So you're this lord, or a wizard, and you start out neutral. You have a small army. Then, depending on your actions - you get Evil points or Good points, and it affects the choises and the tools given to you by the game. Kinda like in Black & White, right ? Well, in B&W depending on your actions things "mutated" in good or evil ways, but essentially stayed the same. The cow stayed a cow. An evil one, sure, but still. The problem i am presented with : suppose that getting enough Evil points will make you a "Dark Lord", and will allow you to recruit horrible demons in your army. Should that affect your "neutral" initial forces in some way ? And suppose you would actually care enough to go and get many Good points, so that your title changes to the "Light Lord". Should that somehow reflect on the demons you still might have under your control ? I'm saying yes, it should. But how ? Are demons units to disband automatically, or maybe even turn hostile on you ? I was considering "mutation" option, like in B&W, a human could "mutate" into a demon under the evil ruler, or into an angel under the good ruler, but this does not give that many options. Extremities are always more colorful than the averageness. What can possibly "mutate" in a beholder, for example, and what would be its good counterpart ? On the other hand, if your "dark" units just disappeared, and the "light" units with equal statistics appeared in their places, would it be accepted by the player's logic ? I know i wouldnt accept something cheesy like this. How would you go about this ?

Fame draws followers.

You start out neutral, and all your starting units have a stat of 'good/evil' rating. They'll all naturally follow your lead slightly, and if you're shifting one way, they'll shift with you slightly. Go too fast, and you'll lose your extremist from the other side. They'll go wander off to join groups of 'Mobs' that spawn around the map.

Now, the extreme good/evil characters can't shift with you if you go away from their alignment. They'll rejoin the Mobs you attracted them from (based on your fame) or Mobs of a like kind if you some how created/summoned them.

Okay, so you would go the "disband" way. Thats pretty...tame, i guess. A safe road. :D

Still looking for opinions.

I think the problem is that like all "moral choice" games it comes down to good or evil.

I mean its the same thing bioshock stumbled with, there were only two endings a good one and a bad one and the extreme contrast between them was rather jarring. In the good ending your a virtuous flower child full of love and smiles for all the shiny coated beasts in god's kingdom, and in the bad ending your some sort of hybrid between Hitler and skeletor who's very piss is pure liquid malevolence. I'm sick of games that talk about choice but all it really comes down to is Mother Terresa or baby eating. all i'm saying is that some middle ground is nice now and then.

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there were only two endings a good one and a bad one and the extreme contrast between them was rather jarring.

The way i see it - it only irks you because the ending depends on a single choice. However important a choice is - its just not feasible to lead to such dire difference in consequences.

Now, if there were, maybe, a hundred of smaller choices during most of the game - maybe you'd taken it more lightly. Nothing happens instantly.
If you personally give orders to execute someone every morning, to use the bodies for experiments and whatnot - maybe your...bodily fluids WILL turn to acid, given time, hmm ?

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all i'm saying is that some middle ground is nice now and then.

Thats true. Except that, our reality is pretty much always a shade of gray anyway. We see gray every single day. Gray is not a colour for a high fantasy.

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Original post by Tsakara I mean its the same thing bioshock stumbled with, there were only two endings a good one and a bad one and the extreme contrast between them was rather jarring.

Doesn't BioShock have 3 endings? I do agree that there needed to be a more neutral ending, but there was good, bad, and VERY bad wasn't there?

I agree with Talroth, here's my take:

Units that join you could have a threshold when it comes to morality/views, so if they are constantly ordered to do things that go against their specific nature they might not fight well, they might eventually betray the army, attack you, desert and give away your position, etc. So, instead of mutating all units it'd be more along the lines of:

You hire ten swordsmen, each one with their own views, you ransack a town and four of them become disgusted by your actions of slaughtering innocent people, so they leave or you kill them, whatever.

Those six units stick around, and you're probably recruiting units elsewhere to build up your army and replace the four that left. Maybe down the line only two of those swordsmen remain, but they've been through hell and many battles since and are two of your most experienced units. They could have an 'area of influence' on your other units in that as long as they are in or around your army, weaker units (when it comes to morality/views) will be more likely to stick around, whether that's because of intimidation, respect, whatever. Have these core units mutate, because it's more than likely these units are the ones that are truly more prone to doing evil or good things.

If you suddenly felt like turning to the opposite side you could risk losing all of your experienced units or possibly being killed by them because they'd probably think you are "weak" or "delusional", so there'd be a big risk involved.

This way you'd probably have an army of different units, some that look significantly more "bad ass" than others due to aesthetic alignment mutations, plus you'd still be able to change your mind at any moment but at great risk to the rest of your army, at least towards the end.

I think this would be an organic way to go, but a drawback might be the micromanagement that could rear it's head if you weren't careful. Trying to manage and balance your army so you don't have a lot of problems while still trying to come up with a strategy and defeat the enemy in battle could become a pain in the ass.

You'd probably have to balance it in such a way that the evil path is hard at the start of the game, but towards the end most of the people with you are in it for the long haul. If you are following the good path it would be very easy to get people at the start but you'll have an easier time losing them if you don't watch your step.

Something like that.

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I think this would be an organic way to go, but a drawback might be the micromanagement that could rear it's head if you weren't careful.

Thats exactly what i'm afraid of. The player (in my mind) should concentrate on the given choice of alignment, all his actions change it, so he must think and choose what he actually wants. And clicking every unit of his, wanting to check their "morality" parameter, is quite a task, especially if it must be done regularly.

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You'd probably have to balance it in such a way that the evil path is hard at the start of the game, but towards the end most of the people with you are in it for the long haul. If you are following the good path it would be very easy to get people at the start but you'll have an easier time losing them if you don't watch your step.

My idea of the balance for this concept is that different alignments will get resourses differently, and it would also affect the size, strength, and the kind of the opposition.

Initially neutral player will get a little bit of resourses from killing enemies and a little bit of resourses will self-regenerate slowly. Pure evil player will get lots of resourses from killing, exclusively, and a pure good player will only get resourses by generating them, somewhat faster. And the good/evil scale is like -100/100, where any action is just 1 stone on the scales.

There should also be neutrality perks, like, if the player can actually cope with the low amount of resourses AND keep his alignment within -5/5 zone for some time - well, he should
certainly be rewarded, right ? Somewhat like the expert mode or something like that.

You shouldn't assume that the units would be fully aware of their leader's morality. Part of the game could be the player's attempt at placating units across the morality scale. This would involve fooling good units into thinking your orders are just, or giving evil units enough money/power/fame that they don't care who you are.

So you just ordered your good-hearted knights to slaughter innocent civilians in a strategically-important town, and some of them are balking? Tell them the civilians are evil heretics/communists/terrorists, and that God wants them to be killed. Problem solved! The player's evil rating increases, but the knights don't care! The knights either became a little more evil, or a little more blind.

Or, it's the end-game and you've built up an army of angelic peasants. Your good rating is practically off the scale. Unfortunately, the enemy has a giant basilisk that will easily devour your hapless peasants. You recruit an evil black dragon by convincing him that the basilisk will be denying him a healthy supply of peasant meals. You always knew he had a heart of gold! Your charisma just changed the black dragon's morality enough for it to join your army. Either that, or you'll soon have a black dragon to kill.

Tracking another stat ("blindness to the truth") might be excessive, so simply making units adjust to the player's morality might be easier. This should require significant effort on the player's part, or it would lose the effect and end up like Black & White.

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Original post by Karnot ...clicking every unit of his, wanting to check their "morality" parameter, is quite a task, especially if it must be done regularly.

That is more of a user interface problem. You could display "morality alignment" as a filled bar right next to health/morale/mana/whatever. Units with a very low value could have a dark cloud over their heads, or you could play some unhappy/grumbling sound effects when the player is nearby.

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Your good rating is practically off the scale. Unfortunately, the enemy has a giant basilisk that will easily devour your hapless peasants. You recruit an evil black dragon by convincing him

Omitting the part about "convincing", if a good player can easily just go and recruit a dragon - what is the incentive to be evil then ? And vice versa. The actual ability to recruit dragons should be a reward, i think, if player is dedicated enough to pursue the path of evil.

The alignment change should not only alter inner mechanics, but give different game tools for player to have fun with, in this hypothetical case - a dragon. Its like a coat of arms, a visual representation of your choices, so that you know it meant something when you made those choices. Dont you think ?

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Tracking another stat ("blindness to the truth") might be excessive, so simply making units adjust to the player's morality might be easier. This should require significant effort on the player's part

I'm afraid i dont follow, could you elaborate on that ?
Basically in your post as a whole you say that units would somewhat adjust automatically to your current good-evil scale, and then you say its an effort. I lost you there.