I like seeing where other similar games ended up AFTER being modded. I guess it shows how games mature and where balance between racial groups and unique racial play-styles tends to end up.

Age of Wonders

Started off being very LOTRish with elves, orcs, humans, undead, goblins etc. Excellent diversity and racial strengths and weaknesses.

Second version introduced a couple of new races that didn't do much for me. In particular the Shadow people and desert dwellers (can't remember the names). The diversity became a little too much and detracted from the feel of the game.

After modding the racial diversity was enhanced but the races were made much more cohesive thematically. For me this has been the best game I've ever played because the world lives and is completely different each time you play it. The random maps are great but it really comes down to the races you find along the way.

Age of Wonders also did an excellent job of keeping racial integrity. For example, if an orc army took an elvish city, you had to cleanse it. You would not find combined armies because if good units were placed with evil units in an army it would cause unrest. Love the way Age of Wonders controlled this balance while other games ignored it (specifically Warlords and Heroes of Might and Magic you could mix and match as much as you liked).

Civilisation 4

Good game as vanilla with racial traits playing a low role.

Introduce the Fall from Heaven mod and OMFG!!!! Much much better than the original game. Introduces excellent racial diversity and unique playing styles.

Fall from Heaven takes the game into new areas. Where as Age of Wonders had very clear racial boundaries, Fall from Heaven blurs the divide but keep the playing style for each faction very different. Can't remember the specifics but the I think the elvish race as an example had a couple of clear racial divides and then a number of faction choices based on the leader.

Dominions

Great game but with low racial diversity at first glance. Once you start playing the racial diversity and strategies show themselves beautifully.

In this case modding is great but doesn't dramatically improve the vanilla game (although some would disagree I guess).

Key points

We haven't much racial diversity within the beta version yet so we can't really judge the final game on this score yet. But I think the mod-ability of the game will allow a heap of freedom.

I'd love to see all the classic fantasy races available and all with very different playing styles and tech trees.

Specically:

• Humans
• Elves
• Orcs
• Lizardmen
• Dwarves
• Undead

I'd also love each race to need to maintain its integrity to a degree. Don't want to see undead races controlled by elves as an example. But undead controlled by humans would be OK.

Each race/faction should have a specific tech tree to enhance the core tech tree. Taking this a bit further than Gal Civ for example.

Don't want to end up taking this balance too far. Would hate to see space aliens as an example with laser weapons in a fantasy world.