Lawful/Chaotic Alignment Axis Balance

[Valkrionn]

Right... Moving this to a new thread, as I'm pretty sure this one will be around for awhile. Might also generate more interest... Which is always a good thing.

Original Post:

We've added an entirely new alignment axis (Not really all that difficult, just a MASSIVE amount of copy/paste/rename work.)

Though they are displayed together, they are in fact entirely separate... This is very important, as it allows BA to work. This is what I meant by the Alignment Shifts being simply the ground work for something else.

Main reason for this is flavor, and differentiation... Order will be Lawful, while Empy will be good, for example. Doesn't mean Order won't give a small boost to Good... Not decided yet there. What it DOES mean is it's main effect will be to make you Lawful. No more Good Calabim from following a corrupted Order. Good Calabim doesn't make sense.... Lawful Evil Calabim? Bingo.

Another example is Basium and Sabathiel. Both are good, and yet in the lore still dislike each other.... Why? Because the first is Chaotic, while the other is Lawful.

Now, the main reason I post this here is I WANT discussion. Which axis should each religion move you on, and how far? What alignment should the various leaders have?

One thing I would like, is a 'Pure' leader for each alignment. As in, one Neutral Good, Neutral Evil, Lawful Neutral, Chaotic Neutral, and True Neutral. True Neutral is obviously Cassiel. I'm thinking the Emperor for Lawful... Perp as Chaotic? Not sure how evil he really is. Not sure who to use for good, either.

Both alignment meters will have in game effects... Decided to go with the discount mechanic, and there will be a few new buildings/units for each alignment. Keep in mind, bonus production can go the OTHER way as well... Chaotic shouldn't be able to construct Courthouses as easily, for example.

We could also use a better name for it, I think... For lack of a better name, the new axis is the Ethical Alignment axis. In DnD, alignments are Moral (good/evil) and Ethical (lawful/chaotic). Couldn't think of a better term, so I went with that.

One final note: When looking at this, don't think DnD 4e. We have ALL (but one) alignments.... Lawful Good, Neutral Good, Chaotic Good, Lawful Neutral, True Neutral, Chaotic Neutral, Lawful Evil, Neutral Evil, and Chaotic Evil (Hyborem?). The only one missing is Neutral Neutral... Decided we can skip that. True Neutral is an active thing... Doing what you can to preserve balance. Big time Cassiel. Neutral Neutral is more uncaring... Less important, less interesting, and not worth the distinction.
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Description of the Alignments:

Source of the descriptions
When looking at the original, keep in mind we are using the 'subset' definition for True Neutral... Active balance, rather than uncaring.
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• Lawful Good
  • Lawful Good is known as the "Saintly" or "Crusader" alignment. A Lawful Good character typically acts with compassion, and always with honor and a sense of duty. A Lawful Good nation would consist of a well-organized government that works for the benefit of its citizens. Lawful Good characters include righteous knights, paladins, and most dwarves. Lawful Good creatures include the noble golden dragon
• Lawful
  • Lawful Neutral is called the "Judge" or "Disciplined" alignment. A Lawful Neutral character typically believes strongly in Lawful concepts such as honor, order, rules and tradition, and often follows a personal code. A Lawful Neutral society would typically enforce strict laws to maintain social order, and place a high value on traditions and historical precedent. Examples of Lawful Neutral characters might include a soldier who always follows orders, a judge or enforcer that adheres mercilessly to the word of the law, a disciplined monk.
• Lawful Evil
  • Lawful Evil is referred to as the "Dominator" or "Diabolic" alignment. Characters of this alignment see a well-ordered system as being easier to exploit, and show a combination of desirable and undesirable traits; while they usually obey their superiors and keep their word, they care nothing for the rights and freedoms of other individuals. Examples of this alignment include tyrants, devils, undiscriminating mercenary types who have a strict code of conduct, and loyal soldiers who enjoy the act of killing.
• Good
  • Neutral Good is known as the "Benefactor" alignment. A Neutral Good character is guided by his conscience and typically acts altruistically, without regard for or against Lawful precepts such as rules or tradition. A Neutral Good character has no problems with co-operating with lawful officials, but does not feel beholden to them. In the event that doing the right thing requires the bending or breaking of rules, they do not suffer the same inner conflict that a Lawful Good character would. A doctor who treats soldiers from both sides in a war could be considered Neutral Good.
• True Neutral
  • Some Neutral characters, rather than feeling undecided, are committed to a balance between the alignments. They may see good, evil, law and chaos as simply prejudices and dangerous extremes.
• Evil
  • Neutral Evil is called the "Malefactor" alignment. Characters of this alignment are typically selfish and have no qualms about turning on their allies-of-the-moment. They have no compunctions about harming others to get what they want, but neither will they go out of their way to cause carnage or mayhem when they see no direct benefit to it. They abide by laws for only as long as it is convenient for them. A villain of this alignment can be more dangerous than either Lawful or Chaotic Evil characters, since he is neither bound by any sort of honor or tradition nor disorganized and pointlessly violent.
• Chaotic Good
  • Chaotic Good is known as the "Beatific," "Rebel," or "Cynic" alignment. A Chaotic Good character favors change for a greater good, disdains bureaucratic organizations that get in the way of social improvement, and places a high value on personal freedom, not only for oneself, but for others as well. They always intend to do the right thing, but their methods are generally disorganised and often out of alignment with the rest of society. They have no use for those who would try to push them around and tell them what to do.
• Chaotic
  • Chaotic Neutral is called the "Anarchist" or "Free Spirit" alignment. A character of this alignment is an individualist who follows his or her own heart, and generally shirks rules and traditions. Good and Evil come a distant second to their need for personal freedom, and the only reliable thing about them is how totally unreliable they are. They typically act out of self-interest, but do not specifically enjoy seeing others suffer. Many free-spirited adventurers are of this alignment. Alternatively there are madmen whose actions are chaotic, but are not themselves inclined towards evil.
  • An unusual subset of Chaotic Neutral is "strongly Chaotic Neutral", describing a character who behaves chaotically to the point of appearing insane. Characters of this type may regularly change their appearance and attitudes for the sake of change, and intentionally disrupt organizations for the sole reason of disrupting a lawful construct.
• Chaotic Evil
  • Chaotic Evil is referred to as the "Destroyer" or "Demonic" alignment. Characters of this alignment tend to have no respect for rules, other peoples' lives, or anything but their own desires, which are typically selfish and cruel. They set a high value on personal freedom, but do not have any regard for the lives or freedom of other people. They do not work well in a group, as they resent being given orders, and usually only behave themselves out of fear of punishment.
    It is not compulsory for a Chaotic Evil character to be constantly performing sadistic acts just for the sake of being evil, or constantly disobeying orders just for the sake of causing chaos. They do however enjoy the suffering of others, and view honor and self-discipline as weaknesses. Serial killers and monsters of limited intelligence are typically Chaotic Evil.

Potential Religion Alignments:

Made up some documents for the religions... A Spread Sheet and a rather more detailed chart, located in the Screenshots section. The Spreadsheet should show the basic alignments, while the screenshot shows my thoughts on BA values for the religions. Note on the screenshot: The more positive the value, the more lawful/good the alignment is, and vice versa for negative values. Morality is Good/Evil... Ethics is Lawful/Chaotic.

Order:

Lawful, maybe a small boost to Good (Junil is the leader of the good angels, after all)
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Empyrean:

Good. No lawful/chaotic here... Lugus doesn't seem to care much about law.
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Runes of Kilmorph:

Not sure here... I think a mix. Given that it currently moves Evil to Neutral and Neutral to Good, I think it could fit.
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Fellowship:

This one I'm very unsure about. It's traditionally the neutral religion, but I think a small Chaotic shift (Lawful->Neutral, Neutral->Chaotic) could work here. Could use discussion.
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Esus:

Again, not sure, but I think Esus shouldn't move your alignment at all. It is meant to be a hidden religion, why should it have visible effects?
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OO:

Chaotic. OO is not necessarily Evil, and I don't think it needs to push you in that direction.
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AV:

Evil, but I could see Chaotic Evil. AV is all about destroying creation... I think Chaotic would fit it, albeit not as well as it does OO.
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Ordo Machinarum:

If anything, a small value for Lawful Evil. Not enough to change your alignment unless you're on the edge already.

Spoiler Reasoning :

Really, my opinion is flavoured by a leader who isn't in yet (Check the Ideas thread), but it's more of a 'lean' than an actual alignment here. The religion would be neutral on both axes... What it WOULD do though is give you a small push towards those values. Currently (in 1.12) it gives -100, towards Evil.

Basically, the religion is neutral. But it's more Evil than it is Good, and it's more Lawful than it is Chaotic. It is all about the ability of Mankind to progress, to usurp the power of the Gods. Like AV, it is a religion based around Power... Unlike AV, you do not sell your soul to achieve. Instead, you forsake all gods and rely on your own abilities.... Too often, this power is used for evil purposes, hence the lean in that direction. Lawful is a bit easier to explain... It's a religion based on Science. Science is about as un-Chaotic as you can get, really... It's still a weak lean, however, as it's more of a rigid thought process, not a rigid social structure.

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White Hand:

Lawful Evil again here. This one I'm not sure on, but I think it fits perfectly... It's planned to be an Evil religion that doesn't increase the AC, and Auric strikes me as a Lawful leader.
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Magister's post on Religions:

Pretty much reaffirms my own thoughts here... Anyone have dissenting opinions?

Could you make it so that The Order turns Neutral civs Good, but leaves Evil civs Evil? Those who are neutral are already basically good but don't have the fanaticism that The Order would give. Those who are evil would likely use this fanaticism to enforce their twisted laws. It would also be interesting if good-evil alignment changes were more pronounced for the extremists of The Order. They essentially cannot see neutrality, and so are more likely yo fall into real evil when they fall short of The Good.

The Empyrean should move one towards good without effecting how lawful one is. I think of Lugus as at least slightly more lawful than chaotic, but that isn't as big of a deal. His followers are expected to have strong personal codes of ethics but they are to rationally convince others to follow them rather than use the force of law. Sinners are harshly punished, but the purpose is always to rehabilitate the sinner or re compensate those he harmed, never to get revenge or intimidate others. Punishment is always decided based on the merits of the case, not according to any legal code.

Kilmorph is definitely Lawful, although not to the extent of Junil. I see RoK as moving towards Lawful, plus moving towards both good and neutral (so it makes evil neutral, and would generally move one towards good but would moderate the most extreme, fanatical good.) It is a very tradition oriented religion, which could perhaps dampen alignment changes.

I see FoL as moving everyone towards Neutral, perhaps with a slight push towards chaos too.

OO is almost pure chaos. I could see building certain OO units and its wonder as moving towards evil rather than the religion itself. The Overlords have plenty of good followers, but the the cult leaders are pretty much all quite evil.

AV should probably be pure evil. Agares actually does not want to destroy creation, he wants to corrupt it enough so that The One will destroy creation. The Emrys (Ceridwen's followers) and the ones that want to destroy creation themselves.

(In the scenarios, OO was the main enemy of The Order, while the Empyrean mostly fought AV, indicating that these pairs of religions should be opposites alignmentwise.)

The White Hand is certainly Lawful Evil, and is likely much more Lawful than Evil. Auric does seem more evil that Mulcarn was though now, even though he was a very nice boy in his youth and seems to be decent again after his death when the precept of Ice is no longer directing him.


I'm not really sure about Esus. It would be interesting if it let you set your own apparent alignment, while corrupting your true alignment.

Potential 'Pure' Leaders:

We need at LEAST five of these... Possibly 9 if we want one for each hybrid alignment as well.

• Lawful Good - Sabathiel
• Lawful - Risen Emperor? Seems fitting, when you look at the mechanics of his cult.
• Lawful Evil - Flauros
• Good - Ethne? Einion?
• True Neutral - Cassiel
• Evil - Os-Gabella? Alexis?
• Chaotic Good - Basium
• Chaotic - Perpentach
• Chaotic Evil - Hyborem

Potential Leader Alignments:

• Sabathiel: Lawful Good
• Capria: Neutral Good
• Varn: Neutral Good
• Ethne: Neutral Good
• Einion: Neutral Good
• Basium: Chaotic Good
• Garrim: ? Good
• Beeri: Lawful Good
• Cardith: Lawful Good
• Amelanchier: Lawful Neutral
• Arendel: Neutral Good
• Thessa: Chaotic Neutral
• Arturus: Lawful Neutral?
• Kandros: Neutral?
• Sandalphon: Chaotic Neutral?
• Falamar: Chaotic Good
• Hannah: Chaotic Neutral
• Cassiel: Neutral
• Tasunke: Chaotic Neutral
• Rhoanna: Lawful Neutral, True Neutral?
• Valledia: Chaotic Neutral
• Dain: Neutral Good
• Charadon: Chaotic Evil
• Mahala: Neutral
• Perp: Chaotic Evil
• Keelyn: Chaotic Neutral
• Jonas: Chaotic Neutral
• Sheelba: Neutral Evil
• Faeryl: Lawful Evil (in the meaning of a schemer)
• Alexis: Neutral Evil
• Flauros: Lawful Evil
• Tebryn: Chaotic Evil
• Os-Gabella: Neutral Evil
• Hyborem: Chaotic Evil
• Auric: Lawful Evil

Display:

What colors should the alignments be displayed as?

• Good - Yellow
• Neutral - Grey
• Evil - Red
• Lawful - Blue?
• Neutral - ? Grey again?
• Chaotic - Orange?

Where should we display it? Currently it's in the Scoreboard, which is where the actual ALIGNMENT needs to stay... Otherwise you can't see the alignments of other players. That said, we don't need to keep the BA values in the scoreboard... If we were to move them, where do you think would be best?
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Ideas/Mechanics:

• Also is it possible to make "True Neutral" not an alignment. It seems to be more of a leader trait. It is essentially a trait which blocks alignment change and holds it to regular Neutral. The difference being its a leader trait which suggests that the leader is committed to being Neutral as apposed to just being undecided. This trait could could be done by including a new variable into your alignment shift calculations that is a boolean (For example bNotTrueNeutral). you could multiply the value of bNotTrueNeutral by the alignment shift calculations. If bNotTrueNeutral is 1 the alignment shifts will not change. But if its 0 (implying you are true neutral) you will never see alignment changes.
  
  In fact the leader trait could be more along the lines of "Closed-Minded". And could be used with the variable "bOpenMinded." This would allow you to set a leaders alignment and then force them to keep it. I believe this should not be used a lot. But I could see a couple of leaders I would use it on. For example Cassiel and perhaps Basium and Hyborem.
  
  Edit: On second thought. Given your disdain for full out blocking things. You could use the same logic to write code which simply makes the decay rate much higher for closed minded leaders. In effect making it much much harder for the player to shift alignments. But still possible. I'd still prefer the blocking thing. It just makes sense and is more lore appropriate. Cassiel was never meant to shift alignment and I'm fairly sure neither was Hyborem.
• Could you make it so that The Order turns Neutral civs Good, but leaves Evil civs Evil? Those who are neutral are already basically good but don't have the fanaticism that The Order would give. Those who are evil would likely use this fanaticism to enforce their twisted laws. It would also be interesting if good-evil alignment changes were more pronounced for the extremists of The Order. They essentially cannot see neutrality, and so are more likely yo fall into real evil when they fall short of The Good.
• thomas.berubeg is working on a Religious Schisms mod for LENA, which I'm thinking of merging. Essentially, the 'standard' 7 religions can trigger events which cause a Religious Schism, founding an offshoot of the religion. As an example, FoL can become the Wild Hunt, a highly chaotic form of the religion... Think Doviello here. OO will have both a good and evil offshoot, as does Order.
• There will be more buildings/units that require certain alignments... There will also be production discounts/penalties for certain units/buildings. I'm also rewriting all of the civics... Some of the new civics will require a certain alignment.
• New UUs for the various Religion/Alignment combinations? As in, Order has a different UU for Good, Neutral, and Evil... Paladin, Judge, Executioner. (ArcticNightWolf)

Spoiler Screenshots :

 

[Valkrionn]

Saving this post for potential overflow.

 

[Valkrionn]

Saving this post for potential expansion.

 

[razzach]

For the display, I am against showing the whole name, its too long..
Why not use first letters...

Lawful Good - LG (Light Blue)
Neutral Good - NG (Light Green)
Chaotic Good - CG (Light Red)
Lawful Neutral - LN (Blue)
True Neutral - TN (Green)
Chaotic Neutral - CN (Red)
Lawful Evil - LE (Dark Blue)
Neutral Evil - NE (Dark Green)
Chaotic Evil - CE (Dark Red)

Basically, the darker it is, the more evil you are and the three colors differentiate their ethical alignment.

Or you can reverse it. The lighter the color, the more lawful you are, and the three colors differentiate the Moral Axis...

 

[Swinkscalibur]

This just looks awesome. I did notice that no religion gives a chaotic good alignment. I could see a small good benefit to FoL. (Though I understand why there is non as of now) Just the word fellowship seems to imply a small sense of altruism.

 

[civ_king]

I think RoK should have a lawful bent, not extreme but still lawful

 

[Valkrionn]

For the display, I am against showing the whole name, its too long..
Why not use first letters...

Lawful Good - LG (Light Blue)
Neutral Good - NG (Light Green)
Chaotic Good - CG (Light Red)
Lawful Neutral - LN (Blue)
True Neutral - TN (Green)
Chaotic Neutral - CN (Red)
Lawful Evil - LE (Dark Blue)
Neutral Evil - NE (Dark Green)
Chaotic Evil - CE (Dark Red)

Basically, the darker it is, the more evil you are and the three colors differentiate their ethical alignment.

Or you can reverse it. The lighter the color, the more lawful you are, and the three colors differentiate the Moral Axis...

I really don't want to use just the first letters, honestly. To be perfectly blunt, I see no issue with a larger score display... But I also have a widescreen monitor. I would shorten it if I thought it looked good... As it is, I don't. At the least I'm dropping Neutral where it's unnecessary (Lawful, rather than Lawful Neutral).

As for your color scheme... I take it you mean something like my edit of your quote? Used orange for the first two reds, as there is no light red on the forum.

It's not a bad idea... My plan was to pick new colors for the new alignments, and combine them. So with Lawful and Good, you'd be Lawful Good. I'll wait for some more opinions (and maybe ideas) before deciding between the two.

This just looks awesome. I did notice that no religion gives a chaotic good alignment. I could see a small good benefit to FoL. (Though I understand why there is non as of now) Just the word fellowship seems to imply a small sense of altruism.

Yeah, there's no Chaotic Good yet... I could see FoL as that, but my plan for it actually has it actively pull you towards Neutral. Just rather hard to display when Neutral is 0. Maybe I should give that to CoE?

 

[Valkrionn]

I think RoK should have a lawful bent, not extreme but still lawful

In the current plan, it does. If you check the last screenshot (Inside the spoiler), you see that it moves you towards Lawful Good, but not as much in either direction as Order or Empy. The White Hand is the same with Lawful Evil.

 

[razzach]

I think RoK should have a lawful bent, not extreme but still lawful

There is. If you look at the chart above. You will see that RoK have a Moral alignment of 250 and Ethical Alignment of 250 that means "somewhat Lawful" and "somewhat Good", where 500 is the max.

 

[Valkrionn]

There is. If you look at the chart above. You will see that RoK have a Moral alignment of 250 and Ethical Alignment of 250 that means "somewhat Lawful" and "somewhat Good", where 500 is the max.

500 is the current max. It may go up... If it does, expect it to go up to either 750, 900, or 1500. Something which (when doubled) is cleanly divisible by 3... So each alignment would have, in order, 500, 600, or 1000 points to play with. At the moment it's around 333.33.

 

[razzach]

I'm so glad there is now a L/C and G/E alignment, I'm a big fan of D&D3ed and not so much on D&D4ed... Just do not go into the 4ed way...Alignment is all in the mind and roleplaying

 

[Valkrionn]

Agreed. I'm sure the new DnD setup makes for less arguments in a party... But this isn't in a party. I like the additional flavor of the other alignments.

 

[civ_king]

Agreed. I'm sure the new DnD setup makes for less arguments in a party... But this isn't in a party. I like the additional flavor of the other alignments.

no more drow party members picking your pockets

 

[Valkrionn]

no more drow party members picking your pockets

I think Svarts are close enough to that... And seeing as they'll continue to pick your pockets (and steal your specialists), the alignment is needed.


Also, updated the chart... Moved the titles to the left, added value displays to each bar, should be VERY easy to read now.

 

[Wodan]

Potential Religion Alignments:

Made up some documents for the religions... A Spread Sheet​

Can't view it.

General comment: we're not just talking about a shift, right? The alignment of a religion will determine some of the things you can do in the game. So there are broader consequences.

Fellowship:

This one I'm very unsure about. It's traditionally the neutral religion, but I think a small Chaotic shift (Lawful->Neutral, Neutral->Chaotic) could work here. Could use discussion.
​

Concur with this and your other comments.

Magister's post on Religions:

Pretty much reaffirms my own thoughts here... Anyone have dissenting opinions?​

Could you make it so that The Order turns Neutral civs Good, but leaves Evil civs Evil? Those who are neutral are already basically good but don't have the fanaticism that The Order would give.

Not sure I agree with that. Lawful neutral with The Order would be free to use good or evil means to achieve the end goal of an Ordered society. In fact, they might be more true to the "cause" than Lawful good (despite the Junil argument).

OO is almost pure chaos. I could see building certain OO units and its wonder as moving towards evil rather than the religion itself. The Overlords have plenty of good followers, but the the cult leaders are pretty much all quite evil.

Although much of the backstory is predetermined, it's good to keep in mind that each game is its own "world" and makes its own story. While a couple of the OO heroes/leaders may be evil, there's no reason in a specific game that ALL leaders (especially the implicit ones represented by the player) are evil.

So I'd probably rather OO be presented as chaos but without any overt evil tendencies.​

 

[Valkrionn]

Can't view it.

General comment: we're not just talking about a shift, right? The alignment of a religion will determine some of the things you can do in the game. So there are broader consequences.


Concur with this and your other comments.


Not sure I agree with that. Lawful neutral with The Order would be free to use good or evil means to achieve the end goal of an Ordered society. In fact, they might be more true to the "cause" than Lawful good (despite the Junil argument).


Although much of the backstory is predetermined, it's good to keep in mind that each game is its own "world" and makes its own story. While a couple of the OO heroes/leaders may be evil, there's no reason in a specific game that ALL leaders (especially the implicit ones represented by the player) are evil.

So I'd probably rather OO be presented as chaos but without any overt evil tendencies.

Exactly. Religion will be the major source of alignment change still... Alignment WILL control some of what you do, whether it be alliances or which units/buildings you make or civics you adopt.

Why can't you view it? Seems to be shared with everyone....

Yeah, I don't think I'll have the Order make you Good/Evil at all, honestly. Even though I put it on the chart. When thomas.berubeg's Religious Schisms are complete, there will be a good and evil version (I believe, would have to check to be sure).

And the same is planned for OO. I don't think the religion in and of itself has to be all that evil.

 

[arcticnightwolf]

[*]New UUs for the various Religion/Alignment combinations? As in, Order has a different UU for Good, Neutral, and Evil... Paladin, Judge, Executioner. (ArcticNightWolf)

Cool ... someone will implement my idea ... i'm flattered ...

 

[Valkrionn]

Well, for now it's in just the 'Ideas' section... But it's one that I really like so most likely.

 

[Valkrionn]

As Swinkscalibur mentioned in the other thread, True Neutrality is a balancing act... The leader actively maintains balance in all of their actions. As a result, I've added a new leader tag...

Essentially, True Neutrality as an ALIGNMENT has been dropped, unless you wish to roleplay a character that way. There will still be Neutral Neutral leaders, but they aren't necessarily True Neutrals...

For those leaders who ARE True Neutral (Cassiel), I've made a new tag, set in LeaderInfos (not traits). This tag prevents ANYTHING (Religion, Civic, buildings, units, etc) from affecting your alignment. If the leader has this tag, he will maintain his original alignment values throughout the game.

The tag is, for now, only applied to Cassiel... He was never really meant to be able to change alignment anyway.

Here's how it's displayed on the leader:

 

[Wodan]

Why can't you view it? Seems to be shared with everyone....

Changing to "View / List" fixed it.

Yeah, I don't think I'll have the Order make you Good/Evil at all, honestly. Even though I put it on the chart. When thomas.berubeg's Religious Schisms are complete, there will be a good and evil version (I believe, would have to check to be sure).

And the same is planned for OO. I don't think the religion in and of itself has to be all that evil.

Great!