You misread that. The current model would change all your cities to your faction, and the new model would create mixed populations.

  I like(oops) creating my own factons so far and I am sure I would just love to create my own races of elves, orcs, etc..What I don't particularly like if we do that is  "a 'Race' tab where you would design what they look like along with a very simple Strength and Weakness list."  As of yet I haven't been able to model any units.  When I'm in unit creation screen I can see a white window with a lil bit of turqois color in it.  I can see the background poses and background pictures I just can't get them to work.  So assuming the modeler tool is working well for others how do you like creating and designing what your unit looks like?  Have you been able to do that?  A little worried about what the models might look like.  Hoping it is sufficient for a wide variety of racial types.  Like wings, gills, scales, claws, talons. sharp teeth, cat irises(eyes), multihued beings, eye stalks, suction cup limbs, etc.

We have at most a few sentences of lore and backstory behind most of the factions. The only exception being Pariden, which you might notice is about twice as popular as the next highest.

We have absolutely no connection to these factions, and honestly I don't think the game has reached a point where their differences can actually be noticed; either that or they just aren't different enough to begin with. I'm not surprised custom races are vastly more popular than the stock races - the stock factions feel incomplete (and I imagine they are indeed very incomplete), so why bother playing one of them when we can invent our own faction with our own narrative or story? I think this would change as the game progresses to the point where faction differences begin to matter, the background and lore is expanded on, and the player demographic expands beyond the type of people interesting in beta testing.

Additionally, what about unique techs and faction-specific magic? I recall a while ago it was mentioned that each faction would have a handful of unique techs available only to them. And I remember reading that the majority of faction differentiation was going to be done with magic. Are these being dropped? Would you continue developing these as content for custom races?

To be honest, while I do like the idea of more content for custom factions and neat features like mixed-race armies, I'm wary of there only being two stock races. I enjoy playing custom races and probably play them 75% of the time or more, but I don't particularly enjoy playing against custom AI races. Hand-crafted factions, through the synergy of their specialized AI, backstory, leader personalities, etc, provide an experience that simply cannot (from my experience) be captured by a custom race in the hands of the computer. And I would hate to have to choose between populating a world with only two stock factions, and populating a world full of randomized custom factions.

YES YES YES!

That should be the way to do it.

Don't worry about fleshing out the races too much.

You can even try to do mixed races within a city, although that would be very complicated....

I think this is a good idea, although I'm surprised that providing a generic race modeling option (and balancing it) is only about as expensive (in development time) as making one or two "premade" races.

@Frogboy

have my children (don't panic i don't have any), those are great ideas

Am i the only one to think that if people choose custom factions over premade ones, it's because the premades ones aren't appealing enough ? Maybe it would be better to work on improving the premade factions so that people choose them thinking "wow, a slave master draconian blood spitting faction, how cool !" ?

In Gal Civ 2 i loved to play the pre made factions/races, because, well, destroying the galaxy with your drengin psychotic furred enslaving fleet was just... fun. In Elemental, i dont get that feeling yet : when i face the selection screen, i just pick the faction with the bonus i want, and that's it. We need some cool factions !

I'd love to be able to customise races as well as sovereign, that would be some pretty tasty icing on an already delicious cake.

But I do share the concerns about the resulting lack of depth for the AI factions, particularly where the SP campaign was then involved.

Not that I personally will likely end up finishing the SP campaign (unless it is amazing) as I'll be likely using it as a tutorial and spring board for the online play, but hey.

So I guess ultimately for me: If I have to chose between being able to create a custom race OR having various developed preset factions.. I definitely pick on the side of customisation.

But if we could meet in some middle ground where existing work didn't have to be tossed out, that would be best of all.

Personally, I don't feel that I have enough knowledge at this point to make an informed decision.

What differences would the stock races have if you were to go that route? Would they have some different buildings, research, magic, and units (to at least a short extent)? Also, by that I don't mean new textures and particle effects; I mean will they have abilities unique to them in a game changing way? For example, one race may have the ability to summon ogres, and no other race can. Maybe that race can also sacrifice population to gain spell points, and they may have a tactical spell that forces some of their opponents troops to turn on their own faction.

On the other hand what would you be able to customize with a race editor? As far as strengths and weaknesses are concerned I can't think of much meaningful that one could add to a race that they can't add to a faction; so most strength and weakness attributes would be unnecessary for the race editor from my perspective, except for the illusion of addition customization. The other point that you mentioned is appearance, but to be able to make any significant change in a races appearance would require a very powerful editor that could be very difficult to squeeze into your development time if there isn't already a large chunk of time alloted; look at how long it took Spore to create a powerful creature editor, it took so much of their multiple year development time that they barely had any time for the rest of the game. Now, if the race editor is as simple as... this one is taller, this one is shorter, this one is wider, and this one has blue skin... then it would be of minimal gameplay value.

Looking at the two of these, taking option A and creating more races from the get go would give far more customization from my perspective even if its only one additional race. I would also be concerned that option B would damage the campaign, and there is the AI in custom games to think about; I would much rather have interesting and diverse opponents than tall, blue skinned people running around my cities. As for mixing races, I think it would be much more important to have this ability with option A than B.

Bare in mind that I am trying to fill in the gaping holes of knowledge regarding this topic that I currently have with pure speculation. Ultimately I would like to hear more from the development team about what these options really entail so that I can make an informed decision.

Frogboy, I hope you will consider this.

The factions aren't there for us. They're there for the AI, to give the AI a set of known strengths and weaknesses, and specific traits. The AI that plays the Krax will know what tactics the Krax use best, what units work the best with them. They won't know how to play "random mishmash #9912." They're there to give the enemies we face in Elemental life, and a difference between enemy #1, and enemy #2. The horsemen from the steppes should *FEEL* like the horsemen from the steppes, they should field hundreds of elite calvary units and sweep across the land. The seamen should build great navies and the Gilden should be rich beyond dreams.

It is the differences that can give the world we play in a semblance of life, not one sparsely populated by randomly strewn-together races (those belong to the independant city-states that arise and fall, not those lead by full NPCs) or playermade ones with no real forethought or flavour.

I guess:

• The AI can be better balanced to take advantage of a known set of weaknesses and strengths.
• The Flavour of the enemies we fight requires detail and attention to what each "race" is.
• We'd like to have the option to play games where everyone is playing a predesigned race, since balancing all the abilities AND soverigns will be a nightmare.
• A lot of us love lore. We want to find out about the world and read these fascinating in-game little snippets that are part of the other cultures in the game, not just random "<RandomFaction> does <RandomVerb>."
• Some players just want to hit the "play now!" button. Unlike us they want a quick enjoyment without a lot of thinking about things in advance. Believe me these rare beings do exist!

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.

What is the point in the current beta to choose a premade faction instead of a custom faction? You can alter the premade faction by adding/removing strength and weakness. And the specific benefits (which couldn't be choose by a custom faction) aren't meaningful enough (seafaring bonus) in the beta to specifically choose a faction.

And with all available strengths/weaknesses, the premade factions really need some interesting bonuses that can't be available to a custom faction.

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.

please leave it to the modders to make races, playing against custom races sucked in GalCiv, preset races/factions are much funner.

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)