On masochist level, sometimes harder to be evil?

Yes, although I never went so far as to colonize bad planets to turn my alignment 'good'. The advantages I found in playing ‘good’ were the free ships from other ‘good’ civilizations and their loyalty. When I play ‘evil’, other ‘evil’ civilizations aren’t as loyal to the cause.

I always went ‘good’ at the beginning of a masochistic game in 1.05, but now I don’t seem to need that in 1.13. Am I more experienced or are the AIs less aggressive in 1.13? :notsure:

That may be the case with default alignments... of course I play as evil with all evil AIs so the only thing to fear is the fundies .
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Default alignments make for the richest gameplay. I tried "random", played that twice, both times most of the AI's leaned one way, and when I did, the game was way too much cakewalk for my taste, so I went back to defaults.

And yes, whether or not the advantage lies with good, evil, or even remaining neutral, depends on the map, the terrain, and sometimes the way the timing breaks down on wars, random events, etc.

For an example of a game where I started evil, found myself in way over my head and scrambled to change my alignment in midcourse, click here:

http://sirian.warpcore.org/galciv/losing.html


- Sirian

I'm sure that some prefer Maso on evil, but I've seldom been able to pull it off.

I usually play the stock alignments, sometimes with slight variations (Torians and Yor bumped to "pure," for instance). It gives a good mix of AI tactics. Unfortunately, with my style (possible ANY style), the AIs have a significant military lead for the majority of the game. Surviving this stage takes very good relations, and it's much easier to keep relations high by playing good - particularly with the Altarians and Torians. Friendly, good AIs also seem more willing to jump into a fight to help a pal.

If you're good it's absurdly easy to befriend the altarians. You don't even need to trade with them. Have the altarians been hardwired to adore humans or is it just the pure good alignment. One wierd thing always happens in my games though. Unless I set the torians to pure good they always seem to show up as neutral on the alien stat screen. I mean the your aren't pure evil and they come up as evil? Do you have to be less evil to become properly evil or something?

Seems to be two-edged, though. It may be easy to get to friendly relations, but it's also easy to lose it.

In my experience, the Altarians are a lot less forgiving of anything they consider a transgression. If they're the #1 empire, relations with the Humans slip; if the HUMANS are the #1 empire, relations slip; if your military is weak, if you're moving warships nearby, etc. etc.

All of the other AIs have these attitudes as well, but not to the extent of the pure-good Altarians, at least in my experience. Something that would make the Torians say something like "Oh, you still here?" seems to bring the Altarians to the verge of war...

Great website Sirian. I love reading about other players' experiances.

Gman....thats what i call break...2 months away and then return, great to see another player who just couldn't stay away from the game

Danke!