Alignment System and Random Events

I thing random events should stay, and even be on a macro level. It would be cool if, say, you could be able to click on a planet, talk to the Governor, and deal with individual planet events. "the workers in your Science sector are protesting because they feel they aren't getting paid enough." You then have multiple choices on how to deal with it, like the alignment choices when you land on a planet. Dealing with those individual planet events could affect your alignment as well as give you more things to deal with.

Say you built a prison planet, and you click on the governor, and you guess it , a prisoner escaped. It's up to you to bother with the situation, or let the governor deal with it. If you decide to get involved, you will have to search the neighboring planets and any nearby stations by clicking on them or using maybe hired bounty hunters, or space cops or whatever. Solving the situation increases planet happiness, affects alignment; hell, it might even please an alien race who might of been the ones who tossed him in your prison.

If they include an alignment system similar to that of Galactic Civilizations II, I would like for it to not be possible to lock the alignment in place. And I'd also like for the choices affecting the alignment not to have the options of 'stupid good', 'maybe not the brightest neutral', and 'why wouldn't I do this evil', especially since if we really wanted a specific alignment we could just pay for it later if the current alignment wasn't what we wanted to end with.

Yeah. I didn't like 'stupid good' or 'maybe not the brightest neutral' either. It might have been a hold over from GalCiv 1 (and maybe earlier versions of it) where they had the same system in place. I really think that good should be able to be played intelligently, not stupidly like it is in GalCiv 2.

Things might turn out better if we had more than 3 options (one for each alignment) to choose from. I would also like an option to be able to postpone doing something when the event occurs and maybe deal with it later when things are better (maybe give a time limit or something). Perhaps allow us to deal with a random event by researching a specific tech (one that might be available while the event while the event is still around).

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I've been watching some stuff done by Richard Dawkins recently. One of the documentaries he has worked on is all about how and when good behavior, or altruism, is both rational and effective, and when selfish behavior fails. You might want to watch it (though the whole program is like 50 minutes long). For viewing convince, I've picked the version on YouTube that was broken up into 5 parts.

Nice Guys Finish First (1/5) - Richard Dawkins - YouTube
Nice Guys Finish First (2/5) - Richard Dawkins - YouTube
Nice Guys Finish First (3/5) - Richard Dawkins - YouTube
Nice Guys Finish First (4/5) - Richard Dawkins - YouTube
Nice Guys Finish First (5/5) - Richard Dawkins - YouTube

Random Events, Events During Colonization, ect were my favourite part of GalCiv. Frankly, I think that the more they have the better. Use the old ones, then add a hundred more. Then keep adding more, the more the merrier. I want to have so many events that by the time I get the same one I have already forgotten it. 

I love random events <3. In case you didnt notice. Especially those ones that let you do really evil or expensive things to unexpectedly up the planet quality. I loved those planets with the devices that you sent innco- I mean, volunteers into to raise your quality. 

While yes, only up to a point, not like we need a random event every turn

Perhaps procedural events?

The ethics system really does need to be revamped.

Not being able to lock in ethics is a must.   Being good or evil needs to have legitimate consequences.

 When I say more I more mean increasing the number of "cards" in the events deck. 

For example, say the game had 30 "Cards" which could be drawn for each event, I would want 300 "cards", not a random event each turn. Just more variety, more stories, more morale dilemmas. ect. Even if the outcome is the same as another "card", I love the storys. 

I would rather have 300 "events" as say 100 "events" at launch, then add a few with each patch, so there's always something new, and have events with different rarities.

AI should get events as well.

I like this idea - not necessarily more frequent events, just more events period.

It would be nice to choose the frequency of events during game setup.

Do bots get events in GCII? They should; I thought part of the point of the game is that the AI is playing the same game as the player.

The ethics system is part of the GalCiv signature.  I'm sure it will have its own flavor in GC3 ... but should definitely be present.  Yes, other games like MOO2 were fine without it ... but GalCiv is GalCiv and it should be present.

The events were nice but the options/consequences could be improved. More than just % bonuses. Otehrwise, I liked them.

I don't think that there should be techs unlocked based on aligment at all. Except maybe some buildings. I'd prefer that you unlock all the stuff researching but that some of that stuff have an impact in how you are view by everybody... if you actually use it. Some techs would be tagged as "evil" and others as "good", the rest (most of them) being "neutral". So if you build some molecular twisters, you get bad rep while if you build galactic orphanages (forgive the bad examples here) you get some good rep. There would be a small usage scale for each of those aligned techs so when you build once something that uses that tech, you get some alignment points. But once you have built a certain number of stuff using that same tech, you get no more aligment points (once you have built some molecular twisters, no one is going to think that you can be more evil in that area). That would be in addition to the regular aligment points that one can achieve through events.

A step further would be that to align with "good" or "evil" would make some research branches (and to build certain stuff?) to be more expensive while others to be cheaper. If there were buildings unlocked by aligment, they would be only useable while you are of that aligment (obviously).

There could be other stuff but I just mention this as brainstorming. Something more organic than "Get random events, unlock tech". 

The AI in GalCiv2 didn't get events AFAIK, and also had special rules for tech trades.

I don't think Brad would categorize the latter as cheating, but it was maddening at times because it made no sense.

But the AIs had an aligment from the get go, I think. Drengin presented themselves as Evil. Also liked to attack Torians above other species. Nice AI personalities going on.

The random events of GalCiv 2 is what really kept me playing over and over.  So much fun.  

Using good and evil is part that seemed to change up GC2 to being a little more space opera, which did add to it's distinctiveness. That said it could have used more than just that one feature. Another problem was it was such a small tech tree that it didn't change your speicies. Neutral should have been if you didn't research up that tree, not simply middle of the road of the race that explored good and evil.

Another bonus might be to make a change to alignment based choices to be more dynamic in the universe, for example if you pick the evil benefit when colonising a world, the other races you know hear about it, some sending messages of amusement or encouragement, while the goodie goodie races may become diplomatically hostile to you over these actions.

On events themselves, I am kind of disappointed with how the events in Elemental add identical outcomes on choices meaning they lost thier randomness on replay for just a selection toggle for a benefit. Perhaps a randomiser could be added after the choice, where the decision results could be more or less effective than predicted, or even randomly changed.

For example if your world contains the ruins of an ancient ruin you could use for public housing (evil but pop boost) or keep as heritage (good but less population) a randomiser after may fluctuate the estimated population modifier or even randomly benefit such as the ruins contained the disease that wiped out the original inhabitants and is now in your people, or those who moved in find some ancient texts giving a different bonus to the world.

When they finally researched Xeno Ethics (or you trade it to them), there was a small chance they'd pick a different alignment. The occasional good Drengin or evil Altarians were nice changes.