chananyahoschander's post made me think about the alignments again. The way I understand the intended design is this: Good suffers in the short term, but gains long-term benefits, due to better relations with the other races. Evil gains short terms benefits, but suffers in the long term, due to constant conflicts with the other races. Neutral is somewhere in the middle.
This is definitely how it was in GalCiv 1. If you played Evil, you needed all the benefits you could get, because everyone wanted to see you dead. Playing Good, on the other hand, was pretty much "easy-mode", because everyone liked you. Except for the Drengin and Yor perhaps. Neutral was the least beneficial alignment, because you didn't get any of the fancy techs Good and Evil got. Well, at least nobody hated your guts for being an Evil jerk.
However, this isn't really the case in GalCiv 2. The downsides for playing Evil just aren't that big, or not really downsides at all. (The Altarians declared war on me? Great! I was already sending my invasion fleet in their direction anyhow.) While the bonuses for being Good don't offset the penalties suffered in the beginning.
We obviously can't fix the underlying issues, because they are hardcoded. However, we can change the bonuses the alignments receive in form of SPs and GAs. So, here is what I'd like to do with Evil:
1. Move the Mind Control Center to Xeno Brain Washing.
2. Move the Artificial Slave Center to Artificial Slavelings.
3. Move the No Mercy Invasion Center to Terror Drones I.
4. Move the Secret Police Center to Concepts of Malice.
The primary reason for this is so Evil only gets what it's supposed to according to its bonus-sheet. Which is good enough already, if you take all the bonuses from events into account. The other reason for this is so that the Drengin, Korath, and Yor, have something unique to them. Plus, it fits nicely into their playstyle and general theme. For example, the Drengin already use propaganda and brain washing, so the MCC fits right in. Artificial Slavelings is an absolute no-brainer as a requirement for the ASC. Invasion is the main-method of the Yor to acquire new planets, so the No Mercy makes them save a lot of money. Still, I feel the Yor got the worst deal in this. The No Mercy just isn't as powerful as the first two improvements. Especially the ASC. (50% more total Military Production on all planets in the empire? Yes, please!)
I'm still not sure, however, about what we should do with Good. The Emphatic Tactical Center feels kind of redundant, because Good already gets a Defense bonus from the unique defense techs. Maybe a Weapons or Soldiering bonus instead would help. The Hall of Empathy, on the other hand, ranges from "meh" to "useless", depending on if you activated the option for surrenders or not. It may be nice, if it guaranteed that races surrender to you, instead of just doubling the chance. As it is, I rarely bother with it. Too bad we can't change that.
So, any thoughts? Feedback?