Are you playin' good or evil?

I've not yet played a DA game so I'm not aware of any major difference in how the alignments play out on DA than on DL, but IMHO playing good is effectively playing at a higher difficulty level.

It does seem that playing evil makes you a little bit more of an earlier target but not by all that much. If you're weak, you'll be attacked. It really doesn't seem to matter that much what your alignment is, it just makes a difference in who will be the one to attack you.

There has been a lot of discussion on this topic and I think the concensus is that from easiest to hardest the ranking is evil, neutral and then good.

Evil gets the Mind Control Center with it's undocumented 100% global economic bonus (the downside is no planets will flip to you via influence). Evil also gets early strong weapons and free invasion tactics.

Neutral gets a 10% approval bonus, the Neutrality Learning Center and a discount on rush buying ships.

Good essentially gets the shaft.

Which of these you prefer is up to you.

Well let's hope people prefer the first two vs. the third option!
Yes, as Mumblefratz pointed out, evil is the way to go. I myself have never played as anything but custom race/evil alignment. So many weapons, so many bonuses... would it make sense to be anything else but evil? I think not.

I've never picked any alignment but neutral, really - the free terraforming is a cash and time saver, the extra trade routes are like free bonuses to diplomacy with select races, and nobody outright HATES you because you have an opposite alignment than they do. The NLCs are freaking awesome, in my opinion.

Plus the Neutrality Temple lets you get tourism income from pretty much the whole map - it's crazy on bigger maps, and useful on anything above small.

also, in my opinion, the balance needs to be changed - but the devs need to BUFF good and leave neutral and evil as they are, and by no means should they nerf neutral and evil down to good's level of uselessness, or I just wont bother to research Xeno Ethics.

I tend to play Evil 70% of the time, Neutral 20%, Good 5%. Neutral definitely has its place on smaller maps. Good was starting to hold its own when DA had the defense bug (some experiments suggest DA still has it).

Actually, in a lot of my DA games, over half my game I'm not any alignment at all. I tend to postpone researching Xeno Ethics a lot, because once you research it you don't get the ethical events when colonizing new planets. That means you miss out on a lot of Evil bonuses. It can still be worth it if you still choose Neutral (where the bonuses are immediate), but with Evil, a good portion of the game where you really are Evil, the game's already more-or-less over.

In regards to Evil's free invasion tactics, that's only true on large maps. You have to build the No Mercy Invasion Center, which is very expensive (I think it's like 2500bc?) and it's at the end of the Evil tech tree. It takes like 4 Information Warfares to get any return on your investment, not to mention you're tying up a planet tile and that planet's production for ~14 turns. I usually play Medium maps and I never build it.

The other key bonus to Evil is building the Artificial Slave Center, which gives you a big military production bonus. It goes together with the Mind Control Center nicely. Also, Evil is better at spamming starbases, because they don't pay for upgrade costs (in addition to building constructors twice as fast as everybody else).

Good probably does better on fast techs (e.g. Battle of the gods, Accelerated start, fast tech research), because the defense bonus kicks in. By contract, Evil effectively doesn't have a weapons bonus when all the techs are researched.

also, in my opinion, the balance needs to be changed - but the devs need to BUFF good and leave neutral and evil as they are, and by no means should they nerf neutral and evil down to good's level of uselessness, or I just wont bother to research Xeno Ethics.

Amen.

Neutral definitely has its place on smaller maps

that's only true on large maps.

Absolutely, as tetleytea mentions, your galaxy size and research rate settings can have a large impact on the benefits of any particular alignment. Although I still think everyone can agree that good needs some help with respect to the other alignments.

All in all my intent was not to denigrate playing good but to point out that those that do play good deserve a little bit of extra credit for playing at what is essentially a higher level of difficulty.

True, but evil does get some decent weaponry early to mid game, thus allowing you to get the edge on your enemies with less research effort.

Yeah, but that doesn't really apply on Fast Tech settings, so Good does have a bit of a niche there. Still though, shoot--on Battle of the gods, I would totally mitrosoft the Mind Control Center on Evil as early as I could, and that outweighs Good's empathic center.

When playing DL i was goinf neutral. i liked the extra trade routes and the instant usable tiles was awesome. Didn't even have to research the techs. Half price on quick built ships was good too.

Im playing DA for the first time now, as the Yor so i decided to keep them as intended and went evil. I got the first bonus weapon and it made my medimum hulled ship a true fighting maching. i only pout on one since it cost 150bc but with it i put a bunch of smaller ones so i have 12 beam attack (the bonus weapon), 12 mass driver attack and 9 defence. I ike being evil. i still haven't gotten to the other alignment bonuses so i dont even know what they are. Not to mention all the nice evil choices i got to make.


I agree with the others about going good. Ill try that when i get better at the game and can handle the lack of pluses.

The ethical bonuses also depends on what version of DL/DA you are playing. It was not until DL 1.2 that neutral could build the NLC (very useful for boosting your research rate). In 1.2 neutral could also automatically terraform planets (very useful because you also did need to terraform or even research the terraforming techs), got morale bonuses (very useful because morale = $), and extra trade routes (not so useful). In later versions the cost of NLCs was increased from 300 to 500 and planets were only auto-terraformed after you researched the appropriate terraforming techs.

After I post my DL 1.2 suicide neutral victory on a gigantic map (everything abundant, 475 planets, very fast research), I'll try a DA 1.6 suicide evil game on a medium map (gigantic, everything abundant take too long to play)!

So far every game I've played I've been on the good allignment and generally a custom race which is probably why I generally have too much trouble currently going beyond normal rating, though that might also be because I don't really think ahead too much.

Haven't gotten far enough in my DA games to see how it fares but in DL the defenses were very useful, especially against the Yor who started packing a 21 attack on their small ships. Having a 12-18 defense without using too much space definitely kept the number of ships I lost down to a minimum and was one of the main reasons I could beat them.

I generally play the alignment the race starts with, which means that I role play each race as the designers intended. This makes it more fun for me.

Overall, I have to agree that Good is more of a challenge.

Hydro

You should try Evil Torians sometime. Man, do they rake in the dough!

My current DA is with evil Torians on a maxed out map. Very effective, the population growth super ability nicely compliments the evil bonuses.....And I just love the thought of evil, warlike Torians.

It usually depends on teh bonuses I get on the random pop-ups. I usually try to end up neutral to good (I'm just not an evil person) but I won't not play evil if it means too much given up.

I just choose all the evil ethical events and if I want to play Neutral I'll just pay the 10bc/turn penalty. That's cheap.

Indeed, while you play evil at the very beginning you should avoid beeing weak on military because otherwise you are attacked like hell, but the some bonuses from the beginning should let you come more easy forward I guess...ok, because I used to play good and man I had much worries, I decided like Iceciro said to go neutral, at least no one is hating you that much, but no big love neither  . During the game you can even wait before choosing your ethics, it may then not cost you toooo much if you wana change to the other side good/evil, this way you will strongly influence and challenge the game.

Question 1: do folks play Evil because of the bonuses or because you like to laugh maniacially and enjoy Blood Makes Grass Grow?

Question 2: If Good weren't so whimpy (or Evil had serious long term disadvantages, which doesn't seem to have now (and I think it should)) would that change your mind?

Question 3: What would convince the Dr. Evil's out there to play good?

Hydro

1) Why both!

2) I would change my mind. Bonuses out rate evil laughter....Just barely!

3) Good needs a nice big game booster and at least one small one. Preferably some boost that can't be created any other way. Neutral has one in the instant terraforming and another half in the base morale boost. Evil has two and a half IMHO, MCC and Artificial Slaves. No Mercy Invasion counts as a half. Good has nothing. (I don't view either the extra defense or extra weapons as long term bonuses, tech advancement can neutralize them and I am playing on fast tech) In order for me to actually switch to good, I would probably really need to see to game altering types of booster added to it. Something like making good pay no maintainance on the initial colony for ALL planets + another big booster.

I heard Torian skin tastes good....(no, I am joking guys..)

I play as good, so my armies of "crusaders" can annihilate all those inferior evil races. Or I play as neutral to get the bonuses.

You should try taking math for your remaining 5%.



Amen - You who play evil are cowardly wimps. Those of you who stay good are the real warriors.

Im usually evil however sometimes if i have very few events happening i am neutral but so far i have never been good.

Maybe the other 5% he doesn't research ethics?

The alignment-specific weapons and defences are a bit pants. If there were new branches leading to better stuff later on in the tech tree it might help.

That's exactly what it is. 5% of my games I'm done before I even research Xeno Ethics. Sometimes I even get an influence victory before the colony rush is over. Of course, that's a telltale sign that you need to bump up the difficulty.

I sure appreciate the smart-a** response from Serrian, though. It's the thought the counts. Always good to know you're loved.