Being good is its own reward.

Being good is it's own reward. Notice that if you are good, none of the other "good" races will attack you. Notice that if you are evil, the other "evil" races will stab you in the back just as quickly as everybody else. Evil has short term, obvious benefits. Good has long term, subtle benefits. I often tend to lean good if I'm sandwiched between the Altarians and the Torians. That's two borders you often don't have to worry about.

Evil is a good choice if you don't mind fighting everybody else on the map.

Heh, I don't give a damn, if Evil means I get Star ship bonuses, loads of money at the expence of my populace, then so be it.....

When I feel like it I just click on Xeno Ethics, then choose neutral or good. Especially now I have made three techs for each one (Good - a path to 'Utopia, Neutral - a path to a 'balanced' society and Evil - a path to a 'Tyrannical' society) With nice fat juicy ability bonuses, but they cost a lot, so it balances it out a bit.

Oh, and those techs require the relevent tech before they can be researched.. i.e. concepts of righteousness / malice or balanced vision....

And if anyone wants a notepad version of my tech tree ask me to e-mail it to you - dark_storm@tiscali.co.uk

Just copy n paste it into the tech tree file

Good should just get a moral bonus. I see loyalty, but I look and look and can't find where this is noted in my game. Also same for "approval", only morale I see.

Also same for "approval", only morale I see.

Approval and marale are different names for the exact same thing.

The Nutmeisters of the Dark Snathi concur the foolish forces of Good are not set in appropriate balance to the forces of neutrality and evil.

We would choose to see two changes: As has been mentioned afore, there is no nifty planetary improvement...
Secondly, each of the other alignments has a clear advantage in seeking a victory. Evil has many advantages to conquer, and Neutral has the almighty NLC to speed to Tech Victory. Good has no clear path. Is this fair?

My gut says, "Maybe"

Good should have a more tangible advantage to pursuit of an influence victory. The Diplomacy bonus helps keep other good nations from attacking you when their worlds flop over to you, but that is nothing compared to the advantage of an NLC or a shredder.

How about:

Shrine of Goody-Two-Shoesness : Build Cost: 500, Planet's Influence +50%
This has the same cost and effect as two Cultural Exchange centers.


Won't it be a challenge when friendly Altaria's borders start swelling uncontrollably? Your mighty Drengin warriors speak loudly in crowded bars that they love their lord, but would prefer to fight for the Altarians. Your children run in the streats quoting Altarian holovision characters.

If I should die, tell my wife, "Hello".

Morale determines how likely your planets are to switch sides if they start rioting.
Approval determines your approval rating.

As for good's advantages, the biggest one is that of improved relations with other races. It can be the biggest advantage in the world to be going 3 on 1 vs Drengin, instead of having 3 vs you. As for defences prior to 1.2, I still think the bonuses can come in handy, especially a 30 shielded cruiser against two or three plasma wielding destroyers. Even if they attack first, chances are they won't get through.

Being good is its own reward

my sentiments exactly and same is true of being evil

i too have rewritten some of the diffs between good/neutral/evil, and have a few more on the horizon.

good:
new mil. starbase modules to boost defenses significantly, "refugre fields" +3 to all defenses
new "xeno co-op" farm produces food and a morale bonus
new defense comps: "EM Charge, Rift Armor, and Stasis Field" come after ultimate defenses but cost significantly more
new tech, "ends-means reasoning" improves diplomacy (oh yeah, i removed the diplomacy bonuses from the gov't tech line)
added new invasion tech, 'moral crusade', works like info warfare but better, also provides a bravery bonus
also increased the defense and HP bonuses provided by the other good techs

neutral:
added a new SB module, "merchent's guild", to neutrality shipping, provides a +40% trade bonus
nerfed NLCs just a bit (19/turn, now between inv matrix and disc sphere, still a major advantage though)
added 'omniplex' to morale tech series - basically centers a la The Matrix where people pay to experience whatever they want - since it's 'virtual' the neutral gov't doesn't legislate it at all, so you can dream of murdering your boss or what have you: point being, they porivde a 65% morale boost and a slight eco and infl boost
added two new defense techs per defense type for neutrals; they aren't stronger defenses, but cheaper.

as far as evil goes, i'm still lacking ideas. i'm hesitant to just overpower the military even more. not paying for starbase development is a huge advantage in my opionion, regardless of what type of bases you're building. one thing i added:
new invasion tech, "terror tactics", cuts enemy advantage factor with no penalty, provides a soldiering bonus
but i'm still trying to figure out what else evil could get without overpowering it.

oh yeah. ii also renamed 'good and evil' to 'self-referential philosophies' and 'balanced vision' to 'concenpts of non-duality.' as i said, purely for flavor. but ethics + religion are an interest of mine, and i wanted the game to reflect more advanced, futuristic notions of ethics otherwise what's the point of even having a 'neutral'? at least, that's my thinking.

oh yeah, i wanted to say something about defenses. i've been playing 1.2b for a while b/c i always wanted the combat system that way. in the game i'm playing now, i've got a handful of medium sized ships that fought my way through a war, and some of them have more HP than brand new battleships. when i had newer tech for them, i looked at upgrading the whole class but it was going to be way too expensive. instead i upgraded them to a more expensive medium size class (psyonic beams and double adamantium... everyone else is using mass drivers in that particular game), and the rest of my medium fleet was upgrarded to a cheaper model (a single adamantium, and regular beam/missile offenses). the extra nice perk is that in subsequent battles when my cheap model wins a few times and gains some nice HP bonuses, i can upgrade it to the better model without ever having risked producing a fresh one with low HP that could still be shot down with a bit of luck... the best part is, if i've got a planet nearby and upgrade the ship, i don't even need to wait for it to repair.

Evil: Make the non-economic part of the Mind Control Center work properly and they'll be terribly powerful. As is, they're so-so.

Neutral: These guys already rule. Morale, research, free expensive techs, economics, alignment compatibility, Neutral has it all.

Good: Good is gimped, and for no apparent reason. Their pre-officialdom alignment choices are lame. I mean, Neutrals get "mine with remote control bots so nobody gets hurt" and Goods get "let the people suffer with less resources to keep them safe" on one of them. I mean, what the hell? Then, once you're official, good gets shafted--loyalty doesn't usually come into play and it doesn't really help much if it does, the defenses suck compared to the higher-level defenses (that Neutrals will beat you to because of research), their special buildings are dumb, the no-maintenance thing is barely noticeable, and diplomacy doesn't help you when one of the other good races switches sides and eats you for lunch. Good needs an overhaul badly.

I think good civs should be able to defend better agansit evil civs and be crusader-like (several advantages aganist evil speficaly). Neutral as it is is good but is not very good at fighting either force (being they don't take part in "Galactic Ethical Politics") Evil is quite powerful as it is, but i think they should get better approval because they are forced too (maybe more gulags?)

Hey Mek,

Think of it like this:

GOOD is NOT a BONUS ...

IT is really in GALCIV2 a ... handicap !!!!

Like playing at Hard vs Impossible ...

So enjoy the CHALLENGE

And have FUN ...

Why should good have greater morale and influence? Secret police forces do wonderful work in putting the squeeze on enemies of the state without and within, and I am certain the romans with their slaves and brutality were much more loyal to the roman empire then the selfclaimed "good" societies today. Not to mention, "good" societies are supposedly very "free" and "free" people tend to sow dissent and opposition to the government. I know some people who living in russia during the iron curtain times. They think it was a shithole today, but at the time whenever they thought about how hard life was they told themselves how lucky they are to be in russia and not in some horrible place like the US or Europe (controlling the media has that effect). Anyways, in regard to the question. Good civilizations DO have real concrete benfits. Evil civilzation exloit their population and others to get the most out of every planet or sitation and REAP THE REWARDS. Good civilzations loose alot of money and benefits by trying to help everyone (we CAN'T sacrifice people for the greater good/enslave and kill innocent indegenous creatures/etc). But good civilzations are much friendlier towards eachother while evil civilzations backstab like crazy. So being good has real diplomatic benefits, they just aren't entirely obvious like the evil side's "+20 to ship construction" tag on your new planet.