and btw, the "Secret Police Center" is bugged, too - it should give a flat 20% approval civ-wide - this would fairly top the "Neutral" 10%.

Another bug: there are no "Neutral" weapons/defenses. Also, you'll still need to research those terraforming techs for the tiles to become instantly accessable.

To be honest: some of these improvements (esp. Temple of Neutrality, Temple of Good/Evil & Propaganda Center) are a drag and to built them is actually a disadvantage, they are far too expensive (to build AND to maintain) for the little gain they give. They are not even worth the empty tile - where a Stock Market is more advantageous in all instances.

It's basically 2 different things. For one, 3 defensive shiparmament-techs are opened, and further, after "Good & Evil" a tech called "Concepts of Righteousness" is opened also - which let's you built the "Empathic Tactical Center" which gives +20% DEF.

Actually, the description above lacks some of the improvements one can built after researching Xeno-Ethics. Neutral also have "Neutral shipping" which adds some trade routes (and I think, a bit more money out of trade...). by the way, don't confuse the 'Temple of Neutrality' (which gives some additional tourism-income) with the 'NLCs Neutrality Learning Centers' which are labs.

The yellow Evil-tech is called "Concepts of Malice" and this gives you the MCC, as well as the ASC 'Artificial Slave Center' which adds +50% to Military Production civ-wide (!!!). I forgot this to mention, if you are actually producing ships then this is very significant.

Actually, there is only a 100% & a 300% food bonus-tile - you can always use them, they'll save you 1 farm. On the 100% built the Advanced Farm whih gives you then 2*7b = 14b + 6b(colony) = 20b. On the 300% built the 2nd tier farm 4*3b = 12b + 6b (colony) = 18b. This way you'll only have to built a cheaper farm with a lower maint, too. And actually, you don't have to grow each planet up until the cap is reached - a planet will find its natural limit once 20% approval rate is hit. Even if the farm(s) still would allow for another 10b people - don't care, there's no need to fill that in.

There's a small app called "Galactopedia" around, there you can easily go through all of the improvements and get some info on them. However, it's only DL/DA, the new unique techtrees in TA haven't been considered.

Yes, I know. That one looks really good. I must say that, over all, Neutral looks the most powerful alignment for research, evil for warmongers and good for pacifists. Due to the significant research bonus, Neutrality looks the most powerful to me even if I must admit that the upkeep for those Neutrality learning centers is really heavy and in one game, where I've built them massively, I have had some troubles in keeping science funds at 100% without going into red. What's the use of such power if I can't afford it? So, probably, Good is also rewarding because it means that it is possible to increase global productivity and still having quite happy people thanks to the high economic bonuses What I dislike is that the alignment choices at the beginning of the game very rarely present some situation where the Good choice is the most rewarding too. I have like the feeling that initial sacrifices are not refunded in the long run.

About Evil, I can just say that I'm playing the Kling... ops, the Drengin in the second official champaign and that their status of "bad guys" has a serious impact on diplomatic relations, so... effectively there are consistent pro and cons in each choice. It is just that Good doesn't look so good! But maybe I've already wrote that.

Actually you can scrap the "good" economic bonuses. They are not really there. Alone the evil ASC brings you more in when you keep in mind that for the extra production you'll only have to pay half of it - and if you then reduce Military output to the norm it was before building the ASC it'll safe you much more than Colony-costs or Freighters ever can bring you in. Not speaking about the MCC....

Yes, your sacrifices are not rewarded. From the colonization events "Evil" is always the best choice, and some of these are a real advantage, foir example if you get 20-40% research bonus you could specialize that planet to research entirely. Or the event which increases Ships-strength - this'll make a good production planet.

bad guy rules the world! even in the GALV2.

Thread necrophilia!

Doesn't Evil also eliminate paying for invasions by building the No Mercy improvement?  In a big map, that's quite useful.

This is true but in a game not played for score you generally want techrate on normal or even less and this will seriously hamper your ability to swindle the AIs because, they will have established a military long before you can do that (you will also go broke before having the SCC, psionic beams etc)

Further, the game is still full of bugs and if you use them all to your advantage there's no way you will ever loose a game on any imaginable setting. I speak of that because the swindle tactic is also nothing but a bug, or, an exploit of a really careless coded routine.

I understand that a civ will be very impressed once the enemys MMR far outweighs their own, but then, there's simply no realistic approach or logic in making peace (= which is a means of *survival*) by handing them over all your planets (=which is the exakt opposite of survival)

That said in a warfighting game the No Mercy Invasion Center can really be helpfull if paired with a special invasion technique:

1. The turn you invade put spies on all morale building on these planets

2. Use "Information Warfare" (costs 800 bc, said Center will drop it to 0)

3. Invade with maximum fleet, the more the better around 8000 soldiers will always do the trick.

4. Usually someting like 1000-1500 enemy soldiers join your forces

If you have enough soldiering the battle will be won without loss, in fact, it might be that you'll just loose 500 soldiers, and only one invasion ship. That way it can even be productive to use all logistics available to you and put a simply small troop transport therein too, because it could be the one that will be lost, saving the more expensive ships.

A second tactic which is also very effective (in cases where you don't have the upper hand so to speak) is to bomb enemy planets with a smaller force using mass driver or planetary bombardment (or whatever it is called). This usually results in reducing the planets popultion by a great amount. Be carefull that you loose that fight though, because then the planetary penalty will not be in place. Afterwards invade with normal troops.