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.

^^ Yeah, AoW2 got that one right, lots of races & unit mixing, crappy morale for units if they are mixed with races they hate,  I can only imagine the pain it would be to run a dwarven city captured by goblins...  If an evil faction can somehow harness the labor of the 'good' population through slavery & what not then that would be awesome.  None beat the dwarves as  slaves....

Please, devs, allow for unit mixing.  Nothing's more annoying than capturing that 'whatever race' city then having it's population flip to your race, meaning you get to make the same units you've been making, nothing new.  Whoopee.  I wouldn't care if doing this mixed race thing right backs the game's release until the end of 2011, would be worth the wait.

Heh, man if all the ideas posted in these forums were implemented, this would be the 4X fantasy game to end all 4X fantasy games, well at least until the release of E:WOM 2

Got to say, though, I'm holding out hope that we get dwarves, elves, etc instead of just 'men'....

Hobgoblins... how come there are never any hobgoblins in these fantasy games?  Either as a unit for the goblin race or a race unto their own?  And gnolls, don't forget the gnolls!

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.

At the moment we just don't know much about most of the factions. Too much stuff is missing from the game to really get to know any factions that well. So the poll numbers can be kind of misleading that way. We certainly need factions to play against. While I might like to create my own, I also like to play as some of the built in ones and really don't want to have to create ones to play against.

Letting people create their own races is cool, though.

Fully customisable races gets my vote!

This is what I was talking about as well.

Additional notes: Whatever we end up having later on in an expansion or EWoM 2., we need to have predesigned factions, else the AI will have serious problems imo. Also, custom factions/races shouldn't be better than a predesigned faction/race. It's important. Creating a custom race must be fun, but it must have its limits regarding balance.

The only input I would give would be to make sure bonuses and weaknesses are BALLANCED!

Take for example, Gnolls from MoM.  

Horrible.  Barely any strengths, many weaknesses.  The only time I ever played them was when I wanted a challenge.

When making the race designer, place only abilities  that MATTER.

You know when you take over a city you should have a choice between keeping the population that is there or (killing/magicly altering them to turn into your race) so that if you dont like how one race looks like you press "Kill Current Citizens" or "Magicly Alter current citizens" i would press kill or magocly alter most the times oh a "Enslave current population" would be cool as well coz if i make a race that hates every other race be it kingdom or empire i dont think it would go if they had cities full of other races coz the leader would be like "i thought we aim to destroy everyother race but ours why do they live in our city" "Sorry sir its in the game we just cannot get rid of them might i suggest a mod" "yeah lets go with that" so i would like it optional for my EVIL custom race and my traditional(in a sence that they hate other races being in their citys...unless they are slaves) race would be a good thing just a bit of code i guess i dont make games might be lots of code still i personaly hate it wene i got other races in my city

I'm pretty sure he ment take over a city and it's population stays what it is. Now considering you made your native population at your starting city, you now have a city of a different race to use and make units from, but they aren't mixed. I'd almost garantee that's the way he ment, especially since it's a lot easier to code it that way.

So when he says enough customisation assets, then does he mean there would be the opportunity to -

(1) Choose skin colour

(2) Choose head shapes / body builds (e.g. bestial head, red eyes, muscular body, green skin = orc)

(3) Choose ear shapes (slender body, pointy ears = elf)

(4) Scale the models (small = halflings)

(5) Partially scale the models (short but wide = dwarfs)

'Cos that would be cool

  From a earlier thread someone had mentioned it would be nice if the humans took over an 'elven' city, and then with time, the city wouuld eventually produce half-elves(the mix of humans an elves).  I think that poster had it right(what I would like to see also, but might not be possible).  There should be many options when 'conquering' a city.  Raze, enslave, assimulation, tension among the different races(for some), etc.  Some populations should be hard coded for not being able to interbreed(elves and orcs), some should have the option to interbreed (like humans with elves, orcs, gnolls, etc).  The reasons for this can be varried like racial enmity, some races  wanting to be 'pure', genetic disposition, magic, lore of game, etc.  So some cities would remain with the same racial make-up before and after conquering, some cities would be mixed race with diversity(units we could use also), and some cities would remove existing populations to the outskirts of the 'civilized' part of town, and some cities would get a whole new racial identity through replacing them(genocide for the inhabitants)with a completely different race or races in a current 'inventory'.  Glad were at least discussing these options.

  Another big thumbs up for Stardocks concern for their product and willingness to relook at a big picture items like this(no matter if it make it in or not).

This is fantastic. This is one of the first things that I'd been intending to try to mod in, but if it's in the game as stock then so much the better. A lot of the other things that have been suggested in this thread is stuff that I'd also love to see.

Yeah, I'm not sure I would interpret that poll the same way. Even if I play my own custom race, I definitely want the other players' races to have interesting flavour, not just be identical stock races.

I like the work you Devs do, so I'd like to see your provided races.  I think your races would make a more... complete/integrated world.

I'd also like to be able to import races made by others, and make my own, and be able to play against them in my games.

So yes, I want best of both worlds.

Given that there are only so many things you can do and if you provide races then something else will have to give, I'd still like to see your provided races.  I'd rather delay release a week or so for this.

As an aside, I'll probably only ever play a customized race/faction myself.

Customizing my own race is good, but I don't want to customize the AI races. I liked the mixed population in MoM. It simply makes sense. The approach of Master of Orion 1 is logical too, but killing all people on a planet (or in a city) is too cruel. Even if I were evil, I would rather turn them to slaves, so I can use them. If you conquer the city and all the people become your race - it is not only illogical, but it also makes your empire oversimplified.

And if you look at Earth, in the areas where two cultures meet (even if they fight against themselves) the population is mixed. Good example is Israel and Palestine.