Ethics/Morals in Civ IV?

[jeffreyac]

Hello all,

Bringing this up because a recent thread I started with slavery/whipping made me think; my apologies if it's been brought up before. As a former Galactic Civ player, one of the things I liked in that game was actions you took (mostly in response to random events) influenced your civ towards either good or evil, with tangible in-game effects (some cosmetic, like changing the interface and some actual game mechanics, like good-only or evil-only techs and build options)

My question is, would you like to see this as an option in BtS? I think it's doable, with the random event system - and you could have a good/evil modifier to certain civics or actions (whipping maybe?)

Please note - this is NOT meant to devolve into a 'is slavery/whipping evil' thread, or a true discussions about the morality of any action, real or in game. I'm just curious how many folks would like to see such a system (without getting bogged down with the implementation details) in BtS.

Overview, for discussion (particularly for those unfamiliar with GalCiv): you could include certain civics, units, or buildings that were good-only, neutral-only, or evil-only, and then have an ethical scale where your civ moves up or down based on in game actions (i.e. if you continually make 'evil' choices throughout the game, you become more evil, etc) Exact details, I dunno - but what do you think of the idea in general?

 

[eewallace]

I actually think the game is fairly nuanced in this regard already, with the benefits and drawbacks to various kinds of civics. Using slavery, for example, gives you the very real risk of getting the slave revolt random event. I actually like the relative subtlety of the pros and cons of the civics in civ, compared to the sort of obvious good/okay/evil choices in galactic civ. In Civ, morality is really more in shades of grey than in black and white, I think...

 

[economiser]

They also take into account your civics during diplomacy. Maybe they could add a large negative diplo bonus between slave socieities and emancipated ones. Civs with open borders gets a bonus, why not give bonuses between economies that run state property or free market and negative against one another?

Plus, nuking anybody gets you an automatic negative.

 

[Drill IV]

It is already implemented in a way that's fun enough for me. Morale is very dependent on society, and I would probably be annoyed by having to make a decision based on some morale considered right only in-game. Implementing morale and ethics - based effects carries the danger of making this rather fun game much more serious.

 

[narmox]

This is a world of civilizations, research, wars, development, not a world of morality and godliness.

ie what you described is the actions you take have a metaphysical/supernatural effect in the game, allowing you some specific techs etc? Not the domain of Civ, although maybe the domain of that one scenario Gods of Old

OTOH, I like the idea of the interface changing. It _might_ be cool for my interface to look diff if I'm a dictator whipping my citizens and carving a bloodpath across the continents, vs a pacifist democrat who's going for a cultural victory. Maybe even some slight different music would enhance that.

However, I am against any moral judgement of what is "good" and what is "evil", and that doing so-called good or evil actions would give you certain boni or penalties - that would get the fun out of the game for me --- let the historians decide if what I did was good or evil, not the game!

Narmox

 

[Diamondeye]

I think it's a bad idea - cosmetic changes might be nice, but why not make them so that the player himself can change from good through evil even if he has not got these alignments? My vote's a no.

 

[The Rook]

I don't think that there would be any definitive way to categorise civics as good/evil. Is Theocracy more evil than Free Religion? The answer to that is as obvious to me as it would be to anyone, but I am sure that there wouldn't be unanimous agreement.

Without universal consensus of what good/evil is, I think it would be difficult for the game designers to implement such a feature in an impartial way, without the game becoming a billboard for their personal opinions.

 

[Woodreaux]

I agree with Drill IV. The game already implements it in various ways. War Weariness, Slave Revolts, We Demand Emancipation and various diplomatic penalties seem to cover it.

 

[Lucky The Fox]

Let's just say that I found GalCiv's black and white view of good and evil kind of dumb.

 

[Inspector Javert]

I don't know that sounds like an OK idea for a scenario but not for the entire game

 

[Silver Marmot]

This game already has enough features to encourage morally "good" behavior, and implementing anything else would be unrealistic.

Slavery, wars for land, the destruction of cities, etc., have only been viewed as "evil" in recent times. For the vast majority of human history, these activities were nearly universally accepted, and so for the game to discourage players from engaging in these activities would simply be absurd.

Besides, the final eras of the game already do a great job of encouraging "good" behavior. Your citizens will get angry without emancipation, they will get angry over wars, and other civilizations will look down upon you if you start using nukes.

 

[Powerslave]

I totally agree with Lucky the Fox, even though his avatar frightens me. I was left singularly unimpressed with GalCiv II. One thing that the original poster forgot to mention was that in GalCiv II, you can buy whatever alignment you want, which completely invalidates the entire ethical model.

No, it was poorly implemented in GalCiv II, and it would probably be poorly implemented in Civ IV (or V). I've never in my life heard of a computer game that was any more philosophically challenging than Super Mario Brothers or Tetris. Save the philosophy for books.

 

[magichj]

The problem with Gal Civ's version of morality is it is to black and white. The problem is that doesn't correspond to real decisions at all. If the only changes would be in the interface I would be fine with it, but research paths or units that are allowed or disallowed based on morality I have serious problems with.

 

[MrCynical]

I was never hugely impressed with Gal Civ's morality system. It always seemed silly that there'd always be the good but unprofitable, the evil but useful option, and the essnetially ignore option. Things aren't always that clear cut, nor is it always advantageous to be evil. The fact you could exploit the system by going good on the trivial events, and then using up an "evil credit" on a relaly profitable one was also a little silly. The fact you could buy whatever alignment you liked for a fairly small amount of money basically negated the system anyway.