your missing the point entirely bud, and if you took a race by influence in GalCiv it still had the original species.

And im just asking for them not to get rid of the races they have, instead give them more depth. As for conquering a city of a different race who says it can't be done? i can see a town having several different races, no way they'd be thrown into the same military unit though.

Honestly i don't even care if the entire city is put to the sword, or converted to our race for that matter, im more of a casual gamer.

HOW ON EARTH ARE THESE RACES GOING TO INTERMARRY THOUGH? if i send my sovereigns daughter off to the troll king how are they going to have kids? same goes for your guys avatar vs my regular looking men.

Def want more options for created races!

I don't understand it. The fact that people prefers custom factions should had been an obvious, just like people prefering custom Sovereigns (especially right now that many talents/weaknesses do nothing).

In Gal Civ 2 and Dark Avatar I liked Terrans and Altarians but barely touched Altarians. In any case, I played mostly custom because that allowed me to pick the traits that suited me best (plus custom avatar and silly names optional). With Twilight (of the Arnor, mind you) I started to play more and more Altarians because they had a cool tech tree (yes, I could select the tree for my custom race but it gave me a reason to play the faction I liked more but never played because it sucked).

In Elemental right now, in the faction screen we select the alliegance, the race, colours, coat of arms, talents and weaknesses. Sounds very much to what you propose now. The exception would be... tech tree specific for the default factions? What else was there to wait for? Does the new plan involve generic tech trees due to racial simplification? The differentation, visuals aside, would be some bonuses picked in faction creation (like the traits in MoM)?

I suppose these changes are possible due to not affecting the campaign/lore so... ok. I want cat ears (head models without the normal ears so they don't end with two sets of different ears), cat tail, bird wings (although I don't see flying making it into Elemental, some wings with some animations would be lovely), pointy ears, reptile heads, reptile tail, different models of hands and feet, wolf tail, different models of horns, dwarven beards...

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.

If you want eye candy go watch Avatar. I want a good game.

That said i don't think playing against player created races can compete with playing against default races/factions. I liked how they gave each race in GalCiv a back story and unique feel when you played as them or against them. Player created races are shallow and often not very creative. There should be perks to choosing default races that custom races arn't allowed.

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

No comment.

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

Being able to create our own races (like elves, orcs, ...) would be just great, I agree with your decision.

But would the computer take advantage of their traits and be able to play them properly too? For instance if one creates races like orcs, elves, dwarves and all the middle earth races for a middle earth like game, will the AI have some clues about how to play them? for instance can we also chose a few behaviour traits like "aggressive", "defensive", "expansionnist", "territorialist", ... to help the AI? I mean it would be strange to have Elves as brutal world invaders and pacific orcs traders

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. )

Sounds like a good idea.  Being able to create races by their bonuses, weaknesses and looks would be a powerful tool.  I would suggest that you force the player to choose a weakness in their race if they want to choose strengths (by a reduced point distribution pool) as that would make for a much more varied mix and tactics to the game.

I suspect one of the joys you have with this beta process is being able to skim the best publicly created creations (and their accompanying lore) and add them to the stock characters of the game.  That way you get your stock whilst making this awesome community to give you their best.

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.

Maybe Im just stupid but I like simple things. I get confused if there are different races that look similar (I never really understood human inter-race conflict much).

The great thing about a different race is trying to figure out how you could have sex with it. Brad clearly loves this aspect also (children).

Factions are groups of people aligned with similar viewpoints - like furries. The furry faction is full of a wide range of memebers of 'various' races but mostly humans. There are many other factions. There are many other races (okay there isn't but were going into fantasy at this point).

So this is what my mind is telling me:

Elemental has 2 races that you can play as of the base game - Men and mosnter costume Fallen. Aproximatly 10 factions inhabit the world from those races.

In my mind they are devided into "Yup, I'd tap those guys." and "Err... well... go on then." The factions devided up into Emo, Cool, Emo, Emo, Emo, Emo, Cool.... etc.

But everytime I read something from Frogboy, that dosn't seem to be the case?

All I want is a good selection of factions that act like they are designed. I don't see the need for complications in this aspect. As in the words of Amorphis "I made that stonewoman for you. To see me and say I am here."

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.

I vote for 2 races at release with mixed-race factions.  MOO3 attempted to do this, and I always thought it was a very cool concept.  Be sure to add some attribute(s) to control how fast each race is attracted to civilizations and cities.  Even if my faction is mostly "men", perhaps a few "troglodytes" will still wander in.