Cities should produce citizens of the race that inhabits them. But if there are many races and you must design your own units, then you have to design one more unit per race you conquered. Which means more work and micromanagement, as you have to design units yourself. So it would probably be best to reduce the number of races to a minimum.

I think it won't require designing different units - when you produce a unit of a different race, it will just get some bonuses/penalties to its attributes. Only the visuals can be a problem, if you design the appearance of a unit, when it's another race it will look different.

I don't think this poll is a very good test.  Without any flavor text, graphics, or back story to differentiate them, it is no wonder that none of us are at all attached to the established factions.  You'll notice that the faction with the most votes is the one for which we have learned a little back story.

A 1+ to this or that stats bonus isn't going to make anyone attached to a particular race.  You need to make them live a breathe before we're going to care one way or another.

Outstanding. This is excatly what I wanted to hear. Good work guys

 Does it really matter? I mean how many really play the campaign that comes with TBS games? I know I rarely do unless I can play it with custom races.

If the campaign has to take a hit in order for use to have good customization tools then I say let it take the hit. Customization is much more important then any campaign.

I do.

Quote by PawelS

I do.

As do I. In some games (like Age of Wonders) the campaign is much more challenging and fun then regular scenarios since in the campaign the developers made sure to put hard challenges on the hardest difficulty while the regular scenarios may or may not be challenging.

However, the campaign is only good for 2 playthoughs if there's no alternative paths and such.

Aye, I play the campaign as well. Of note, King Arthur had multi-path campaign ... even if choices were limited. Perhaps interesting backbone to place as a Foil vs any Elemental Campaign plans?

 I think your in the minority. I know that in GAL Civ 2 I rarly played as the stock races I did use them as opponets but I enjoyed playing against custom races better. But the more races in the game the better both custom and stock.

Well I will disagree with you of coarse. In GalCiv2 the races that came with the game did not have more 'depth' than custom races that you create.

Had I'd perfer that we be given the tools to customize our own races the way we want instead of letting modders do it.

There should be several stock races with the game but allows the USER FRIENDLY tools to create races just as in depth as the stock races without having to know some programmers language.

Playing against custom races was great in GalCiv2 not sure why you think other wise. Perhaps you did not know how to make custom races so you did it poorly. The most fun that my frinds and I have had in that game was playing with and agienst the custom races.

"What if you removed the ability to customize your race/faction near the end of the beta test to help improve the built-in ones specifically?  Testers would only use the built-in races to help refine/tweak them further."

Yep, I think it would be good to disable customizing factions and sovereigns both for a while.  Doesn't have to be near the end though.

This is what I want to say too.  

It is time to revisit the thread "What should happen when you capture a town?"   A new suggestion I've now (or did some one have already suggested a similar already? from the Dev?), is that when you have capture a new town of made of same race, you keep the population (even if it is of different fraction).   But when the town is made up of a different race,  the city population goes to 0.   This does not mean ethnic cleansing, it simply means you cannot use any of the local pop as your workforce.   Those pop of  the other race will be deplaced to the neighbouring cities (that accept them as workforce) or into the wild gradually.

This way should be a much better way to handle city capture than what OP mentioned.

I think it would be more fun to be able to keep cities of other races, like in MoM and AoW.

PawelS, Are you the same PawelS at my AOWSM days?  

"I think it would be more fun to be able to keep cities of other races, like in MoM and AoW."

This is the real question.   No one want to play just 1 fraction the whole game; but if you can utilize whatever race/fraction you capture, your starting race/fraction does not matter, because you end up with a broad mix of fraction anyway after the mid game.    I hope this game ends up in the middle of this spectrum.

Other than my reply 118, another way can be used.   All fractions are arranged in a circle, fraction 1 sitting next to fraction 2, 2 next to 3, etc.  If you are playing with fraction 2, you can capture towns of fraction 1 & 3  to utilize its population.   Fraction 1 & 3 is "compatible" to fraction 2.   

This idea can be further modified (when balance/lore requires it) that fraction 2 can be compatible with 10 and 4, or even some out-of-the-way compatibility with fraction 8.