Good or Evil?

[springel]

Apart from role playing aspects, what are the arguments for playing Evil?

I always tend to become Good, as I find the peace->vassal road for independent settlements so attractive. The quests give you the units that allow you to keep exploring and building up your economy, while the vassals keep themselves safe until you have enough income to start taking them over. Meanwhile your population is happy for having a good ruler.

I have started new games with the intention of trying the evil road (without taking the specialization that forces me though), but I can't help myself agreeing to the peace offerings. Even initially hostile communities turn friendly after a while.

My reasoning is that conquering them will force you to produce your own low tier units to protect them, which more than offsets the gold cost of absorbing them into your empire, and you will not have the money to produce things everywhere in the beginning anyway.

But maybe I am wrong, and there are good arguments to just be Evil and conquer them all?

 

[Frank327]

I don't always conquer independent settlements but I do think it is almost always the better option for settlements that are not your starting race. The biggest advantage is getting control of them so much earlier, which allows them to grow faster and it gives earlier access to the resources around them.

On top of that, if the terrain is suitable then migrating is probably the best option which isn't good if you go the vassalization route.

Also killing defenders is usually the right choice, which is another one in favour of evil.

 

[Yavor]

Pure good here. I don't mind if it is harder, I just enjoy doing quests. The rewards are sometimes very welcome, and the vassals basically give you almost the same amount of coins, with the addition of some free of charge garrison troops. Basically, (at least as I get it) evil is more offensive, and good tries to establish a solid ground, before advancing. It is slower, but a bit less messy, a bit more helpful to slow players, and a bit more stable, if you are planning to keep what you own. Plus the quests are a lot of fun. That alone sells the Pure Good for me.
However, Frank's points are all valid. If you are a fast paced player (and most of them are), then you might benefit more from evil. Still have not enough experience with Greyguard (?) (Neutral).

 

[Rodmar18]

It depends whether you want to go monocultural or polycultural (and how much), because some bad actions owns you permanent cultural bad reputation/hatred.

To my experience, the Path to neutrality may be quite chaotic. Greyguards are best at absorbing conquered cities in their empire. Not migrating populations. If there are many sites, cleaning them with a powerful army can trigger the "Kill or spare" option, which allow for some alignment tweaking. Last time, I found myself declaring war to Independants (or vassalizing, then migrating), refusing peace with any A.I. player, and showing no mercy to fleeing guards. Otherwise acting "good".

 

[Zaskow]

Well, if you're single player there is not really big difference. If you're multiplayer guy evil path gives your units/heroes more experience and makes your development faster (faster site clearing, faster town conquering).

 

[Fluksen]

mostly what @Zaskow said but additionally
Becoming more good and becoming more evil gives exactly the same empire happiness bonus, so no difference here. Likewise if you play with empire quests the first player reaching prime evil will get a few (I believe 3) units of evil alignment, again this is mirrored by the player who gets pure good first.
Just declaring war and migrating all cities you meet will give you the evil alignment quicker than being nice and waiting for quests to become good so you get the happiness bonus earlier as well as the prime evil reward. Also while it is true that you will have to protect those cities yourself - bear in mind that vassals never give you their full income, I think the max is 80% of their income so at least in the long run actually owning cities is worth more than having a lot of vassals. Lastly migrating all cities to your own race will make it much more likely you get the empire quest "monoculture" as well as speeding up your racial gouvernance boni, it is better to have a racial gouvernance at level 4 than having 4 different level 1 racial governance unlocked.

 

[Tropical Sunset]

I usually begin with a good disposition but I turn to evil in the end game. Why? Well, I usually can´t defend all of my cities against the AI on the whole map and then resort to a scorched earth tactic. This leaves the AI with a more and more diminishing amount of resources to wage war while my three or four cities can be easily defended as they all are on the same island connected by roads.

 

[p55carroll]

I usually gravitate toward good also. But for variety I played a pure-evil game once, and it was the fastest win I've ever had in AoW3. I think evil can make the game go faster (except for the time you spend chasing fleeing enemies). It also makes everything clear-cut: you expect everybody to be your enemy, so if you tolerate peace for a while it's only to buy time to gain more power.

Not sure what to make of the Gray Guard yet. It's kind of annoying having to alternate between playing devil and angel just to keep yourself neutral. I think I'd be happier if being "dedicated to neutral" just deprived you of many of the good and evil options; then you could play a purely pragmatic role, steering a middle course and not doing any particularly good or bad things.

 

[Gutzzu]

It really matters who you play with. Necromancers are natural EVIL.So If you play Frostling Necromancer hasty plunder is the way to go.I can say that arguably wining vs AI is easiest with Frostling Necromancer while razing every city you conquer. You focus on having two cities. Very low defense and 3 armies that will demolish every city..I tend to Combine Necromancer and Sorcerer..And make the both un-dead i build 3 very strong armies and beat anything on the map while hast plundering everything.Its most snow balling effect so far i have discovered.You get shit load of money and you gain EVIL bonuses.