Good VS Evil

Good - free maintanance on top 5 colonies is "ok". I think you net about 12 x 5, or 60 BC each turn. You get sme diplo bonuses with other good races, which is pretty minimal. You get "special" defenses, like empathic armor, etc. that only good races can build. These are pretty good, AND you get bonuses to defense in general just for researching them.

Evil - you get money for some trade routes in your influence, not all that great. You get psyonic weapons, which rock. At least the beam version does. Especially in DA/DL. It was moved around in ToTA so its not as much an impact. But it does 12 damage for 150 cost, its a pretty sweet laser. You get the MIND CONTROL CENTER. Ignoring the fact it doesnt do what it says it does, in fact it does the exact OPPOSITE (which makes it very evil...) it grants you the universal economic bonus of +100% economy, which to say the least, is extremely power. It makes other planets HARDER to flip, not easier. But who cares. Finally you get free upgrades to your starbases, which can be really important if you are going for maximum score with a starbase array.

You didnt ask about neutral so I'm not bothering to type it out

Neutral has the neutrality learning centres which are awesome, (best research centre IRC), and also some trade bonuses and extra trade routes.

Neutral: do not forget FREE terraforming when terraforming technology is available. So no more building habitats, terraforming or soil enhancement, those tiles are instantly available when you have the appropriate tech when Neutral.
Neutral also has a morale boost and a slight soldiering bonus against non-neutral races.

Made a new post cause Edit didn't show, and guess what... Edit shows up:

Oh and forgot: In ToA neutrality also gives you 25% discount on instant purchases (combined with i.e. the Korx' discount of 25%, that's 50% off when making a direct purchase), this is also mentioned in DA in the overview, but it doesn't actually work.

Oh and forgot: In ToA neutrality also gives you 25% discount on instant purchases (combined with i.e. the Korx' discount of 25%, that's 50% off when making a direct purchase), this is also mentioned in DA in the overview, but it doesn't actually work.

In DL (and I think DA, but I'm not as sure about it), evil races had a harder time maintaining good morale, and had a higher chance of getting hit by the event where a number of planets revolt. In TA it seems like it might be different. I just completed a TA game as the Drengin, and had no difficulty maintaining high morale.

Another benefit of being Evil is that you can always pick the most beneficial option in all of those random "Ethical dilemnas" that pop up from time to time. The most extreme example that I can think of are the sometimes crazy boosts you can get to planet quality.

Personally, I wish they wouldn't have made the decisions so obviously skewed in favor of evil. There should be drawbacks to evil...

Except that some numbnuts told Brad who hadn't realized this was the case after three years and so in ToA the MCC will do absolutely nothing. Actually I like to think I'm friends with the particular numbnuts in this case but why in God's name he decided to mess this up is beyond me.

Still evil is probably the way to go but this makes the 10% approval bonus that you get from going neutral very powerful. Particularly because it's a straight 10% boost to approval not a 10% morale bonus that is then depreciated by a planets base morale determined by population.

This 10% morale boost corresponds to an economic bonus because it allows you to instantly increase your taxes. Also you get this 10% boost immediately after researching Xeno Ethics and choosing neutral as opposed to having to additionally research concepts of malice and then build a wonder.

Oh i agree with you there Mumble and i even asked that certain numbnuts that exact question..Why? Something to the effect it was too powerful and that it should do what it was built to do...or something to that affect...it was some time ago.

There is a easy way around it though, don't update TA....I'm not, not yet anyway.

Well, regardless of the noble intentions of said pillar of the community (a.k.a. numbnuts), the thing was broken completely in TA to start with and the previous benefit was just a lucky side effect of it being broken before. Having it fixed to perform it's original intended purpose is the right thing to do.

So guys, get over it   , it was a huge exploit! I enjoyed and used to the maximum the bonus it gave as much as anyone, but to be honest I'm quite glad it's gone - saves a lot of time in the spending down to under 20K each turn (now that is one "feature" I wish would get permanently broken).

Oh for sure it was, but i'm still in my mourning period, can't rush these things you know...

I do not understand one thing though, Mr Numbnuts found the solution to the MCC fault rather easily, how is it that no one from SD could find it in over two years since the games release.

Perhaps Mr Numbnuts, if you are interested, you could apply for the job of alpha tester at SD....

Hey...here's a thought, If we call him Numnuts enough, you guys reckon it will stick?


Edit - And the edit feature is back now...no more waiting 10 mins...

I'd really like to know:

What was it in the first place that caused the MCC to be so buggy?
How were Stardock not aware of this bug? There must have been countless threads on this specific issue, most of them around beta releases / final release of Twilight.

And, for the record, I think it was about time they fixed it. All who are now crying about evil being nerfed: You knew perfectly well that the MCC was a huge exploit. (Although I completely understand the period of mourning. )

Finally, good and neutral are almost valid choices again when it comes to ethics.

The only thing about the MCC being a huge exploit is that it was not properly documented. However after 3 years *everyone* was apparently cognizant of the fact except perhaps the developers.

Why is an in-game economic bonus an exploit in and of itself. Simply the fact that it was a 100% bonus, perhaps. But otherwise it required a reasonably high level of tech to be researched and a reasonably expensive wonder to be built. There are literally dozens of similar although smaller bonuses for morale, social and military production and research. Why not an economic bonus.

This issue is two fold. One is the magnitude of the bonus and the other is that the bonus wasn't intended. One could certainly argue that 100% may be too much, however one cannot argue that an economic bonus has no place in the game whatsoever. One can also argue that functions should work as described so that everyone knows what is truly available however this doesn't mean that a well-known bug that has existed for at least three years should be nuked.

As far as fixing the MCC to do what was intended, who in their right mind believes that will ever happen. The best is that the MCC will become totally devoid of function and merely add to the already long list of useless techs and wonders in this game.


This is the 64 thousand dollar question. It was the same question that was asked when the 5% morale bonus was removed from the Stock Market.

It kind of makes you wonder if any of the developers have ever even played this game. In their defense it's clear that they have played this game it's just that they tend to play short games on tiny galaxies that barely scratch the surface of game functionality.

Now if your talking about exploits why not take a close look at diplomacy in this game. Isn't it a huge exploit to be able to go 8 months into the game letting the AI's colonize the galaxy and then go to each AI in turn and say "Please give me all your planets" and have each and every AI say "Sure, no problem". The MCC pales in comparison.

The patch log said it is already fixed in the 1.92 release...

It's been known, it just apparently was never a high priority, and didn't make its way up to Brad. Cari investigated it a couple of times in the past, and I've known about it since it was first discovered.

In any case though, it was pretty definitely an exploit--unintended and massively advantageous. Now maybe people won't always pick evil so much.

A related question about good and evil - can you just colonize a bunch of worlds, pick evil for all the events, and then choose good once you research Xeno Ethics?

You can, but it'll cost you big.

The costs seem bigger than they are, first of all, you'll pay whatever you have in your treasure to "purchase good" up to 10k (the conversion costs if I remember correctly from evil to good), if you can't pay it in full (say, you have 3k bc), the remaining amount (in this case 7k) will become a lease with no interest, paid off at 10bc (cheap...) per turn, which you may never need to pay off, as it takes ages... Literally.

I'm also glad that the MCC got fixed, although I've been using it quite extensively. Will the fix be in place for DL and DA? Seems like it should be workable if they did it for TA.

As far as picking an alignment other than evil, that'll take more than just fixing the MCC. The Psyonic Beam and the SCC make a pretty strong combination. The Artificial Slave Center helps you pump out those fighters to overwhelm the enemy.

Of course, if the Psyonic Beam is harder to get in TA, evil might be a thing of the past. It'll take a while to explore all of the possibilities.

The reason the MCC was brought to attention by numbnuts is because in TOA each race has a different tech tree, so there was no default value to receive the bonus (MCC reverted to a default stat, which was econ, to give a 100% bonus to, if I'm not mistaken). This made the MCC completely useless, so it went from an exploit to nurfing evil. So not patching the game wont help

I hardly played DL and so MCC has always been what it states on its tooltip for me. Thank Heaven, then, that they fixed it!

Psyonic beams are very much alive with the evil Drengin. Total galactic domination when you jump from +1 to +12 weapons.

In my current game only the Drengin are left, I have aboit 76% of the galaxy an my influence has engulf entire solar systems of Drengin planets, thre are skill and cross bones everywhere, but alas i get no free planets, guess ill jut have to build those 137 transports to finish the game. I'd give half of my income (ie, that gained from the MCC)for an immediate flipping of those planets; which is what i would get if it worked as originally intended. I'm almost willing to demolish it (if thats possible) just so SOMETHIMG or anYTHING would flip at all.

I never really considered the bonus to be an exploit since the AI was welcome to building it. For some eason they never ever do. And since everyone playing in the Metaverse was aware of it, it wasnt a hidden way to higher scores. I don't think I'd mind losing the bonus IF it does gets fixed. On the other hand I always thought that ability should gop to the GOOD alaignment (under a differnt name of course).

Back to the OP... just wanted to add that you should not under estimate the bonuses to defence that godd gets. +15% just for researchinging defence techs which don't take all that long in addition to the better part to put on your ships. Good civs appear to stick together better than evil ones. And the building that increases the likelyhood than a surrender from an AI will come you way can be good too. I'm just not sure how well it works or if it really makes a difference. Keep in mind too that the instant terraforming ability of neutral civs is easily taken care of by the Orbital Terraformer. That alone makes a third colony "rush" worth while.

FROM MUMBLE


I agree with the idea that many structurs that are availabe are useless. More of them need to be civ-wide to ever be worth building at all. 40% planetary morale for the galactic resort?? so what? I got this with a conquored planet and i wish i could raze it.

Ahh...There ya go, shows how little of TA i have actually played. Thankyou.



Do you mean to tell me that without ever taking a turn, going from 4 planets to 512 due to diplomacy is not an exploit or a bug!!! I'm shocked!

But Shhhh Mumble, you don't want to be known as Mr.Numbnuts Two do ya?

Surely that would be "Mumbnuts"   

Can someone please tell me what this means. I have enough trouble getting the AI to sell me one planet.

No money involved - you just have to ask nicely under the right conditions. "Big stick diplomacy" is one commonly used term to describe it.

As to it's standing as an exploit... well there are historical references that support this action as reasonable. Unconditional surrender has at times resulted in the assimilation of an entire nation state into the victors' civilization - sometimes even before battle has commenced, in the face of overwhelming odds.

The methods used in game to achieve this are almost certainly to be viewed as exploits, but the underlying diplomacy process and AI rationalisation of the situation is not as far from reality as some would have you believe.