I should note:

1) I am not suggesting coding a different AI for each faction. One AI for all factions, but the same AI is aware of its special abilities.

2) I am totally in favour of allowing us to conquer "Fallen" cities and feel the factions should not quite be "races" but rather thought of Kingdoms. If it looks like a man, walks like a man, it is a man! Stick it in the platemail suit and send 'er out. Vary the initial stats if you must. : )

3) Right now, no race has "special units." Just because you could make Fallen soldiers and Men soldiers it doesn't really have to change the game that much. This isn't Age of Wonders, conquering the dwarfs does not give you a super uber unit you can cheese with the Undead special uber unit.

Please keep it the way it is, GalCiv 2 was awesome everyone loves making their own race, but the other races had depth to them and i often played as them to get a feel for a certain style of gameplay.

Now i don't mean to be rude or anything but i do not want a bunch of Avatars, Necrons, and who knows what in my games, i preffer to play game against factions preset by you guys and possibly using a faction i've twisted around a little. You need to promote the factions a little more, i've tried looking them up and at this stage they are all the same.

Let modders, make new races, let players make new factions. Keep what you have because it is great, im personally anticipating learning more about the races and factions of elemental, not what some other person has created that does nto belong in the game.

In GC2, taking a planet means doing a genocide which isn't the case in Elemental (you take a city with one army and keep the city population)

Def want more options for created races!

Well, I think this idea is better than how you handled races in GC2... I'd do it differently though. Scrap default SOVEREIGNS, but keep the stock races and really cut down on the changes you can make for them. Maybe get rid of em completely.

In GC2, every race had the same pool of strengths and weaknesses to choose from, with similar point totals, a few starting stat differences that were outweighed by the custom points, and only one real form of differentiation: super abilities. Even the different tech trees in Arnor weren't all that... different. It felt a little pointless what you picked. I don't want to see elemental repeat that problem, either through the same over-customizable stock races or just dropping the pretenses of stock races.

A lot of this game seems to be centered around the sovereign, and the sovereign customization system even in this beta stage is a LOT better than race customization. There's so many different options for what they can do, what they can start out with, and they all distinctly affect the sovereign instead of being generic empire wide boosting stuff (except scholar. scrap that pick.) Roll with this strong point. Let this wide variety of things you can do with your character be the cornerstone of customization, and fix the races like in a civ game.

On the AI end each race could have default sovereign stats/abilites that AIs would focus on, but I wouldn't even provide that option to the player. If you're going to offer major customization in an area default templates for players seem a bit pointless.

I love that idea 100% Brad. It would be worth the wait if such changes where made to Elemental if you ask me.

From what I understand, Frogboy, I think I like the idea you have presented. I'm not entirely clear as to the intent though.  Correct me if I am wrong in my analysis.

Currently:

-10 factions

-Each faction falls under either Fallen or Men, but are actually sub-races (Gilden's "Ironeers" for instance could be considered dwarves)

-Each faction has its own story and personality, shown both by its strengths/weakness and the play-style of the AI associated

-When you conquer a city the population is converted into your faction and loses its racial identity. So, even if the population was made up of trolls, they'd now be regular men like your kingdom, no racial distinction beyond the faction

-You can create your own custom faction, but the race is nothing more then cosmetics.

You propose:

-2 races with specific strengths and weaknesses

-5 factions per race, each with its own distinctive qualities

-Each faction would still retain its story and personality, demonstrated by its strengths/weakness and the play-style for the AI

-When you conquer a city the population would switch factions, but would retain its racial identity, giving you a racially mixed population pool.  Thus allowing you to build an army based on the races you have available in your kingdom/empire.

-You can create your own custom faction, and your custom race, defining not only the appearance of your people but what they are good at, beyond the qualities granted by their faction.

Maybe I'm not fully understanding your post, but if I am, I really think it'd make for a more diverse game in the long run.  Players could quickly mod in a unique race for each faction, and if coded right, they AI would understand how to make use of these custom races. Sounds stellar to me, if I'm not confused that is

You guess right.

As for the rare beings, I’m one of them.

Sometimes I feel like the odd guy on these forums, some kind of Joe-six-pack if you want: I don’t know about coding or modding, never installed any mod in any game, I don’t play multiplayer, I play few games and very rarely read fantasy (except I have the whole Conan books and comics).

So, YES: I buy and I play what was given to me.

Now, I don’t know what to do with this journal entry.

First, what does it mean “The faction I create myself”? As some said, there isn’t much difference between factions, if any. Usually, I choose my Sovereign and just take the kingdom associated with him, then I fiddle with the traits. I wouldn’t call it ‘creating’ a faction. And I don’t spend time with it since, at this stage, it’s more about finding CTDs and game-freezes than fiddling with the editor.

But what I thought the other week, and someone spoke about it, is that it gave some special feeling to meet Procipinee in the game, knowing she was the daughter of the old magic master. I thought: yeah, it’s good to start feeling immersion and attachement to people and kingdoms, to feel the game becoming a world of its own.

That’s why the base game should have predetermined races with their special abilities, special lore and so on: immersion! That’s a big part of what makes a game stand the test of time, perhaps even more than mechanisms and sure a lot more than graphics and eye-candy customization, even if these are fine. But to be honest, and take ‘space-exemples’, I played a lot with GalCiv1 but only 2-3 games with galCiv2; it just didn’t appealed to me and customizing ships for the sake of it was some pain, I would have just preferred to get the basic choice or, as in Space empires IV, to choose at the beginning a general line for my ships (some like rockets, some flats, some like balls) when I also choose how the race looks like. Simple and efficient.

Immersion, I said. Yes! It’s key.

If I still play Alpha Centauri after 10 years (and never tried any Civ), that’s because of the epic backstory, because each faction has a face, a name, and play very differently, because I feel like reading Red Mars once again when I play.

With Europa Universalis 2, after having played tens of games, I am still excited that I send my explorers discover the New World or  the nations around the Pacific Ocean, even if I know perfectly well where they are and what they are. I play a nation, I have a religion, some destiny goals. It’s epic.

Everytime I read here that “Players will take care of it” or “It will be modded so don’t worry”, my blood boils.

Don’t get me wrong: I am all for modding tools and some customizing options. I wonder what wonders people will do with them: mods of Lord of the Rings, Forgotten Realms, Hyborian World… I’ll probably go out of my way and install some.

But the game must be solid and stand-alone out of the box. Give us lore, stories, tell us who is Lord Gilden (I like him, makes me think about King Edward in Braveheart), make factions/races use different AIs if possible!

That would be what Main Street thinks comparatively with Silicon Valley.

(Feel free to correct me if I misunderstood the intent! I’m not native English speaker and I like to groan before thinking sometimes. )

Frogboy is it you that is flying the 'only 2 races' flag?

I don't really see how having the original factions as different races costs more than allowing more customisation of the players race but regardless I don't see how this improves the player experience.

When I play I want to choose a race or create my own but I deffinately want to play against varied and well fleshed out stock races.  There's no way I want to play against only men in a fantasy game.  I might want to create a game Vs 2 other races and feel the enemy is very different to another game where I play against 2 different races.  The different feel would come from aesthetics, AI play style and opponents strengths/weaknesses.  Aesthetics is a massive part of that (probably biggest in my opinion, although don't mistake what I am saying for being Hortz) and I can't see men in different armour types would make me feel like I'm having much of a different game to the last.

Now wait a sec. It was a little premature to even have that poll, factions flat and undetailed as they are right now. Improving races is absolutely fine, but not at the cost of making pre-existing factions undiverse and uninteresting.

This. I agree completely. This was one of the reasons why I loved AoW 2. - SM. Lots of different races. -> Diversity & fun.

I am not surpried about the votes. Right now the players don't see any real differences between the factions. We don't have unique tech trees at all. The only difference between the races are the bonuses [+diplo bonus etc.] Also, it's fun to play with a custom faction...it's a fact. If we would have custom races in AoW 2., most of the players would play with those, I am pretty sure about this. Creating a custom faction gives you the power to make it "uber". -> Powergaming basically.

Additional notes - The current system can work. Factions will be diverse enough in the final product. Different tech trees, combined with other stuff [+diplo bonus, +military production bonus etc.] should be enough imo. What else do we want really? Oh yes, the "eye candy"...right now most of the factions are humans, which means -> No real "eye candy" for us. It would be cool to have vastly different looking races in the vanilla game [lizardmen, orcs etc.], but it's against the lore. The modders will take care of this.

I'm so glad that even major parts of the game like this are still under review. This is what makes this form of 'beta' testing so amazing!

This topic has been debated quite a bit recently. I could rant about this for many paragraphs, but I will try to keep it somewhat brief. Some of my ideas are already being argued by others, I just wanted to share my take on all of this.

Elemental needs two things in this area:

1) The ability for players to pick up the game and play without spending tons of time customizing the game.

2) The ability for players to customize their experience without creating mods.

While retaining the following key features:

1) Gameplay that forces players to make meaingful decisions.

2) Variety

3) Character (ie: story, lore, and personality, not just bland stats)

Thus, a player should be able to jump right in and find a fun game that has lots of variety, personality, and interesting, meaingful choices and stratgies. A player can also enter the game and fully customize their gameplay experience, if they want to spend the time to do so.

My suggestions on how best to do this:

1) Elemental should have several well developed factions, races, and Sovereigns that are each different in lore, personality, and gameplay. I'm all for having 100 different factions that are all awesome, but that is impossible. I am intrigued by the current slate of factions and look forward to seeing them developed. I am fine with the current slate as long as they are developed fully and play differently. This will appeal to the ''jump in and play' players who don't want to spend time customizing everything, and will also provide the critical fully developed and interesting AI opponents for all players in all games. I consider this to be essential to the game's success.

2) Each faction should be defined by three things:

     A) The Faction itself (ie: Gilden, Capitar, etc)

          i) Unique, fully developed lore

          ii) Characteristics (ie Civis, Ethos, whatever) that define the faction's government, economy, politics, etc. These characteristics can be changed by adopting new Civis / whatever that have been researched, at great cost. So what starts as a Feudal Kingdom could evolve into a Merchant Republic.

          iii) Unique tech / building / equipment lines for each Faction. Most will be generic, but there will be special things that each Faction can acquire. Custom Factions will be able to select their unique lines. This would be defined by broad archetypes.

     The primary Race of that Faction (ie: men, Fallen, Sub-Fallen, Sub-Men, etc.)

          i) Unique, fully developed lore

          ii) Characteristics that are set at the Race's creation that never change (or maybe only with some mega-spell or other big event)

          iii) The total population of each City and Faction is broken down by Race. Cities and Factions can have mixed races, with new races being gained through conquest or peaceful migration. Peaceful migration would be influenced by diplomacy, treatment of that race, etc. Players can design and create units and select the race of the unit. As long as a city has population units of a particular race, it can recruit units with that race.

         iv) Races would have attitudes towards other races which would influence Faction level diplomacy, happiness in cities, army morale, etc. These attitudes could be helped or harmed by events in the game. So the 'elves' and 'dwarves' might like each other at first and work together, but relations could later be badly hurt by some major event, leading to changes in diplomatic relations and happiness in mixed cities.

     C) The Sovereign

             i) Basically the same as now.

             ii) Sovereigns have a race and can only intermarry children with compatible races. This may become too complicated, so a simple 'can intermarry' option would allow most factions to breed, and would keep some weird Human-Klackon scenarios from arising.

Sigh...sorry...much longer than I wanted, but this is one of the issues with Elemental that I, and I think many players, really care about. BOTTOM LINE: Players need the ability to customize their experience, have meaningful options, and jump into a fully developed game if they don't want to spend the time to develop everything themselves.

Fully customisable races gets my vote!