Good, Evil, and Neutral

The three moral alignments in Galactic Civilizations

Published on November 19, 2005 By Draginol In GalCiv Journals

In the original Galactic Civilizations on OS/2, playing as good, neutral, and evil were considered to be pretty innovative concepts for a strategy game. Depending on which moral alignment you chose, different ships, technologies, and plantary improvements would come into play. Moreover, how races interacted with you would heavily depend on it as well.

In Galactic Ciivlizations II, released over ten years after the original OS/2 version, such moral issues in strategy games are no longer quite as innovative. This time we have made some changes anyway.

As players interact with their planets and go about the business of being an intergalactic ruler, various moral dilemas come up. When someone starts the game, they start out with a preset moral alignment depending on the race. Humans start out at a moral alignment of 50 (neutral). Drengin start out at 25 (evil) and Altarians start out at 75 (good).

Depending on ones choices on these events, their score will be changed (usually by an amount from -10 to +10 depending on the choice and severity of choice).

However, eventually one can CHOOSE their civilization's ethical philosophy. However, it comes with a price. The further you are from a given alignment the more it will cost.

An EVIL civilization wanting to choose GOOD as their moral alignment would have to pay $20,000.

A Neutral civilization wanting to choose GOOD would have to pay $10,000.

and it works the other way as well (it's free to choose the alignment you already are). While there is some irony in someone who has been consuming their citizens for amusement being able to choose the "good ethical philosophy" at all, one has to remember Eric Cartman's wise song:

I'm gonna make, make it right.
I'm gonna take a little time and set things right.
Make, make it right.
I'm payin' for my sins and it sure feels great.
It feels so good to be making up
For all the things I've done wrong.
I know now what the Good Lord in Heaven
Wanted from me all along.
All along, I'm gonna make, make it right.
'Cause Jesus wants me to have a clean slate.
Not faking it, I'm making it right.
I'm payin' for my sins and it sure feels great.
Make, make it right!
Make, make it right!

So why would you choose one at all? Because only through choosing the ethical alignment do you get its significant bonuses:

Good Civilizations:

+ Citizens more loyal (less likely to defect)
+ Five most populous planets have no maint costs in their capital.
+ Trade with other good civilizations increased by 25%.
+ Diplomatic Ability increased with other good races
+ Several extra Defense-oriented technologies
+ Galactic Achievement: Temple of Righeousness

Neutral Civilizations:
+ Citizens more content Approval tends to say over 50% despite population)
+ Less expensive to purchase ships outright.
+ All upgradeable tiles automatically become available instantly.
+ All Soldiers get +1 added to their ability during invasions with players of other alignments
+ A couple of extra weapons and defense oriented technologies.
+ Galactic Achievement: Temple of Balance

Evil Civilizations:
+ Starbase upgrade fees are waived
+ Can build propaganda centers (planets less likely to defect)
+ Can build Secret Police (increases -ahem- "approval" rating)
+ Get +1 from every trade route per turn from freighters that pass through their space.
+ Several extra weapon-oriented technologies
+ Galactic Achievement: Temple of Malice

Comments (Page 2)

Lord_StarPilot

on Nov 30, 2005

Supreme Shogun, in GC!, that bonus would have been (typically):
1) -5% production
2) -1% production
3) +7% production

Heck, most of the PQ events didn't yeild a bonus over +1 most of the time.

As you can see, even Popup Target agrees that Evil got seriously screwed in GC1. You'll note he states that Good was always better for the moderate military to the peaceful empire builder. Which is 80% of the play types/styles of GC.

I am one of the players that was conviced that Evil is totally screwed in GC1. They risk the Fundy event, with no real bonuses for their choices 19 out of 20 times. Only if you get a few really nice PQ bonuses was it worth going evil in GC1.

Playing good in GC1 was taking advantage of the AI. It helps make the game so easy, it often feels like an exploit to me. You can go hardline military, doing a Drengin from the start, and due to your good alignment, and the good guys would stay out of your way, trading with you the whole time, occasionally giving you help(!), while you are eating up the smallest reachable civs (regardless of their alignment!). But try that while evil, and the civs would band against you and support your enemies. Which do you think is the more challenging game? Evil is a serious handicap in GC1.

Popup Target

on Dec 01, 2005

even Popup Target agrees

Do I have a reputation for irrationality I'm not aware of? *snicker* Stubborn, you bet, but I try to approach everything with my eyes open and evaluate all arguments on all sides

Lord_StarPilot

on Dec 01, 2005

Sorry. I wasn't taking a shot at you. I was just trying to point out that by your own statements, you agree that Good is the optimal strategic choice except when you play as a total raving Vandal horde.

You should try playing Good while doing that. It's much easier a game then playing Evil in GC1.

I think ideally, that Evil and Good should both be equally valid choices as a strategic manner. That certainly wasn't the case in GC1. I hope that GC2 can address that imbalance to some degree.

Popup Target

on Dec 01, 2005

S'O.K., I was laughing when I typed that. I wouldn't be surprized if I did have a bit of a reputation, as I'm highly opinionated at times

I try to keep it in perspective, but don't always manage.

Supreme Shogun

on Dec 02, 2005

Alrighty. First off, found the screens in foreign advisor panel. It will tell you if your alignment is a + or - to that relationship with the alien race( among other things that also affect it). Awesome.

I'm sorry Evil was like that in GC1. I hope its equally fun to be evil in GC 2 as it would be to be good or neutral.

Regarding the PQ event, that's why I put it as a pq 16 planet. 40% means a few more tiles. A PQ 5 wouldn't even get you one!

There's another one there too... I think its the sea labs... I've seen it offer really sweet bonus to research

No real bonuses ?? Are you kidding me ? The good takes a hit on something every event. Correction almost every event. I think the best that came off was nothing / no change same for neut and evil got a bonus.. The point is, is that good isn't offered any bonus to anything its a cut on something. A few times it is mediocre even if you take the evil one, but still its better than being neutral. They get shafted half as bad as good or pull out of it with nothing. Something along the lines of what I am asking for is that 33 1/3% of the time, when an event occurs it has equal chances with the other alignments to be of a bonus for that alignment.

Example, say we're governing an evil race. An event occurs, we are just as likely to get something favorable for us as the other alignments. So if a 1/3 of the events have something for your alignment its not always a penalty. Nor are you always offered something on a platter. However this may take some doing.. Paradigm shift, re-wording events, etc.

Also, I think whats good for one alignment may be good for the others. Why shouldn't neutral have a bonus for other neutrals. Evils should have some bonus with other evils. I realize it's a beta and we've still got a ways to go. For now, events occur random during coloization. Or I haven't been lucky enough to get a non-colonizing one.

I guess another part of it is, when the bonus is not so great its easier to be good. And if the bonus to whatever is large enough its tempting to be evil.

To me, I guess. . . the better bonuses stuck out and presented a view that its better to be evil.

Popup Target

on Dec 03, 2005

Just as a side note, the larger the bonus/penalty, the more effect it has on your alignment.

Also, there were non-colonization events in GC1 but far more rare than colonization events. I don't know if they're in GC2 yet, but I imagine that they will be.

Again, keep in mind that the events are a way to determine someone's alignment, not reward/penalize someone for their alignment. If you create a system where the best immediate choice varies between good/neutral/evil, then the only people that will always be choosing good are the "good" (as in alignment) players, the only people that will always be choosing evil have a rather unrealistic view of what evil is. The rest of us will probably always choose the big bonus if there's a big bonus and use the small and medium bonus choices to nudge our alignment in the direction we want.

Lord_StarPilot

on Dec 05, 2005

In GC1, Good was always penalized in the events because that was supposed to be the game balance to all the bonuses that being Good brought you in GC1. Evil was supposed to be rewarded with each event to offset the minuses you suffered for being Evil.

The problem was, it didn't work.

That Undersea Civ event, for example. What good did a 10% research bonus really matter if the world wasn't a big PQ world in the first place? It wouldn't amount to more then 1 or 2 points bonus per turn on that world otherwise. At that point, what's the big deal for an extra 200 points (ie, 1 point bonus for the 200 turns you played through from its founding). There really wasn't one, unless that event happened at the very beginning of the game.

I found that except at the very start, none of the evil events you could chose would really be useful. Well, other then the PQ bonuses... and that didn't matter 1/3 of the time because it wasn't big enough to work on many of the worlds it was offered on (ie, a PQ 14 world with an evil bonus of +4% just wasn't worth even thinking about).

Pop up is right though... if you don't use GC1's design, then the true "Evil" player will always choose the best bonus offered. If that isn't in the "Evil" choice, that means the GalCiv1 "Evil" player would often get their alignment bumped out of the Evil category. But then, I've think the Good/Evil of GalCiv should be based on Honor, rather then some other axis of morality. It would explain why even Evil civs know they can trust Good civs, and why Evil civs know they cannot trust other Evil civs. Otherwise, why would the civs governments care? Governments, by their very nature, are evil and self-serving.

Supreme Shogun

on Dec 05, 2005

Ah well.. so thats it. First paragraph of that response hits the nail on the head with me.

Saber Cherry

on Dec 11, 2005

I have never played GC, but it would certainly be a morale-hitter (for the player) to constantly get hammered with these forced "choices", as though the game is laughing at you and saying, "Ha ha, you goody punk, pay the price for your stupid alignment!"

If the weapons techs and other bonuses were suitably compelling, there would be no reason for good/neutral to get shafted in every "choice". Evil races could get +50% production to everything due to slavery, +50% population due to forced breeding and government-built ultra-high-density slums, +50% hitpoints to all ships and soldiers as internal warfare weeds out the unfit people and weapons (while peaceful races rely only on theory), +50% diplomacy versus neutrals who are scared ****less of pissing off an evil race (while happy to snub good races, who are less likely to kill them for it). And so forth. In essence, there is no reason evil must suffer; "good" should not intrinsically get all the advantages through cosmic karma, such that it needs balancing through only negative events.

Realistically, there are many situations when moral/economic alignments force unwise decisions. Take logging, for example:

*** Note - for real world examples - I am not implying that some countries are "evil" or "good", just that they act analogously to the GC usages of those terms ***

Evil: Log everything as fast as possible, and sell the logs to the high bidder! (stupid, destroys the terrain and rivers, and cannot be sustained... the economy and environment both collapse eventually)
Good: Protect everything! Logging is illegal! (puts the majority of any world off-limits, and suddenly there is no lumber, paper, cardboard, etc... the economy collapses immediately)
Neutral: Allow logging limited to local demand, but only on areas designated as tree farms, with replanting of only high-wood-producing species. (not perfect, but economically the best)

In the context of a game, the player will generally choose the neutral path based on its superior bonus profile, and maybe pay a price of losing some "evilness" or "goodness". In real life, this will not happen because...

Option (good) is expensive to enforce, and angers corporations and their employees and families; poor states, 3rd-world-countries, and stupid people are not necessarily evil, but they choose evil anyway, even though it is not the best choice! Good is NOT chosen to prevent a country from slipping toward evil.

Option (evil) is sometimes not chosen because again it angers "good", "neutral", and intelligent constituents; it might violate international laws and cause sanctions/loss of aid/etc; and with a strong internal legal system, opponents can often sue to prevent the "evil" choice (justified or not).

Option (neutral) is, in this case, the most expensive and complex to implement, and has major opponents on each side! It is rarely chosen, because dumb people (the majority) typically gravitate toward pure good or evil, and only think in the short term.

Well, this is just one example, in which neutral comes out on top economically. In many cases evil, and sometimes even good, will come out on top. But the point is that the choice of good/evil/neutral is not one-dimensional, "the more evil, the more bonus" in real life (and of course the developers know this). Games always simplify things, but it seems like this particular simplification hurts gameplay by making the good player feel punished.

So... rather than using events and choices as a basis for balance (which is pretty random) it seems better to make the alignments more fundamentally balanced by another means, and allow the events to be fun for all players, at least sometimes! And, at the minimum, make the choices real, instead of "I'm good, therefore I must choose (1)".

My suggestion:

1) Change the current single cost (balance scale change) into a triple cost.
1a) Cost 1: Balance scale change, toward good, evil, or neutral
1b) Cost 2: Monetary cost of implimentation. Evil will *generally* be the cheapest. Could be up-front or recurring.
1c) Cost 3: Popularity cost. This is entirely dependant on morality; e.g. populace of a good empire would become unhappy with evil choices, and vice-versa. For example, Californians would be outraged by a huge 50% subsidy on monster pickup trucks, while Texans would be outraged by a 50% tax on monster pickup trucks.

2) Scale the costs and benefits.
2a) The cost should be based on morality difference of the empire and choice... for example, Brazil (e.g. evil/lawless) would have to create an entire new vast branch of goverment/military to protect its rainforests, while California (e.g. good/lawful) can simply tell the park rangers to not let visitors chop down Redwoods, at no cost. It depends on the situation, but something cheap for an evil empire might be very expensive for a good empire.
2b) The costs should also be based on the size of the operation. Something that affects a 20-tile world should be more costly than something that affects a 1-tile world; maybe 20x, maybe not.
2c) The benefits should scale too. Even if protected Redwood logging was legalized and monster pickup trucks were subsidized in California, the citizens would not benefit much because they would be unpopular.

3) Add legal concerns.
3a) Domestic: California could NOT allow Redwood logging (in protected areas), because domestic law would prevent it (lawsuits, etc); assuming Kuwait has a real legal system, it would ban any attempt to end oil production.
3b) if the UN were more powerful, France could not do open-air nuclear tests and Japan could not do unrestricted whaling, due to international law, without penalty.

This sounds very complex, but basically, it boils down to this:

Event: "Whales are discovered to be intelligent!"

A VERY Good empire will see:

Choices:
(Good): Ban whaling, and enforce this. (popularity +5%, agriculture -15%, cost 100BC, +1 good scale)
(Neutral): Subsidize whalers to switch to shark farming, and propogandize that whales taste bad. (popularity -5%, agriculture -10%, cost 40BC, +2 toward neutral)
(Evil): Start farming whales; intelligent species are brain food, plus they are smart and don't need as much oversight as cattle! (Your legal system forbids this) [greyed out]

A Neutral empire will see:

Choices:
(Good): Ban whaling, and enforce this. (popularity -5%, agriculture -20%, cost 200BC, +2 good scale)
(Neutral): Subsidize whalers to switch to shark farming, and propogandize that whales taste bad. (popularity +5%, agriculture -10%, cost 20BC, +2 toward neutral)
(Evil): Start farming whales; intelligent species are brain food, plus they are smart and don't need as much oversight as cattle! (popularity -10%, agriculture +40%, cost 40BC, +8 evil scale)

An Evil, lawless empire will see:

Choices:
(Good): Ban whaling, and enforce this. (popularity -20%, agriculture -25%, cost 400BC, +4 good scale)
(Neutral): Subsidize whalers to switch to shark farming, and propogandize that whales taste bad. (popularity -5%, agriculture -10%, cost 40BC, +2 toward neutral)
(Evil): Start farming whales; intelligent species are brain food, plus they are smart and don't need as much oversight as cattle! (popularity +5%, agriculture +50%, cost 10BC, +4 evil scale, +1% chance of God being a whale and crushing your empire with a cosmic fluke)

There are always other priorities, but fun, dynamic, interactive events that reflect and shape your empire in a non-random fashion would be very interesting in my opinion. Obviously not all of this is reasonable to add but a second dimension (sliding implimentation cost) and a change from the "evil always == beneficial" philosophy would achieve the basic objective.

-Cherry

stevenutt

on Dec 13, 2005

I agree with Saber Cherry, especially about the God being a whale bit

and about the fact that it should be "easiest" to carry on down a path to "evil", "neutral" or "good" once you start down that path, i.e. in terms of cost, popularity, etc.. I'm not sure it should ever completely lock you out (and it seems you can always buy out), but that once you start being good, it becomes easier to be good more often and the rewards reflect that. Maybe it should be that at the start of the game evil does get the quick win bonus's, but as the game progresses, it should give higher bonus's to following choices similar to those you made before, by checking how far along the dark path you are against overall game time (or something like that).

Or maybe just adding to the choices from the random events, so that evil = imediatly beneficial (i.e. get rid of natives, thereby boosting a planets PQ), good = benefit in the future (i.e. work round natives, natives eventually start to intergrate into your society, thereby very slowly increasing planets population), and neutral = a balanced inbetween approach (segragrate natives but allow trading, thereby slightly increasing PQ and slightly increasing taxes from planet, but slightly lowering popularity)...

Welcome Guest! Please take the time to register with us.
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:

Richer content, access to many features that are disabled for guests like commenting on the forums.
Access to a great community, with a massive database of many, many areas of interest.
Access to contests & subscription offers like exclusive emails.
It's simple, and FREE!