is being evil better?

Yeah - it's a common problem we've brought up multiple times. Good is so far underpowered a lot of us consider it to be playing on a higher difficulty to use.

Neutral is more powerfull, if you use it right (NLC's, for better research capability - which means faster to the top of any tech tree).

Evil just seems better.

Good is weaker, to a great extent, than either.


But, with good you have right on your side.
And when considering the after-life, that is a better position to be in.


Of course, the after-life is after you are already dead in this world.

NLCs are nice if you're going for a tech victory, or need the tech lead bad...

but Evil has the Evil Weapons Techs, the Artifical Slave Center,and a ONE-HUNDRED-PERCENT econ bonus.

That's hard for NLCs to beat.

Where? I've played all the difficulties between normal to suicidal in over 30 games(although I submit rarely) but I've never seen anything in the ethical alignment choice screen that says 100% economy bonus.

Good also has its good points. For example, you are spending 60 BC per turn less with good then evil(assuming you have atleast 6 planets in your empire). Good gets extra trade bonuses if you're the trading type. And good races have better relations between themselves then evil races do. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think a diplomacy bonus and a small research bonus applies.

But I guess that is why its more commendable to be good rather then evil because you are choosing benefits for all rather then solely personnal gain.

hes talking about the mind control center (i think thats the one...) it give +100% to the planet it's built on and makes planets defect instantly

I used to play netural, but evil is way better once I understood it.

It is the Mind Control Center, and the 100% bonus is empire wide. So that is like 2,5 fully upgraded economic resources. Sure neutral gets better research centers, but with the evil economy boost you will be able to run spending at 100% most of the time and still make a lot of money. First time i played evil on a large galaxy on crippling I was loosing bad because my economy was really bad. And after I built the Mind Control Center I swept away the entire galaxy. And also there is the Artificial Slave Center which gives a 50% empire wide bonus to military production. The Psyonic Beam is really good as well.

Read more on the wiki https://www.galciv.wikia.com/wiki/Evil

And I guess this is why most people that play suicidal (that I have seen anyway) play as evil.

Evil is better. There are some people who will try to make a case for Neutral being the best, but they are wrong. The 100 % econ bonus can be used to mimic or better the benefit from any other alignment. A double economy is just sheer unbridled power to do ...anything. That's on top of the game-ending psionic beam, free invasion techniques (more money for the pile), artificial slave center, and the fact you come out on top of every single planetary moral dilema. The advertised benefits for evil (free starbase upgrades) are the least compelling reasons to play evil.

The game isn't even remotely balanced in this area, for whatever reason, which good being so anemic next to neutral and evil, and evil being so clearly superior. It's one of the small handful of broke-ish qualities about the game that have gone unadressed since launch. TotA may address this, as every race will have different tech now.

There is one exception. If you plan on playing an "influence" style game where you culturaly dominate, you'll want to go with one of the other alignments, as the MCC breaks planet flipping.

I'm wondering why the devs haven't fixed that. They know about it, but why haven't they done anything about it? Since it's hard coded we can't fix it, but they should be able to.

Hi!

IMO because it's not a problem that needs to be fixed. There's no multiplayer, that would automatically penalize "good" players versus "evil" ones, it's just a player vs. AI. If he wants an easy win, he plays "evil". If he wants harder game, he chooses "good". That simple.

And BTW, good has some hidden bonuses: when I played Iconians, a half of my "weak" military was composed of granted ships from other civs, even the evil ones. Not that I actually needed them.

BR, Iztok

Mmmmmwellllll...I don't think it is quite that simple. It's true that in a single player game, you don't cheat anyone but yourself, but it's conceptually sloppy, and should be fixed for no other reason than "roleplaying" considerations. Conceptually, it would be nice to feel like you can engage in any playstyle you wish, and not be penalized for doing so. That's a perfectly good reason to go back and balance your game concepts.

Does it *need* to be balanced in order to make the game playable? No...not in the same way AIs need to learn how to escort defenseless troop ships in order to ever be a real challenge in a war. But the game isn't called "Evil Galactic Civiilizations", though it currently should be. It needs to be addressed, for no other reason than taking pride in your game design (speaking in general terms, not saying SD doesnt take pride, they clearly do).

Wait, if you want to make your game harder, set it som machaotic. Not choose good. I hope in TA the good, and maybe all of the alignments, get a complete overhaul.

Gotta agree here. It makes me wonder honestly, if Good didn't have some ludicrously high bonuses at the start that made it make sense that every planet event is evil=best outcome, and then got nerfed back.
Either way it needs to be fixed - and by buffing Good (and neut a bit imo) not by debuffing Evil.

If they did and overhaul on the good and neutral alignments, what would we want the devs to put in them?

Easy answer: Dont worry about overhauling anything, except drop the evil econ bonus to 25%, or better yet, give it to "Good" instead of evil, and balance the Planetary moral dilema events so that an equal number favor good.


Blather: I'm not sure that good and neutral really need adjusted (neutral defintely doesnt...it's great except for the comparison to evil) , so much as Evil needs a nerf, since it's the one that seems to be out of whack. To this day, it's never been made entirely clear whether the MCC is working as it was intended to work (it almost certainly isnt working as its supposed to with the way it supresses influence planet flipping.) It certainly doesn't work the way it was originally written up as working in DL. If it's something they've since decided they liked and just kept it in, you'd think thet we'd see it changed to something that made a bit more sense for a double economy bonus achivement, like an "insider trading center" or something.


I'm of the opinion that a "blank check" double economy bonus is just too powerful compared to any other of the alignment perks, because piles of money are whatever you need them to be at any given point in time, as opposed to the more specific nature of the other alignment bonuses.


Conceptually, and in game balance terms, I'd award the econ bonus to good (though not a 100% bonus...more like 25% global). Traditionally it's the free societies with the massivly developed markets and economical power. Sure, evil has a slave economy, which is already represnted as a big global production bonus from another building. You should be able to name real life examples of a "slave" economy with massive manufacturing power vs the massive economic bonuses of an open capitalistic society without me risking naming them and getting into some political debate. I'm open to the idea that conceptually it's actually "neutral" who should get the econ bonus, but it's "good" that's in need of the love. You could give it to Neutral, but then you'd have to shuffle a bunch of stuff around.


That's assuming the outcomes of all the planetary moral dilema events stay one sided as they are. If those were balanced out with an even number favoring good and an even number favoring evil, and assuming the evil econ bonus was brought in line, then it would actually be neutral that needed the nerf bat, since it would then be the "easy path" of least resistance.(If you tried to always pick the most benficial option, you'd end up as neutral, and the same if you always opted for the "safe" option). In that environment, Neutral would actually need to be nerfed to have fewer overall benefits, since it required the least amount of commitment, and came with fewer potential negatives than either of the extremes.

Of course, this is all moot with TotA, a week from now. Each race with have its own unique tech, and we dont really know how alignment will fit in that yet. And balancing this stuff is never as easy as it might seem.

/armchair designer mode off.

To Stardock : Just discussing this for discussion's sake and community interaction, not to complain inordinately. I don't think my hundred bucks I've spent on the game entitles me to any input or endless "free" updates, and I'm happy with whatever I get.

I disagree a little, about this being conceptually sloppy. When you play a computer game, you're entering the designer's alternate reality, where they're free to set whatever moral system they want. It ranges from things like the three-way alignment in GalCiv2, to the multi-axis alignment in D&D, to the simpler good/evil binary alignment in Bioshock. After seeing how this worked in GalCiv2, I just assumed the devs think evil should be an easier path, and the player can self-handicap if they want to follow the good path.

That said, I agree the tilt on the game table is pretty extreme when you compare the choices and rewards. Along with a nerf for the econ boost for Evil, it might be interesting to see some unexpected rewards for Good choices in ethical dilemmas during colonization. After all, "good" choices in life don't always mean a penalty. Sometimes you get a return on that investment.

For example, maybe after sparing an alien lifeform on the planet, you get a notice a few turns later that it's providing a new drug, or is semi-intelligent and is trading something useful. Not every time... just a chance that this would happen, maybe 30%-40% for every Good ethical choice? It's extra programming, but it could re-use the original art from the first screen you see for an ethical choice. The "penalty" vs. evil and neutral would be that you wouldn't get the unexpected benefit right away, but you'd get it eventually and be rewarded for the Good choice. That would make it seem less like a constant self-imposed handicap when you choose Good.

Well, just some blue-sky thinking there.

Except, that in game terms, its equally costly to reseach and go in either direction when researching ethics (relative to your chosen race's starting alignment). I.E, it costs the same research and money for a perfectly neutral race to go evil as it does good, and you can only do one or the other. The assumption is they are generally balanced concepts. There is a separate, and clearly definied, function for adjusting game difficulty. Genre convention tells us that when developers place an official "alignment choice" mechanic into a game rather than just leaving it free-form roleplay, they are generally trying to work for a "balanced" interpretaion of either path. Of course, it's not always easy to pull off, and often requires ongoing balance adjustments (with feedback from the people playing the game occasionally helpful in this regard).

And I've never bought the "doc it hurts when I do this...so dont do this" defense of flawed game mechanics. Sure, I could tie one arm behind my back and blindfold myself to try and compensate for some broken bit of gameplay... for instance, I could just pretend like I can't hold all my worlds against a much more powerful computer opponent by shooting down their defensless, ungaurded, trasports with a 1 pt attack ship as they come in, and voluntarily let a few of them land on my worlds...but generally it's a much more satisfying experience to try and seek a legitimate correction of these flaws. And of the two approaches, only the latter will possibly result in an even better game at some point.


To Stardock : Just discussing this for discussion's sake and community interaction, not to complain inordinately. I don't think my hundred bucks I've spent on the game entitles me to any input or endless "free" updates, and I'm happy with whatever I get.

I'm late!

But I also have a beef with alignment. Aside from the need for fixing the overpowered evil, I think buying into an alignment needs to be much different. I might enjoy the evil bonuses on every ethical question that comes up, but still choose to be good (I like to draw out the end game by building insanely defensive ships - a single ship normally can take out multiple fleets of my enemies), and the cost is almost negligible.

For instance, if I'm a good civ to begin with, no matter how many ethical choices I make, I never have to pay more than 2500 to be good. If I'm evil to begin with, even if I choose every good choice (yes, I tried this once - even prolonged acquiring xeno ethics to see if I could ever get to good "the right way"), I still have to pay 10,000 to be the good guy! If our final alignment is going to be based so strongly on the race's intrinsic alignment, it feels like the choices we make are totally meaningless. Either the Korx are evil or they pay 10k to be good - their choices really don't affect it as much as their money.

I find it irritating that when I am going for a strong role-playing game, I have to play a race that's the alignment I'm aiming for, and choose evil or else get screwed on every single ethical question.