Metaverse data: It is easier to be good

I just fell in love with this game all over again!

That's cool. How embarrassing for G.R.O.S.S. when it turns out they are all a pack of goody goody diddly puffs instead of a gang of piratical Euro killers.

Oh, and no plans for different ladders for each map size?

Man, I'm all over the place alignment wise. Wonder where I'll wind up - on the side of the angels, or raging with the devils in hell

How does the Neutral Alignment compare to the Good/Evil scale?

Given that the effects for Neutral sometimes slightly better than Good (at least in the Base+BonusPak), but rarely providing more benefit than evil, the Neutral alignment should have a better time. In addition, the Neutral Alignment doesn't harm the relationships of other races, regardless of their alignment.

That's cool. How embarrassing for G.R.O.S.S. when it turns out they are all a pack of goody goody diddly puffs instead of a gang of piratical Euro killers.

Oh, and no plans for different ladders for each map size?



Actually G.R.O.S.S es position is that they are all pretty darn evil. You can invade, kill kajillions of your own peeps (who cares about how many aliens dead) and still be labeled saintly whereas we, who kill a few worms to give our people the best planets we can, labelled tyrants, evil, killers. What's next? the Save the Cosmic sharks fund? paaaaaalease.

We recognize a need for the wolf in sheep's clothing goody goody technique. All the while addicting the Drengin to Torian Sushi. All the while converting throngs of Arceans to your culture with well placed Kentucky Fried Drengin outlets in your satellite water parks. Did you know Drengin tastes like chicken? Ha!! we had it figured all along. We also recognize a need for the "I'm neutral war proffiteer technique.

There is no good and evil in this game. Only power. he who has it, regardless of tactics, wins. And that's us.

And we have noted the "Goody Goody" bias of the devs. Sneaking that fundamentalist event in there just to thwart G.R.O.S.S. Of course we still took frogboy's gang out of the top 10 yup.

Actually, I would contribute a Torian or two to the "Save the Spacesharks" fund. Those were lively times, with Spacesharks all over the place; I miss them. (:(

It took me a while to figure this out. I was one of those who played evil predominately figuring that it was great that you could just gobble up all those colonisation events, get all the evil techs and get the good techs through trade or war. Relations were not that impt to me as I was able to cope with hostile AI.

As the game got harder through rebalancing, I found that increasingly the advantage of keeping good relations with AI and staying out of war outweigh the evil bonuses so I'm really moving towards good now.

It's also a function that the hardest of the races to deal with are both the Good ones. And one of them has been beefed. I know you can set allignment but most just use the defaults.

The Yor are absolutely easy. I can set them two iq levels higher than the other and they still never do anything. The Drengin are tough early but easily out done late. The Torians and Altarians and just sometimes the Arceans always seem to be the toughest ones to crack. Therefore, it's much easier to be good.

not to mention staying out of war makes the game go much much quicker.

HEHE I'm gonna set em all to evil my next game and see what happens. Chaos I hope. hehe.

I noticed that the "easiest" way is indeed to be good.

I always take the "good" choices except
- I don't take the HUGE morale penalties (like -30%)
- I take PQ bonusses of > 20%
- I take *one* Starship quality bonus of > 50%

But not your own alignement is important : if you put all the civilisation on good except *one* you have four "natural" alies and one "natural "enemy".

Alignement is an important factor in this game !

I've found its somewhat an even wash between the 3 alignments myself. Neutrality is great if you want to give yourself more of a chance with the other empires (read: not alienating anyone unneccesarily). Unfortunately, you don't get any alignment specific techs.

The Good Side receives a majorly good tech which yields the Trade Center. I found these to be rather incredible to use.

The Dark Side (if you will) you dont take the huge hits from colony events, and you get artificial slaves, the dark side, and a few other techs. Your huge downside is the Fundamentalists and the "good" guys. The fundamentalists can hurt pretty bad.

I tend to favor the dark side, although lately I've been experimenting around with the good side as well. So I've found it to be largely a wash (read: well-balanced) since each has its own advantages and disadvtanges. I just seem to be biased toward the evil side on these games.

SeanB

My last 3 victories all were Alliance victories. But they all were in 1.03.

Beeing good helped me a lot. I was pure good in the first some and only chaotic good in the latter because I thought every pick has the same value but it seems that the positive alignment shifts for taking good things reduce when you've chosen bad things.

Well, I was primarily a good player, but I need to get a couple more evil wins in. As for going all races evil: been there, done that. The Fundies come along and really wreak havoc. If the Terrans survive in pretty good shape, then they either got a nice opportunity to clean house by taking Fundie planets, or they get a superpower that hates everyone else on the map and has the firepower to prove it!

I find it best to take the 'good' picks 90% of the time...except with planet quality. When those damn worms or whatever pop up, I almost always exterminate them for the 20-30% planet quality bonus I can get. Huge advantage before terraforming, totally shifts the center of power in my empire. I still can end up saintly by the end, with enough expansion.

~SDC~

If I were playing big galaxies, that's the way I will do it as well. There are usually enough events to reverse the effects of choosing the PQ ones.

In the rush phase of the game, I also use to take high PQ, research and starship bonuses. Well, after taking three of them, I´m stuck as a diabolical character, and I can´t reverse that through the rest of the game, even if I always choose the good options in the upcoming events.
Hmm...but what exactly makes the game easier being good? I mean, what counters the "evil" bonuses?

Hmmm, weird. I have never had a problem being Demonic (0), then later in the game, changing my alignment to Saintly (100). Perhaps you are playing on a smaller map.

how can i see if a special tech which i can research is evil-only or not??

I should think it would be more important to fix the lack of stability in Metaverse before you add more features to it. Please work on making Metaverse more stable as far as accepting submitted games before you add any features or enhancements to Metaverse. What good will the new features be if half the games you submit to Metaverse are not accepted due to some intermittent problem with Metaverse?

Galaxor :

Evil empires start a war with you if you're evil
Evil empires start a war with you if you're good
Good empires start a war with you if you're evil
Good empires *don't* start a war with you if you're good.

See the advantage ? Playing the good guy gives you less enemies, which usually is better then the bonus you get from being evil.

Shadovv :
When you're good (or bad) you can only research the good (or bad) techs.
So it's not that researching a certain tech *makes* you good or bad (as alot of people seem to think) : when you have access to the good techs it's a sign that you *are* already good.

Evil empires start a war with you if you're evil
Evil empires start a war with you if you're good
Good empires start a war with you if you're evil
Good empires *don't* start a war with you if you're good.


And this is even more pronounced in that the Torians and Altarians are usually the toughest two empires. The Yor just plain have never doen a thing in any of my games. The Drengin are usually a bother early but fade late. It's precisely the good civs you have to worry about late if you don't get to them early. And they will declare war simply if you are evil.

I tend to take the PQ bonuses as will as avoid the negative morale, pop hits. If I'm in a strong position, I usually just go on and play evil. If not, I gotta get goody goody and pass on some worm killing. Plus, there are several evil punishing events in the game. The "evil empires" trade route council vote, the fundamentalists (although I think I know what triggers how many of your planets they take and take steps to prevent it and so far it's worked.

That´s the point. Being good is suicide(for me, as an amateur player ;)) if strong Drengins or Yor are nearby. They don´t really bother me when I have two nice +40% starship bonus planets for free at hand.

EBZeroMatrix:
Most of my games are on large maps. But the "problem" is that an evil decision lowers my alignment points by ~30, whereas choosing a good path only raises the value by one or two. And after the planet colonization events, I don´t encounter more than 10 other random events throughout my games.

Oh, I forgot: The only overwhelming problem I encountered as sub-neutral is the event we all know where a load of planets defects alltogether. In that case I´m always too frustrated so I reload