well, I'd certainly like an Undead based Religion, a Draconian based religion, an Earth/Nature based religion, and so on ... I'd like to see limited auxiliary units being used based upon which religion you follow ... and of course for the Undead religion to have hordes of zombies .... heck, it would be cool if you could mod in a Zombie infection mod, start of with 1-3 infection starting points, and play as the Soveriegn in a world undergoing the Zombie appocalypse, just you the person/unit, maybe a small band of up to 10 adventurers ....

It would also be nice to have "angels" in a few religions and "demons" in a few religions. For instance, Fire, Earth, and Death demons, Air, Water, and Life angels. Of course, I would want all to look scary looking with a variety of scales, fur, feathers, and skin. For instance, I imagine an Air angel to be a flying scaly draconian with glowing eyes, shooting electricity out from its feathery wings or somesuch. These would be powerful creatures with a high upkeep that you can only recruit if you are following a certain religion. Also, if you are following the draconian religion (an off-shoot brand, not elemental based) ... you will have a natural "sense" of where all the lizardman kingdoms are, so the location of lizzie caves will be revealed to you on the map, and you can go there with Sovereign/Royal/Hero/Diplomat to recruit them to the cause .... and it makes lizzie and other reptile units have strong morale bonuses in your army. ... There will probably be a questline along the path of the Draconian religion, which will eventually lead to raising your own dragon.

Also, a highlevel spell only unlockable by the Undead religion would be a powerful death spell to contact a powerful Bone Dragon, or Draco-Lich even .... and you would have to recruit him and may a hefty payment ... or something. Maybe recruting such a Draco-lich would require a substantial essense cost (like 5? 10? more?)

Of course, there are all kinds of skelletons, zombies, spectres, and other forms of undead creature that could be used ... especially lots of different kinds of zombies from all those Undead fiction stories out there. And most can be fit into fantasy.

Water-angels would probably either not leave the water, and be as mermaids, or they could be giant amphibians, like the powerful prophets that ruled over the lizard kingdoms in warhammer.

However, I see nothing wrong with having a human-only game ... with most of the army being massive legions of (wo)men. I would however like to potentially unlock powerful auxiliaries based upon Religions and Quests. (also the MasterSword should be part of the MasterQuest ) (in addition to the certainly powerful adventurers/heroes and royalty you will aquire over time)

I would certainly like to see Royalty visibly age after a time, but never truly die. Not sure if this is possible, but it would be neat. Or at least an ability to make my more elder queens, kings, barons, duchesses and so forth ... to look older, from a slight greying of the hair to a total grey-white of the hair and paler skin ... possibly wrinkles too, although depending on how often or close-up we see our royalty, it could be different. For all intents and purposes the Sovereign could very well look exactly the same for the whole game (other than equipment) but yea, deciding not only stats/backstory/skills/weapons/spells, but also starting off with visual customization would be nice. Maybe I want an eye-patch, a couple gold fillings, a war-ponytail, and war-paint. Or maybe I want thick over-sized nerd glasses, a frail physique, and long matty hair. Or maybe I want a really cut and bulky sovereign with war scarring, a missing ear, Either in full armor or in the more free-form barbarian leathers.

Just stuff like that. Obviously some things could be a reflection of stats, but I would rather not get Fable-y .... just to have that option if I wanted.

yea, I'd say different factions could have various terrain and weapon-type bonuses, even magic bonuses ... some could have faster cavalry, (faster horses), or more loyal populations, or be more magically resistant somehow ... but other than magic-based physical properties, I wouldn't want to see any sci-fi like changes to humans in order to make them fit some kind of stereo-type. For instance, I wouldn't want a race/faction of humans to breath underwater, or naturally talk to animals, or be able to rapidly climb trees/ect so as to live in houses in tree-tops. Or to have night vision, or thicker skin more resistant to physical damage, ect. Although its a very fine line.

There is alot of diversity you CAN add without it being physical properties. For instance, from a cultural perspective (in buy-in civ points) ... is national morale based upon Gold in the treasury (vaults/economy) ... books in the library (science/academies) ... trees in the country side (environmental) ... and how does the culture look upon coupling? Are they relatively fast breeders (similar to orcs), or are they relatively slow breeders (similar to elves) ... although their will be no extremes in breeding capability or lifespan, as they are all the same species. In addition to having the same lifespan (although that will probably not be in the game anyways) they will all be affected by diseases and poisons the same way. There will be no bonuses vs giants, no disease resistance, ect.

Of course, over the course of the game the sovereign could find civ-affecting spells that alter the entire nation and its inhabitants. For instance, there could be a spell that triples national birth rate/ survival rate, although cuts lifespan by half. In addition, there could be a Civ-wide spell to increase disease resistance/poison resistance and slightly lower the birth rate ... or even a spell to make all peoples disease/plague immune and poison immune, while significantly lowering the birthrate (by a third? a full half?)

Of course all things would have to be *somewhat* balanced ... although I see civ-affecting spells as situational for some-what desperate times/contingencies (except for maybe the rapid birth one) ... so I see significant penalties for an even greater civ-wide bonus. However you will have to think about the consequences of those actions ... because something like granting plague and poison immunity could save you from all manner of diseased/posionous beasts, as well as any world-wide plagues of course (or magic based plagues) ... however fighting a foe using pure numbers ... like the populous warmonger clan of Soviet Socialist Magicks, then your at a disadvantage unless you have significantly greater technology and resources to produce much finer quality troops than they posses, in which case it would be a difficult quantity vs quality war, in which each of your losses is a bitter sting, where they keep sending in practically un-trained grunts to do a little stabbity for alot of effect (in numbers).

ON TOPIC:

Yup, I agree. Changing a name of the faction, together with it's models won't make the most important part of a 'race' - play style. This is the most important thing. You can create an illusion of a diversity by adding race division (between factions) and different graphics (unit models & skins, town graphics, etc.), but in the end it won't matter. As you have already said, there are a couple of ingredients needed for an enjoyable faction:

• Diversified, distinct, unique and game changing faction 'features' (not some crappy +10% to birth rate, +1 to scout range, etc.).
  
• Interesting and catching race background story.
• Diversified graphic & sound themes.

Lets just cross our fingers waiting for Stardock to release the races.

OFF TOPIC:

As much as I like (love?) the focus of this game on the modding part of the game, I say we can't be fooled by mods.

First, there can be good or bad mods. You can't just assume that you will be able to pick and choose in tons of awesome mods. There will be probably a few really good ones, but this leads me to another issue.

Second, how fast such mods will be released? Remember, modders are not payed (most of the time) for their work - they do it during their free time, so if they don't have a handful of people in their group (a standard I would say), they will need a couple of months to release anything decent. You really want to buy the game, get mad about lack of features, and wait 5 months - biting your fingernails - for some decent mod?

Third, if Stardock decides to implement more diverse races (with tons of different attributes, play-styles, skins & models), they will make it MUCH easier to add new races due to changes in the code. I know Frogboy stated many times that they want to make the game as moddable as possible, but let's be honest - there will always be some borders. Think about future of Elemental in a really pessimistic way: few copies of Elemental has been sold, and after a few patches the game is left on it's own. What now? You think modders will make a new game?

Forth, you know that the better the game, the more mods will be wrote for it? No one will want to mod a crappy game. There will be a few hardcore fans, but look at the story of UFO: Extraterrestrials. There is one modder that still maintains a BIG (and needed) mod for this game. Although, I really appreciate the work of many modders that provided their time to make the game so much better, the gameplay still lacks many elements you would like to see.