going to try and tell me that being good is supposed to be an utterly and irrecoverably stupid decision reserved for people who "like a challenge" or "don't care about score" then I suppose there's nothing more to say here. But don't try to call it choice.

Were you to offer to hand a hungry man either an empty Snickers candybar wrapper or a full-course meal at a local restaurant, you should not act surprised that said man opts for the full course meal, nor should you even try to act like there was a choice to be made in the first place. By the very nature of the situation, the choice made was a foregone conclusion.

This is getting to be a pretty interesting discussion! I have to agree there just isn't much opportunity for good to accel. However, that doesn't mean there's no reason to ever play it. Barring the score mongering, there are game scenarios where playing good can be a rewarding experience. Maybe the devs intended it to be this way and we're just assuming they could have "balanced things better".

If the devs intended for good to, for lack of a better term, suck ass then so be it. But don't try to justify poor balancing by saying that there are some nebulous and vague "scenarios" where playing good is a "rewarding experience." Specify strategies that revolve around being good. Name cases in which being good led to you gaining a true and decisive advantage over being evil or neutral. Be specific. Unless it's equally viable to evil or neutral, then there is no real choice if you're playing to win.

Yes, we have established that being good doesn't suck too hard if you're surrounded by other good races and are trying to avoid being gang raped. Joy. Anything else to add to the frighteningly short list of scenarios in which being good is useful? Or can we all collectively agree that something needs to be done about the danged alignment already?

I always thought that taking the Good options was by design meant to be materialistically less rewarding than evil, because in a sense that's how the world works.

If you've played role playing games where you can pick whether to do good or evil, you'll find that in most games it is ultimately doing good that rewards the most money/XP/reputation, while picking the evil options is usually something you do for kicks or for roleplaying purposes. Personally I thought the way Galciv and Galciv 2 did it was more in line with how you'd expect it to work. Honestly, if being evil wasn't what earned you the most materialistic rewards, why would anyone choose to commit evil acts? Doing good or "the right thing" very often earns you nothing except maybe the respect and gratitude of people, and sometimes it even costs you, which in Galciv 2 seems to be pretty much in line with that.

Doing the "right" thing is usually a lot harder than taking the easy, "evil" way out, and that's how it works in the game as well. I mean, if all good acts had significant rewards attached to them, you wouldn't do them for the sake of being good and doing the right thing, but because you'd earn something from it, in which case it kinda stops being "good", or at least it's not selflessness which is perhaps one of the main defining traits of the concept of good. Which in my opinion is just like playing evil, except you pick a different option. They'd both be the same, just with different rewards.

I prefer the system like it is now. Playing good shouldn't be as easy and materialistically rewarding as playing evil because it sort of defies the motivations for being good/evil. But that's just my opinion, I'm just bored of games where picking the good choices always ends up being rewarded so much that you pick it for the reward more than the act of being good, while evil gets nothing which defies the motivations evil people have for being just that, evil.

I doubt it was ever intended to be balanced and equally rewarding, which would be illogical anyway.

TL;DR: Good acts are choices made in accordance with your conscience, regardless of any personal reward or lack of thereof. Evil acts are the choices made for the maximum amount of personal gain, be it material or self-indulgence at the expense of others. That's mostly how the game is now, and how I personally think it should stay.

Of course, this assumes that there's just no benefit from doing good acts, and this isn't so. Of course, there can be a penalty as you pass up lucrative possibilities, but the intangible benefits you receive for doing good works are already quantified in GalCiv as influence, morale, and loyalty, which makes them tangible in game terms, assuming the game gives you any reward for choosing good. Are you saying that a civilization that consistently chooses to respect life and freedom would not reap any benefits from their own or neighboring civilizations just because of the idea that good should always be weaker than evil?

The problem with the example that you give of RPGs rewarding for good and punishing for evil is a) incorrect to begin with - several CRPGs reward differently for good and evil actions - and just shows that GalCiv's design is reactionary in this regard, and not revolutionary. "If these games reward good and punish evil, then GalCiv should reward evil and punish good just to be different."

I'm not saying that good never has any benefits in the game, or that it shouldn't have. But it shouldn't be as rewarding materialistically (money, production, that sort of thing) as evil is, because evil as the game events define it is taking the route which gives the highest amount of tangible rewards without regards for the moral implications of it. Good can sometimes have rewards, but it shouldn't consistently reward as much as evil does (even if differently) because when the game events defines evil as materialistically self-serving, it would be more prudent for an evil nation to pick the good option because it would make more sense if it had almost equal perks but without the negative consequences.

Being good sometimes has its rewards, but they tend to be much more long-term and subtle than the more instant reward and gratification of doing evil and frankly I don't think that Galciv as it is now really manages to do that justice, nor am I sure it is within the scope of the game to portrait it properly. Evil and good are basically differentiated slightly in tech and diplomacy, along with the odd flavor text, otherwise it plays pretty much the same as a good civ does. Influence, morale, loyalty... all of these game concepts are independent of your choices of good and evil, as either of them can excel in all those 3 fields.



They reward good and evil differently yes, but by and large the majority of them have more and better rewards for good. Whereas being evil might net you a quick buck or two, being good will often get someone to reward you of their own free will in equal amounts or better, award more experience, as well as not putting you at odds with the world at large. Bioware RPGs in particular show this trend of good generally getting all the perks with none of the downsides, whereas evil is mainly a "for kicks" type of play. As for the last part of the quote, I don't see how that has anything to do with what I said. I simply said I enjoyed the way it works in Galciv 2 because it seems more logical than materialistically rewarding good more than evil, since good is often done for the sake of doing good without any expectations of a reward, whereas evil is more often done for the sake of personal gain, not for the sake of being an arse. Being an arse is just a bonus

.... you fail.

Trollbait aside, do you have anything of value to contribute to the thread? If not, kindly go and spew your irrelevant comments elsewhere.

@AG3:

Look, if you're going to go ahead and accept that being evil should be "easier" than being good, then you have accepted the premise that the game should not be balanced. I ask you, then; once you've accepted that idea, then what on earth is the next decision that should be taken? Should Yor have an "easier time" than the Iconians? Should Drengin have an "easier time" than the Drath? Because once you've started this philosophy of "things should be inherently unbalanced" then where precisely does that philosophy stop so we can have a game with options again?

There is practically no benefit to being good compared to being evil. Your attempts to skew this simple imbalance with real life rationale on how it's "easier" to be evil will do nothing but keep this imbalance in place and thus make it so people always take the evil route because the benefits infinitely outweight the negatives, especially compared to being good. As opposed to making the ethical alignment options some kind of secondary difficulty meter ("Select good for hard mode, neutral for normal mode, evil for easy mode"*) why don't we actually make them all viable options?

*Note: I only call neutral "normal mode" for effect. I actually think neutral is pretty good as it offers a realistic alternative to being evil and offers real, tangible benefits that are different, yet useful all the same. (Although granted not quite as useful as the evil buildings... evil needs to be nerfed ::()

Okay, so where are the long-term rewards of playing good in GalCiv? Please show them to me, because I haven't been able to find them.

Playing good should tend to make others like you. There are actual, tangible, in-game bonuses that reflect both your own and other civs liking you more: Morale, Loyalty, Influence, and Diplomacy. Good choices should at least boost those traits in some way, if evil gives you better planet quality, soldiering, weapons, defense, etc. If you talk about having intangible, long-term rewards, what you really mean is "no actual rewards," because apparently having people like you more isn't supposed to have a game mechanical effect, despite having racial abilities that affect how much people like you.

For that matter, where are the repercussions of choosing evil?



Oh, bull. I've played every Bioware game ever, and playing evil gets you access to stuff that good doesn't have - powerful NPCs like Edwin, for example, or dark side Force powers as in KOTOR, and so on. Some (like Mass Effect, Jade Empire, and KOTOR) give you more benefits for playing evil than others (Baldur's Gate I and II), but their games do provide more nuanced ways of playing good/evil, light/dark, etc, without punishing you for playing the dark side and giving you actual in-game benefits for doing so.



Then why bring up the RPG example at all? You got it from Frogboy, and while I see what he was getting at, I disagree with him about it. That's what the last part of my quote is in reference to.

First, you did fail. It's Spaceballs, and this is relevant. If you weren't absolutely sure what you were referencing, you should not have referenced it. Right or wrong, errors like this inevitably degrade the percieved credibility of the rest of your argument. The same holds true for blatant spelling or gramatical errors, which you have thankfully avoided.

Second, there are no assurances the game is balanced, or ever will be. To paraphrase Frogboy, it's a single player game. Imbalances will exist, and it's entirely the player's choice in how to deal with them.

Having said that, I agree with you to a point. The random ethical events need to add a bit to good options, despite how unrealistic they may have to be. As for techs, only one change is really needed to balance the extremes in DA (I haven't played enough TA to have a valid opinion) - take the MCC econ bonus and make it a local bonus, not global, and restore the planet-flipping effect it was originally intended to have. That will wipe out nearly half of an evil empire's income, and restore a degree of parity in the influence wars.