Which nations represent order and good?

[Aezeal]

LA Patala is good, I'm surprised it got so few votes.
I think Van nations are really pretty good too.
Oceania, Man, Tien'chi and Jomon are good too.

[Amhazair]

Oceania is really (really!) big on racial superiority and purity. Patala nagas totally exploit their monkey population. Van are warlike conquerors who live for the thrill of combat and sacrifice their battle captives to their gods. You won't hear me arguing that their aren't more evil nations in the game, bacause there definitely are, but they certainly aren't shining paragons of morality.

[Hoplosternum]

Vans all have blood magic and I think they can all blood sacrifice too? This alone puts them in the evil camp. I am not sure the sneaky/pillage side to them really helps either Granted they are the enemies of the Giants (another evilish race) but I think they are still more evil than good.

[Aezeal]

they are sort of the good guys in norse mythology I'd say so that makes them good from a certain point of view blood sacrifice or not. Who are you to judge them

[Ewierl]

Aezeal said:
LA Patala is good, I'm surprised it got so few votes.
I think Van nations are really pretty good too.
Oceania, Man, Tien'chi and Jomon are good too.

Isn't LA Patala a small cadre of otherworldly serpents who rule their monkey underclass through hypnotism?

[Kristoffer O]

Underworldly serpents. Otherwise correct

[Maraxus]

Ewierl said:

Isn't LA Patala a small cadre of otherworldly serpents who rule their monkey underclass through hypnotism?

Oh, right... that adds bonus points for "order" but a penalty on the "good" part.

Plus, when I play them, the Serpent warriors are the front-line defenders for the monkey archers, so the Naga are fair rulers.


Right, I forgot the Van ... probably because of those blood sacrifices.

[SelfishGene]

Eriu is one of the closest nations to being good, as the Sidhe and a few lingering Tuatha have volunteered to return and aid their conquerors in the wider world. Generally water-magic or nature based nations are more closely aligned to being on the side of "good" than "evil"; Pangaea is not so much evil or good but amoral, emotional, and animalistic. The nations of Tir Na N'Og aren't really all that bad despite a warlike past, as they celebrate art and poetry as much as war. The Tuatha/Fir Bolg are a much less warlike version of the Van of Vanheim, and are more quickly banished and defeated (whether ironic or intentional, i also have a much harder time making Tir or Eriu work in-game than any of the much more effective Van nations.)

Of the three subsea nations, Oceania is by far the least sinister. Atlantis is strange and monstrous, but Ryleh is of course evil and alien.

Tien Chi is probably a reasonably good empire; it's failings are ones of external conquest, but it's underpinnings of the "way" remain.

Ulm and Marverni aren't so much good but proud half-civilized marginal nations. Marverni sort of wishes they could commit atrocities but aren't particularly good at them.

Man could be considered good if you don't think too hard about their past . But as a feudal nation they're good only in the broadest sense of the word.

Pythium and Arco are probably a good nation insofar as an Empires can be considered good. Marignon gives in to the fear of death and makes pact with the "lesser" evil; Ulm is somehow corrupted (the nature of the "Night of Treason" isn't explained or foreshadowed much in 2nd age Ulm) and becomes a dark shadow of it's former stern self.

[Kuritza]

Since 'good' is a rather undefined post, lets make it more simple. Imagine you're an indie villager and your province is about to be conquered. You'd prefer your new masters to be...
(choose a nation).

I think most nations will be ruled out because they either make you a slave, sacrifice you, kill you just to make room for their offspring, eat you or make you a zombie. Some nations certainly feel 'acceptable' though, many others seem better than most. For example, LA Vanheim seems better than LA Mictlan, and Man is always preferable to Marignon.

[Agema]

I find it extremely hard to characterise many of the nations as "Good". What you call "good" - using a Westernised RL definition - is a nation that you perceive that looks after it's population reasonably fairly, and potentially treats other nations humanely.

You could draw from Pythium and Marignon's description, for instance, they are trying to save itself from the corruption of Ermor, the former probably much more benevolently than the religious zeal of the latter. MA Ermor might have been corrupted by death magic from EA, but they're trying to fend it off (and we can gather they fail from LA).