First quote:

Second quote:

Frogboy's latest feedback.pdf in the Founder's Vault provides more information.

(Malevolent, Pragmatic, and Benevolent)(good, neutral, and evil) This is what it was changed to. You could add more than three. Why not Dungeon and Dragons has nine or five depending what game you play. A minor issue is it doesn't work that way in the real world. The problem was never Xeno ethics. I was hoping that adopting idealogy was going to fix the problem. It didn't. For the likes of me I can't understand why they wouldn't fix it.

From what has been said so far they have changed from giving the evil choice being the most rewarding on random events especially the ones when you colonize a planet to rewarding malevolent the most instead of the evil choice.

Really we can debate morality in the real world. With me the good option is usually the most rewarding giving you the most benefits, but I am playing a game. This game gives you the most benefits for being evil, so far they are still giving you the best rewards for being malevolent. This is not even fixed with Xeno ethics. Here they try to balance out the three choices. What this means we are going to have about three or more equal idealogies who will only rewarded the most with only one choice of idealogies on random events.

On a side note their should probably be some financial and approval gains for state parks that you can't keep from taking up spots on your planets.

Those ideas are also our only current indication of what it'll mean in-game to have the Benevolent/Pragmatic/Malevolent alignment, or, if you prefer, ideology, at least outside of the one event notice that we've seen.

Anyways, it would seem to me that it wouldn't be terribly far out of line for there to be a morale or production or population growth penalty associated with the research bonus for the event shown - it's not going to make me particularly pleased with the local government if I'm required to endure agony, nor would I be pleased if relatives or friends were required to endure such, and some people might object to the government running a torture-yourself-for-science clinic where volunteers can go suffer to further some research project or other; after all, in the real world that kind of thing is frowned upon and considered not particularly ethical. Plus, if there were some kind of associated penalty, it would at least not be strictly better to go malevolent than benevolent on event choices (and again, from the indications in Brad.pdf, Benevolents boni and mali are strictly worse than those for either Pragmatic or Malevolent, especially since Malevolent gets a diplomatic bonus to offset its diplomatic penalty).

I am aware of this forum post you are mentioning. But in some of the feedback we have see from Frogboy himself, he suggests the use of Malevolent and Benevolent for the new ideology system, which actually mean the same thing:

Malevolent: wishing evil or harm to another or others. (Dictionnary.com)

Benevolent: marked by or disposed to doing good (merriam-webster.com)

So it is not yet a given that "Good" and "Evil" will disappear from the new ideology system. What was said on that forum post is currently contradicted by what we have seen of the alpha. We will soon see how this will evolve.

Good, neutral, evil never bothered me. It was even a minor  inconvience at the worst. The problem was that the random choices favored evil. At least with the defining of idealologies I figured they were going to redo this, and probably remove or change where they don't favor evil. Now they have improved the system of rewarding malevolence instead. Why have a system that favors one alignment strongly more than everyone else. This game is really about being evil you can tell from the choices on random events. or it's about malevolence instead of evil. Please fix this problem Stardock, or at least get on these forums, and tell me how I'm wrong. I'm sure they overlooked this problem, but now you know it exists please fix this before the game comes out.

While it was definitely inferior in a strictly by-the-numbers sense (which is not how I play), I never found playing good to be difficult. I'm not sure where the people saying it was are coming from.

Playing good crippled you if you chose the colonization options, and it was by-and-large bad compared to neutral and evil.

"Crippled" is an exaggeration, particularly because you could pick and choose which ones you took the hit on, especially when playing a race that started out good. I don't deny it was sub-optimal, but there's quite a difference between that and (to paraphrase DARCA1213) good being so terrible that it's unplayable even by ordinary roleplayers.

True. I always roleplay, and I have no trouble playing a Good race. No, I don't take the Evil choice during events, and later pay to become Good. That wouldn't be roleplaying, in my opinion, but exploiting the system.

From a human standpoint maybe, but not from a Drengin one. Their society lives for conquest and slaughter. Anything that would improve their capabilities to do so would be approved of by the people. Also, Drengin can sense pain in other beings, and gain pleasure from doing so. More importantly, however, Drengin-researchers are specifically bred to become better at researching when subjected to pain.

Okay, let's have a closer look then.

Benevolent:

• Tolerance (good for increasing population): Population provides base production, research, and money. Getting more of it faster sounds pretty good to me.
• Trust (good for diplomacy with other benevolent races): Same bonus as in GalCiv 2. We don't know how big the bonus is, and it depends on the amount of benevolent races. So, it could be good, but it could also be worthless.
• Cultural Expansion (benevolent and neutral planets more likely to join you): Sounds good, if you want to go for a Culture victory.
• Pacifistic (penalties for being at war): Sounds bad, if you want to go for a Conquest victory, but it depends on the penalties.
• Higher expectations (harder to keep high approval): Frogboy said recently, that approval is gone. It might come back, and be used for something else, but I don't know enough to judge this point.
• Conservation (loss of some tiles on planets that have protected species/environments): Okay, this is bad. No doubt about it.

Pragmatism:

• Neutrality (No relations penalties): I'm not sure, what Frogboy means with this. If he means, no relations penalties period, then it sounds pretty OP. If he means, no relations penalties for having a different ideology, then it sounds okay, but nothing ground-breaking.
• Trade (Welcome in all ports, trade bonuses): Same bonus as in GalCiv 2. Depends on how much money you can make with trade.
• Persuasive (better in the diplomacy screen, Imps to improve your ZOC): Sounds pretty good. Definitely better than Trust for benevolent races.
• Uncommitted (some penalties in the United Planets): Depends on the penalties. This could range from "minor inconvenience" to "pretty bad".
• Dispassionate (No one roots for the neutrals, penalties to galactic achievement costs): Depends on the penalties, and on how good GAs are going to be. So, again, this could range from "minor inconvenience" to "pretty bad".
• Unreliable (Minor races aren’t keen to work with you): We don't know how minor races are going to be in GalCiv 3. If they are staying the same as in GalCiv 2, then this won't be much of an issue. However, if they are going to be more like City States in Civ 5, then this could be quite a disadvantage. (From what I've seen in Let's plays at least. I haven't played Civ 5 myself.)

Malevolence:

• No Mercy (Extra tiles on planets): That is great. No doubt about it.
• Coercion (Improvements that improve “approval”, slaves, etc.): Not enough information. This could range from "mediocre" to "completely OP".
• Fear (weaker races give you relations benefits): Sounds like one of the relations modifiers in GalCiv 2, like "We have Treaties together++" or "We don't trust you-". In the end, this depends greatly on how big the actual benefit is, and on how many races are weaker than you. So, it could range from "very good" to "worthless". Just like any other diplomacy-based bonus.
• Hated (stronger civilizations come down on you much sooner, civs secretly gang up on your more): Depends on how fast they gang up on you. If it is similar to GalCiv 1 (again, based on my experience from the game), then this could be pretty bad.
• Pariah (United Planets issues frequently punish malevolent races): Depends on the penalties. Just like with Uncommitted for pragmatic races.
• Rebellious (Planets under alien influence are more likely to defect): This could be bad. Depends on the penalty, and on how likely it is, that your planets are under foreign influence.

Overall, I'd say that a lot of this depends on the actual implementation, and, in some cases, the map settings. It's entirely possible, that benevolent races have weak planets, but gain huge bonuses from their ideology, while malevolent races have powerful planets, but gain huge penalties from their ideology.

There was simply no reason to pick good events, ever. Unless you wanted to make your life more difficult by being "good", which didn't really do anything anyway because you could just use Xeno Ethics to make yourself that way.

Roleplaying is not an excuse here. If there is three options, and only one of them ever makes sense from a gameplay perspective, the system is flawed. Putting fluff on it doesn't change that. I mean, if you really want to deliberately make the game harder, then more power to you. But don't pretend that it's a good system when one choice is clearly so much better than the others.

As for D&D, which was mentioned in this thread... for all its warts, the D&D alignment system doesn't have this problem. You're not choosing between "Being Good" and "Being Effective".

Maybe a bit of a brag, but really, taking dozens of stat hits to your planets can be very gruesome, especially since there isn't a way to reverse any of them. 

Xeno Ethics can go play in traffic; it has no place in the game.

It isn't just the Conquest victory that this is bad for. You can't seriously believe me to expect that every game that you've won by any method other than the conquest victory involved no warfare whatsoever, and this is going to make it worse for you if someone picks a fight.

Military might is by far the most worthwhile diplomatic bonus in that list because, regardless of the actual diplomatic bonus, the stronger your military is the less likely it is that anyone is going to pick a fight with you, especially if they have their own problems to deal with. That it gives an actual diplomatic bonus when dealing with weaker factions is just icing on the cake. And as far as the United Planets goes, if the only real penalty for withdrawing from the United Planets is that I can no longer have my trade routes, which if UP resolutions are anything like they were in GCII and I'm playing Evil/Malevolent/Malicious have already become more limited than normal, then I'm fine with withdrawing and ignoring anything that the council comes up with. Might be different if trade is more worthwhile in GCIII than it was in GCII, or it might not. Not that withdrawing from the UP really needed significant encouragement if some of the really crippling resolutions came up - "space time is being damaged! No one can go faster than 2 parsecs per turn!" Great, I'm playing on an immense map. Guess I'm leaving the UP and gaining an incredible mobility advantage over just about everyone else, because even though they say that space-time is being damaged there's no in-game effect from that, unless you play along with the UP.

Out of all of that stuff, the only things that are actually bad under the Evil category are the greater likelihood of bigger fish trying to kill you, and perhaps the 'everyone dogpile this guy' effect. The 'No Mercy' benefit has the potential to be extremely good, and is never going to be a bad thing unless there's some kind of penalty based on the number of tiles in use (e.g. if planets have an environmental rating that affects population cap or growth, or something like that).

Out of all of that stuff, the only bonuses that Good gets are the population growth and better diplomacy with the nicest factions in the game, while that Cultural Expansion thing is as likely to be a malus as a bonus. Or did I miss the part where 'Benevolent' factions and neutrals no longer care if you're culture-flipping their planets? That used to be a fairly stiff penalty, if I recall correctly. Plus, while getting the population up faster does mean that you have an early economic lead, that +50% bonus to research in the event popup displayed is a rather significant issue once everyone's reasonably close to the population cap, which was where most of the time was spent in most of my games. It hardly matters if you get to full population a few turns before I do if we then spend many times as much time at full population, especially when I get a bonus that gives me extra tiles for planet improvements while you take a penalty to the same.

If, on top of all this, there are actually choices where the Benevolent option requires you to take penalties (which was true of many of the 'good' choices in GCII), then it starts looking even worse as a choice while playing the game. Especially if it's stupid things like "we've found a factory for disintegration rifles. Good choice: destroy it and somehow make our soldiers worse than they were before (we weren't using these things, but clearly destroying an armaments factory that we weren't using is going to weaken our military). Neutral choice: convert it to make conventional weapons and get better troops for it (because clearly having more of the conventional weapons that we already have means that our soldiers are now individually better than they used to be). Evil Choice: disintegration rifles for everyone! Have better soldiers." I mean, the neutral choice in that example is at least understandable - perhaps your faction has some kind of right to the ownership and use of firearms and the soldiering bonus represents the resultant increased familiarity with firearms which resulted from greater availability - but the 'good' choice isn't. Weapons that are illegal for armies are almost certainly going to be illegal for private ownership and use regardless of the faction's stance on the right of an individual to the possession and use of firearms, and if there's already an established personal firearms industry, destroying an illegal factory that produces illegal weapons shouldn't significantly affect the general public's average familiarity with weapons, nor should it significantly affect the quantity or quality of weapons available to the military.

Overall, in that list, 'good' has a decent diplomatic bonus with the guys who aren't going to be a significant problem anyways, a marginal economic boost in its population growth bonus, and a bonus to culture-flipping that could be as good at shooting yourself in the foot as at being an actual bonus, then it gets a bunch of penalties. 'Neutral' has a bunch of bonuses and penalties which are all fairly mediocre, and seems overall to be a wash in terms of actual benefits and penalties. 'Evil' gets a great bonus, a bonus which may or may not be worth anything, a bonus which should do a bit to negate the dogpiling penalty as long as there are weaker factions out there, a penalty to relations with people who weren't going to like me anyways (which, in my opinion, isn't much worse than Good's bonus to relations with people who were already going to like me), a penalty with the UP that adds up to just another reason not to bother with the UP (and given the GCII UP resolutions, that might be more good than bad), and a penalty when my worlds are threatened by culture (but if it's like GCII, it's not a particularly bad penalty to have). So overall, in my opinion 'good' gets bonuses and maluses that are a net negative, 'neutral' gets bonuses and maluses that are a wash, and 'evil' gets bonuses and maluses that are a net positive, especially if colonization events continue to be similar to those present in GCII where the 'bad guy' choice is the best choice from a gameplay perspective and the 'good guy' choice is a penalty with no redeeming qualities other than being labelled 'good'.

My unintelligible thoughts, your eloquent words.

This is/was the problem in a nutshell; there should be distinct advantages for all alignments, not just evil  :c

Strange. I had noticed in the early days of GC1 and GC2 that the neutral and good AIs jumped on me more quickly if I had Evil tendencies.

Nor did I say it is. If you don't go for a Conquest victory there is still a chance of getting declared war upon, but at least you can try to keep the war as short as possible, if it happens, or even prevent it outright.

I never said that.

We don't know how any of Frogboy's ideas will be implemented, or even if they will be implemented at all. So why don't you and the others settle down until the Alpha comes out. If it turns out, that Benevolent is as flawed as you feared, you can keep ranting and petition for a change. That's what the Alpha is for, after all. Right now, however, you, and the others, sound too much like fear-mongers to me, basing all of your rants on one screenshot and some general ideas.

Let me get this straight: While I understand what the devs were going for with the alignments in GalCiv 2, I found the actual implementation very flawed. For the same reasons you do, actually. However, I manage to win with Good races on a regular basis, despite all the penalties, so I don't find this alignment as bad as you do. That doesn't mean it is any good, though.

I'm not your enemy. In fact, I agree with your sentiment. I too want Benevolent to be a ideology as powerful and viable as Malevolent (or whatever it is going to be called). However, I also want each ideology to be unique, and play differently from each other.

You realize you're not contesting anything we/he said right? Your opinion is literally lockstep with ours.

And in my opinion, when one of the lead programmers (Brad) says he wants the alignments in the game to be more of the same in a publicly released document, that's cause enough to worry.

+1 to this. Keep your energies for when the Alpha is out guys. Right now it is just speculative rambling.

But if I may add one last bit, the need for balance will be greater in GalCiv III than it was for GalCiv II as this time there will be multiplayer.

I decided against it, because I would just end up repeating "How do you know how the devs are going to implement those ideas?" most of the time. Well, except for this:

There is no such UP proposal in GalCiv 2, only a Mega Event (which reduces speed to 5pc per turn).

Except that playing Good as intended never reduced my enjoyment of the game.

I have to disagree with this. Both GalCiv 1 and 2 used the same idea for alignments I mentioned earlier. However, the implementation was different. In GalCiv 1 there was no Xeno Ethics tech, giving you the ability to choose your alignment. Instead, your alignment was entirely determined by your choices during events. The events themselves were also much rarer than in GalCiv 2.
Techwise, Good and Evil unlocked several new techs, while staying Neutral didn't give you anything. The unlocked techs depended on how good or evil you were. So, if you didn't commit to a specific alignment from the beginning, you were not able to unlock some of those techs. Just to give same examples, if you wanted the fastest ships, the happiest people, and the strongest culture, you went Good, while, if you wanted the strongest military, and oppressed happy and brain-washed loyal people, you went Evil.
Lastly, going Good made it much easier to cooperate with the other races, while going Evil made them dogpile on you in no time. Diplomacy was almost impossible, if you went Evil. At least, that was my experience. I often managed to hold on for some time, but never won a single game as the Evil Terran Empire in GalCiv 1.

So, once again, same idea, but different results due to the implementation.

I agree to certain extent. However, Frogboy already said this regarding balance:

Granted, this refers primarily to races, but it can also be applied to other areas of the game too.

Perfectly acceptable, but as it stands right now, the current three ideologies seem to be making the same mistakes as the previous game's Good/Evil/Neutral and in the same way; giving good too few advantages and giving evil and to a lesser extent, neutral  too many for not enough cost. Even the suggested 'fixes' to this are relatively meaningless, and evil still leads the pack.

Let me be clear; I almost always choose to play as the Altarians, who have gigantic bonuses to being good. I even choose good colonization options occasionally when my inner Human screams out at, y'know, violence and abuse. I almost always play good, but I wish it wasn't so lame.

Yeah I agree and am fine with that.  GalCiv will stay first and foremost a single player game. But I still expect balance to be at least a bit more polished than in GalCiv 2 if only to make the Multiplayer interesting.

Competitive multiplayer gamers tend to complain alot when they feel the balance is off. Hearing them I sometime have the feeling they would want every races to be the same like in WarCraft 2, just have different names. But then they still complained that Ogre Bloodlust was stronger than Paladin Heal or something...

Look at StarCraft 2. They did an absolute brilliant job at balancing everything despite every race being very unique. I played it in ladders league for a while and can only praise Blizzard for the game they made. But there is always a vocal minority constantly whining about balance being off  

I'd rather not.  Don't get me wrong, it's a well made game, but I hate, hate, HATE what Blizzard did to the story.

Haha, I would not know about that.  For me the game was all about multiplayer and did not pay attention to the story.