Should the Good/Evil spectrum be weighted?

from Stardock Forums
We all know that the evil choices in big events provide big bonuses whereas the good ones do not. However, once you reach 100 in good or evil, additional choices don't "help". There's no reason to pick the good choice if you're already Saintly and you get an event... in fact, it makes more sense to take the neutral or evil choice, and then pick good again on the next choice. You'll always stay towards the high end of the spectrum.

One solution would be to simply increase the spectrum so there is incentive to keep choosing the good option. However, this doesn't prevent people from exploiting back and forth options once they reach a value they want (sufficient to get certain techs or be well-liked or whatever).

I propose instead that the scale be weighted so that the last choice you make heavily outweighs your previous ones. If you're very good and select an evil choice, if it's a relatively small evil, it should drop you all the way to neutral, and if it's really bad, it should put you well into the evil category.

The only other thing I can think of is to provide extra bonuses for always selecting Good if you are Good, Neutral if you are Neutral, Evil if you are Evil.

Bruce
213 views 4 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
You know upon further reflection, weighted can still be abused by ping-ponging back and forth. However, at least you have a period of time where you have to be evil and/or good. With the current way it is you can pick an evil choice and still be mega-good, and then pick a good choice next time and you're back to Saintly.

I'm starting to think the better solution is to start rewarding people who are already max at either extreme or perfectly neutral for picking a choice that is "consistent" with their alignment.

Bruce
Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
How is this different than real life for the most part. For certain *really* heinous crimes, we may completely change our impressions of a given person, but it's extremely rare for a nation to go from being perceived as good to evil (or vice versa) based on a single event.

E.g. Right now for some reason most Americans are positively giddy over Bush's complete reversal of his campaign promises to not run around using America's military might to go nation building and forcing other nations to do what we want. OTOH, let's say he decides to invade a few more middle eastern nations, well, odds are people's perception would drop as we don't have the decades of propoganda to set up any of the other nations in the evil light of Iraq. Still, he'd probably only be neutral or slightly evil. Then say he decides to go with the LCD of America and invade France. Well, that would (hopefully) finally push perception over the cliff into genuine evil.

It does take a lot to change the perception of a nation/empire's morality in either direction and the game rightly reflects that.
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Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
Forget about France. We need to invade Canada!

Picture the following scenario:

One day, the US runs out of trees. So we go and knock on our Canadian neighbor's door.

US: Excuse me, we seem to be out of toothpicks. Can we borrow some trees?

CAN: No way, eh! We need our trees to make hockey sticks. You wasted all yours. Take off, you hoser!

US: How rude.

So now you have a bunch of angry Americans walking around with unsightly food chunks stuck between their teeth. The US breaks all diplomatic ties with Canada. They are no longer under the US defensive "umbrella".

The next day, the North Koreans issue a statement wondering why Canada has been "provoking" them. They are demanding unilateral talks (aka bribery) to avoid nuclear war. At the same time, Al Jazerra issues a statement it claims was written by Osama Bin Laden (who is now, remarkably, 136 years old) for all his followers to attack the Canadian infidels and reclaim their land in the name of Allah.

The Canadians go to knock on their American neighbors door ready to make a deal for some trees, only to find a note pinned to the door that reads: Went to the dentist.

All this hostility, suffering, and tooth decay over a few trees!

The only logical solution is this: invade Canada now!

;)

DblDamage
Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
I could see a morale penalty imposed if your trailing average morality is sharply different from your overall average morality, and the latter's extreme -- e.g. people getting upset if you started making Evil choices while your society was Saintly, or vice versa. There'd need to be a lot of numbers filled in to make it a rule, however.