Why do people go evil

[hasty warren]

Trying to play a decent good race so only trying to do alliances with like minds. meet some happy froggys but over time they take nothing but evil actions why? Any way to convert them or help them on the right path 🙂

[toxic grotto]

it gives you more xp (killing mobs instead of letting them escape) is one of the biggest aspects I assume... also quite a few other choices are just objectively better gameplay wise (as in it gives you an edge) there are just too many choices that actually penalize you for taking the good choice

[mossy mountain]

Just like real life

[faint brook]

Well amphibians are cold blooded, so what you can do is try warming them up so they feel happier by lighting their cities on fire. The dancing flames will also provide a fun and entertaining background for them to forget their worries and concerns

[safe chasm]

Evil gives you immediate benefits in events

Good is often gained if you forgo benefits

Most of my games seem to wind up around neutral

[floral gate]

Raiding provinces gives me money and hinders my enemies

[burnt swallow]

There is no benifit to going good, including from everything said here already, the AI also spam forward settle you so trying to play good means you are gonna have only a few cities that take have claimed maybe 5 or 6 zones before the AI claims everything else, so i see no choice but to go evil to free up thoes slots for my cities, like in almost all of my games even if i set it to the furthest spawn i can by turn 5 i have n AI outpost pretty much 2 jumps from my capitol

[trail fossil]

good is absolutely the worst choice. there aren't even long term benefits from it most of the time. while evil most of the time gives both short and long term benefits. i wish the devs balanced this better.

[mossy mountain]

Good is an intrinsic goal, but not a competitive strategy. Unless you're high culture or have Devotees of good, in which case it gives stability and imperium. It'd be nice if being good gave better rewards from vassal events and cultural quests.

[hazy arrow]

While it's true the "increased Negative Events" you get for being Evil are not inherently bad for you, depending on the options provided, it's possible the "increased Positive Events" are, on the average, better than the Negative ones. I would have to see more Events in general to really make that kind of verdict.

The main benefit from going Good, really, is diplomatic. It provides much faster progression along the Vassal track with Free Cities. Also, more A.I. empires will be happy to talk with you.
Not losing units as often is sometimes nice, but it's very true that you will also have less experience overall.

It's also much more difficult, most notable for the High Culture's benefit, to reach and maintain Pure Good than it is to reach Pure Evil.

Just Trespass and Pillage a bit bunch, and you can hit Pure Evil very quickly.

On medium and larger maps, with more Free Cities, going Good can be very rewarding, for the sake of amassing a bunch of Vassal minions for income and Magic Materials, without needing to expend Imperium to increase the City Cap, or build Outposts to claim the Magic Materials.

[safe chasm]

I think I figured out why most AI rulers end up evil - the AI really likes to pillage each other. I had a run where a ruler even had the Dedicated to Good trait, but ended up at Very Evil because of all the pillaging he was doing.

[distant yoke]

This is actually just poor wording on the devs part, they've had to explain several times on this discord that the alignment effect on events increasing their "Chance to be Negative" actually means "Event specifically themed around you being an evil person" NOT "Events that are bad for you". Same for "Chance to be Positive" in good alignment.

It's flavor of events NOT events that are good/bad for you.

[toxic grotto]

The main benefit from going Good, really, is diplomatic. It provides much faster progression along the Vassal track with Free Cities.
not necessarily true, if a free city is evil by nature you actually get a bonus there, and there are options to fast track vassalage for evil rulers as well

[north breach]

Is this not exactly what fenraellis was going for?

Unfortunately I had hardly time to play last week, yet I find this thread extraorinally interesting as before release I only read people complaining that there will be no incentive to become evil and that you will be punished for it, yet here it sound the other way round😅

[toxic grotto]

it is way more easy to get evil now than it was in any AoW before, and I do believe the issue is that the game tends to punish good players
no xp for letting stacks run away, no rewards from quests, removing justifications for going to war, etc

[distant yoke]

I think that the main problem is that the AI is very happy to pillage provinces all the time. So If two AI go to war both will be evil soon, removing any bonuses you might have had with them.

In my current game Alfred Elderstone is evil. The Chivalrous Diplomat himself.

Either toning down the some AIs tendancy to pillage or maybe make some of the AI personalities like good players even if they are evil could be a step in the right direction?

[toxic grotto]

I also have never seen an AI remove a rivalry thing, which usually eventually leads to a war, in which they will eventually do evil things. AIs should be able to forgive grievances and get good points for it, like players, maybe they can, but it basically never happens as it's just a downwards spiral at some point

[grizzled tide]

Just want to clarify that there has been some false info spread (yes, also we devs can be misinformed, it's a huge game). It does mean more negative / positive events as the in game text says. Only that our definition of negative is not pure negative, so any event you get will still offer you something in return, though that thing in return may be less useful in the specific player situation. The main difference to neutral events is that you cannot bail out.

In general it can be said that the +negative events is mostly punishing by virtue of leading to less positive events as pointed out by someone else here already. (though wrong negative event at wrong moment can still be painful)