Playing nuetral alignment

Well, nobody loves you, for one...

Oh and there are of course the individual bonuses/negatives that come with the event choices.

OK, techs you know about.

Neutral lets you get advantage of all the better bonuses (and ignore the ones you dont want so you dont go evil), so I don't see it as much worse off than evil on the individual planet bonus side of things.

Auto-love: goodies get auto improvement in relations with other goodies - as a neutral, you miss out.

While it may seem that the good guys won't attack you as much as true evil, I don't think that is true - they attack if they think they can win, and claim your relative evilness as an excuse. I've had this happen while I was neutral, not only when I am evil.

Thanks for your input. I was just wondering if playing pure nuetral was a viable way of playing the game, but I just downloaded the new user manual (It's nice to have a more detailed manual now so I can figure out how to play better), and under the "Good and Evil" section there's a tip that states being nuetral may seem the best of both worlds but it's really not.

I think Nuetral should have an additional slight advantage (other than being able to pick and choose some advantages through the moral choices). That way you have three choices of alignment instead of just two. I think most people are nuetral in real life, and it would be nice to once in a while play an alignment which matches your real life alignment.

Before you flame me for saying that, let me say that I understand the whole good vs. evil basis of the game, and that it is incorporating slight role playing aspects in it, but I just think that it would add a slight bit of complexity (not too much I think) to the morality aspect of the game.

The main advantage of Neutral is that you won't commit to a radical alignment and then find out that your neighbors have the opposite ethos. This is particularly true in a huge map where influence might not reveal your neighbors for a while, or if you've set the game to randomize all alignments (heh. The one game I tried that, *nobody* rolled good).

If enough events show up later, you might be able to commit to one if necessary. That's a fairly big if, however, since at least in 1.05.71 events seem fairly rare.

To Twirlip's point, I usually play neutral until I see which way the wind is blowing in the game.

On a smaller map, the perception is that it is easier to be evil (the bonuses matter more), on a larger map it's easier to be good. The Altarians, Torians, and Arceans tend to be the tougher AIs and they will be a little nicer if you're good... at least if you're on par militarily.

I never try to be neutral, sometimes I just win before my alignment changes because I'll often hedge at first, or kill some worms to get a PQ bonus and then make up that choice with some 'good' choices on things that don't offer the same level of benefit.

I really wish neutral had its own technologies.

I find myself selecting choices 'cause I want to get the special techs eventually, rather than "role-playing" what I'd do everytime.

Neutral needs a unique tech or two... maybe something weaker... but SOMETHING. Otherwise I just start colonizing lousy planets eventually to switch.

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I lean toward good, but can't resist this 15-35% planet quality bonuses.
I do agree that neutral is a valid choice and something special should be reserved for them as well.

I also usually play on the good side. But like anomalyst, I cannot resist the big PQ bonuses.

one thing i noticed is that it is pretty hard to get allies on neutral, even if you are doing a lot of trade.

i was always expecting that maybe the Arceans would want to ally with me due to our same allignment, but that wasnt so. it seems that whenever i play neutral, it is easier to get the torians and the drengins to ally with me then it is for the arceans to ally with me.