Yes and No. You can modify your starting alignment between 0 and 100. 0 being angelic and 100 being demonic. Altarians, at default, I think are a 1. But as a custom you can be whatever you wish. On the other hand, I *think* taking the Altarian tree means if you don't choose good, you won't get those ethical techs like the creative bonus, righteous justice, etc. Also, it could mean if you are leaning toward evil and you DO want those techs you get hit with the BC penalty depending on how far away you are leaning from Good.

And I here I was wondering why it was so tough being Altarian!
I chose neutral, but I was leaning a little more toward evil.

Now that explains why I'm always losing cash

Anyway, I'll probably start a new game tomorrow with the patch

Thanks

Ethics choice being highly randomized, i doubt anyone can tilt balance *dramatically* enough to impact the hidden fact that one is leaning DIRECLY to Evil or Good; mind you, these options get selected when all planets (and every last) are being colonized almost exclusively.

Meaning two things;

1) Once the colony Rush is over, you faith is pretty much sealed upon the choices you took.
2) The further you wait to research Xeno-Ethics and thus being forced into selecting the alignment itself... the greater your chances that negative effects (be it opposite or tactical wise when dealing with other races - don't neglect the ++_-- tags!) would put you under the radars, so to speak.

The advantages or bad effects can suddenly disappear just by being lucky enough to trigger a specific ethical event.

In general, i'd recommend a definitive aim at Good_Neutral_Evil stuff straight out the gate -- and more importantly, sticking to your guns alllllll the way. Optimal results ensues. Or as they say, maximized efficiency is better than a loop to confusion.

Some key values to remember when developping an Ethical strategy: 41(Good)_50(Neutral)_59(Evil)... anything above or below these have HUGE implications while "leaning towards X or Y" can save you a lot of BCs or necessary tech edges.

No. The evil choices in the game are almost always better. If you are an evil race, then you take no penalty. If you are going to choose a good race, then the only hits are: the high cost when you actually make your choice, and the potential hit to your diplomacy when dealing with the good races.

In my experience,if you start deep in either Good or Evil it's all but impossible to shift to neutral before xeno ethics becomes low-hanging fruit. This may be because I typically play medium or smaller maps - I suppose it's conceivable that an immense game would give you enough ethics events to push yourself a category.

Forget about getting Good Yor without paying money for it, though. Not that you'd want to - in my opinion Neutral gets a lot more out of xeno ethics than either good or evil (Morale bonus! Free terraforming! Bonus to soldiering against non-neutrals!) though free starbase upgrades is nice I guess.

Not enough time to finish things to their liking? Some civs were released with flaws that shouldn't have made it to release.

The Thalans were released without the tech "Space Weapons". Without that tech, the Thalans can't get a starbase module called "Battle Stations", a module needed to install many of their civ specific starbase modules (thus making it impossible to use those modules without tech trading).

The Yor can't spam economic buildings like every other civ... not even low powered ones. This factor alone prevents them competing in the long term as their restricted income places a limit to what they can do.

Maybe not all, but certainly more. Where's the race with tons of evil tech options and no good? It's Altarian for all good, or Thalan for any alignment. Drath get a little from good. I'd like to see a race with only neutral techs, and at least one race with only evil. The Drengin and Korath seem to be the most quintessentially evil races, starting with them would be good. As for personal preference, I'd like to see the Yor as more neutral. Sure, they want to kill anything that produces non-optional results for them, but as machines, it seems like they'd find the sadistic glee in the pointless suffering of others just as unnatural as the obsessive concern for the well-being of others. Still the Yor are defined as evil, so I'd be content to see somebody get some neutrality techs.