I would like to see the emphasis on the Lore. Any tools that can be included to make truly unique races is a big plus.

I think that having deep lore in the game is what is going to make me fall in love with it.

I think the ability to make my own races is what will keep the game on my hard drive. For the inital game I think the deep lore is critical, an expansion with tools for creating your own races down the road makes more sense to me. Trying to add the lore later is just going to look stupid and kludgy.

I think that allowing customization that will not require all equipment models and so forth to be created for each race should be in the canon game. Let us plug new heads, arms, legs, (wings?) on the basic body. Let us scale the models from tiny to huge. Do not give us a Spore Creature Creator. Is that going to over tax the art department?

I'd vote for Expanded race distinction, without those assets most custom races will seem like merely minor adjustments of the defaults... I want to play with different skeletons.

But as someone said on the other thread, in GalCiv2 I played the stock factions more when each had a superability and techtree. I'd play each stock race more often in elemental if each default race had one unique ability or group of associated techs... It'd be nice if those elements could be customised... more techs that aren't used but can be included in custom techtrees, superabilities that no original faction or race has but you can add to your custom faction/race. It would require some additional assets (buildings, items, techs, resources), but not skeletons...

I love the lore of the game and the artwork but in the end this is a game. Keep the lore in the books and give me more options to customize and play the game i want to play.

I feel like there is an in between or some kind of balance we can find so we have a rich amount of lore about the races and factions. So put my vote in the middle?

I foresee...

Elemental: War of Magic

• Campaign (it begins and ends the arc of the story to tell, which apparently means fullfilling certain prophecy).
• Full of Lore.
• Limited customization (it's great but limited to what the world of Elemental supports by Lore).

Elemental: War of Expansion (pack 1, 2, 3, 4...)

• No campaign. Story was finished in Elemental: War of Magic. Mechanics restrictions based on that story still in place. Would need removal to be able to offer another story that doesn't start after another cataclysm and blah blah blah. See the mod idea "Elemental: Ancient Age" somewhere in the Elemental forum for an idea of viable yet not Lore breaking (flavourful details due to ignorance aside) and independent of the base game as expansion pack.
• No new Lore. (see above)
• Eye candy galore (hopefully).
• More customization (hopefully).
• Tweaked game mechanics but without breaking what was already stablished as Core. Unless not being base game and no need to offer new Lore makes Stardock to feel free to break the mold (which could violatethe spirit of what Elemental means depending of how it's done).

I like "In Elemental, the difference between civilizations is based on their culture (Altar vs. Pariden) AND based on their race (Men vs. Trog)."

But if you are asking me. "Choose between totally devoted to Lore OR move some resources for more customization options. And you cannot have middle grounds because you must choose of those two options given and n-o-t-h-i-n-g else.", then I must say: Lore me. Different building "textures", styles in some armours, they way they speak (NO leet) or relate to each other, different tech trees with techs that reflect their history/culture/morale...

I would like to see the races and factions more fleshed out to ensure they are unique and recognizable. Not just from a lore / visual perspective but in terms of unique magic, weapons, armor, units, buildings, etc as well.

That all sounds good, But, (granted this probably isn't likely) what if Elemental is huge flopping failure and doesn't sell well? What would be the draw of buying or making expansions? I'd rather them add as much as they can to the base game and then Expand the Storyline in Expansions. To me a "Expansion" should continue the storyline. If the Expansion Pack for Dragon Age hadn't continued the story I doubt I would have bought it.

Expansions should have more then just eye candy and goodies if they want to sell. Gal Civ 2's expansions almost all of them added new play features and gameplay changes (mobile Starbases were added in a expansion weren't they?)

I vote for fleshing out the game lore and factions.The greatest strategy games all have this immersion and it is part of why they are great.

So I am one of those that finds the current system a little confusing but I think that is partially because it is not finished.  Currently I don't believe race matters at all, does it.

I think it would be possible to combine the faction and race into one entity to make things simpler.  I like the idea of defining your kingdom with genetics and culture but I don't see why it necessarily needs to be separated.  Don't remove any options just push them into one box.  Just have your kingdom creator have your genetic abilities and the cultural abilities all together (maybe in separate tabs though).  Creating a new kingdom would mean choosing your racial look (no limitations) and picking a series of abilities.  When you come down to it the differences between real world "kingdoms" such as the Mongols and Vikings is pretty large.  It's easy enough to just consider them separate races.  I mean if you made these in a game you would probably want your Vikings to be taller and stronger which are genetic differences but if you consider them the same race then would these differences be allowed?

So this is an idea at least which I think kind of addresses what you brought up.  I'm not sure if it is the best solution but I think it would make things simplier without removing any of the customization.

Some people might find it confusing that factions and races are different. Kraxis is a faction that is made up of men that is part of the Empire. Umber is a faction that is made up of Urxen, a Fallen Race that is also part of the Empire.

^this

Custom races are just sounding too much like a coolness factor and I'm not seeing enough argument for them gameplay-wise.  Why add *another* customization screen?  You already can customize your faction and sovereign and it's sounding like there's very little difference between faction and race customization, apart from visual.  Maybe you can merge the two?

Another thing to consider in this discussion is what the campaign is going to be like.  If you are just doing like you did in Galactic Civ 2, a linear 10 mission campaign where we are forced to play one kingdom than I really don't think lore is a big deal.  If you are going all out on the campaign with customization options, branching story with real options, etc than lore becomes much more important.  I am hoping for the all out approach for the campaign.

What is the plan for the campaign?

No matter what we will have:

• The War of Magic campaign
• The 10 canon factions
• The 10 canon backstories

Random House is producing a lot of content for the game.

The question is where best to put this content. 

I could spend a year just making quests where each quest is its own adventure unto itself. But obviously doing that sort of thing means I'm not working on something else. Those are the kinds of trade-offs we make all the time.

On a bit of a tangent, one of the biggest internal debates we have is on features. I veto any feature that the AI won't be able to effectively use. It's one of the big reasons why Galactic Civilizations doesn't have the breadth of player features of say Space Empires V. If I can't get the AI to effectively use them, then they don't go in.