Races & Factions - my short guide

from Elemental Forums

I guess that there has been some confusion in the community about races and factions.

It's important to realize (if you're not in the beta, you may not realize this) that factions are not races. The Gilden and the Krax and the Capitar (in the game, these are factions) could all be best thought of as a country, or an ethnicity, of the race of Men. A faction is what you control in the game, it's your "empire." In your faction, you'll have an allegiance to the Kingdoms or the Empires (this basically determines whether you use life or death magic), and a default race.

There are six races that I know of in the game right now. They are as follows

  1. Men
  2. Dragons - not a playable race
  3. Urxen - basically a goblinoid race
  4. Magnars - a fallen race
  5. Trogs - a fallen race
  6. Wraiths - a fallen race

The current design calls for being able to conquer cities which may contain races not your own, and being able to build units of that race from them. A lot of people are worried about this, because in games like Age of Wonders, this meant all of a sudden you could access the uber-unit available to that race and gain a big advantage.

This is not a problem in Elemental because that's not how things work. We the players create the unit types available, and a Trog in plate mail might be a little taller and perhaps quicker than a Man in a suit of platemail, but they're still soldiers with the same equipment.

The city that the Trog live in may have a special property, like being able to build certain things faster, but it's still not a game-changing property, because it's limited to that city and the city comes with its own drawbacks.

 

One thing that's being looked at is whether to focus on working on the four fallen races, or to put more effort into allowing custom player races, or to collapse races down into the factions. Factions aren't going anywhere, and there will always be at least Men, Dragons, and Fallen, as far as I can tell.

The reason this is being looked at is because it may seem too complex to new players, which is fair.

 

I think so long as the design of the races is kept to specific qualities, and those qualities are not too dominant that they dominate the game, there is not a lot of confusion. Frogboy has a chart here:

That does present the factions in a pretty complex manner. But once the game begins, everything becomes quite simple: You have the Altar, the Capitar, the Tarth, the Gilden, the Amarians, and the Kraxis. They are factions, each with their special abilities. It is unimportant that they are descended from the Mancers or the Ironeers, or that some men crossed after the cataclysm. They are merely different enemies.

Some factions will have different races in them. If you conquer their cities, you will be able to produce a couple different looking units with stat variances. Normally this means conquering a Fallen City, or being Fallen and conquering a City of Man, and enslaving the populace.

 

Urxen vs Trogs

Part of this is why there is a need for Urxen and Trogs, and why they should be separate. I gather some art assets have been completed for the races, and that currently something cool happens with marrying members of the Fallen races - the genetics get shared and the offspring share facial characteristics.

 

What the discussion is really about is about might be summed up as the following two considerations: "The Faction of Resoln" is the only default Faction with the "Wraith" race. And there's this lopsided thing going on: none of the Kingdom Factions (which are all we can play right now in the Beta) currently are anything but Men, and four of the five Empire Factions are all unique races. This kind of leads to the thought that perhaps there ought to be only one "Fallen" race, broken into unique factions called the Umber (that's the Urxen), the Resoln (the wraiths) etc.

Of course no one is talking about removing the factions, but the future of the races is something being talked about. One thing getting some attention also is whether to allow custom races, and how much work to put into custom races.

 

I hope that really sums up the threads in the dev journals which can be confusing to people not in the Beta or just joining the converation now.

elemental
44,486 views 9 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

Very interesting discussion.

Now, the other key ingredient here is Elemental: Destiny's Embers, the book that comes out on August 24th at a store near you.

In that book, there are most definitely Trogs and Urxen in it.  Trogs are powerful warriors. Urxen can be used as warriors but they're mostly grunts doing menial labor and are incredibly common.

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

I have a small concern about the normal units that we can train. Will players have an opportunity to train units that have special abilities?

Examples could be cloaking, area of effect weapons, flanking / backstabbing bonuses, regeneration, wall climbing, etc.

Galactic Civilizations III
Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting TheProgress, reply 2
I have a small concern about the normal units that we can train. Will players have an opportunity to train units that have special abilities?

Examples could be cloaking, area of effect weapons, flanking / backstabbing bonuses, regeneration, wall climbing, etc.

No. Those would be champions. You're training soldiers.  You could recruit units that have those abilities but you can't just make them.

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

The current set up opens up for a lot of questions. After 3 developers posts on the subject (and now this one), people still seem confused about what the game is currently planned to be like and even more what is being discussed. I excuse myself if I am mistaken/oversimplify below (about life/death magic, good/evil ...), but in that case that would also indicate that the current set-up is so complex many players will never be able to even describe it.

If you want to play a Kingdom (with life magic giving life to the land, would normally be considered the good guys, also called natural): you can only play human, right? But if you play an Empire, you have 4 races to choose from. Why has it been structured in this very uneven way? Because the coming book says so ...??  Seems strange for a game. Maybe we should have started the other way around, with a good and even game set up and then developed the story behind??

I am also more and more worried about what a game will actually play out like when you include both Kingdoms and Empires. Is it not so that the Kingdoms (all of same race and with life magic) always are predisposed to like each other more, and team up against the unnatural Empires? But in that case, our 10 factions have just turned into 2 sides (basically good versus evil, whatever you call it and quirk it, just look at the Empire graphics for god's sake!) Will this not make for a very limited gaming experience, with many games and alliances resembling each other? Of course details will vary, but it cannot be compared with a more "open" system where races and factions would not be locked into such a straightjacket due to the lore from a book.

If the above is indeed a more or less correct description of the Elemental canon I must say I am really worried that I will spend all my time trying to make new factions and races - if that will even be included as a priority in the game (currently up for debate!)

 

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Frogboy, reply 1
Very interesting discussion.

Now, the other key ingredient here is Elemental: Destiny's Embers, the book that comes out on August 24th at a store near you.

In that book, there are most definitely Trogs and Urxen in it.  Trogs are powerful warriors. Urxen can be used as warriors but they're mostly grunts doing menial labor and are incredibly common.

In Urxen vs. Trogs, I suppose that would mean that the individual Trog can overpower an Urxen quite readily. Is a balance to this to make the Urxen able to produce units faster, with less upkeep?

Or are the Urxen basically meant to be unsuited for duties of war? It would be neat if the Empire of Umber was basically a slaver faction that used other races to do their bidding, I'm just wondering how to accomplish the early-game Urxen access other races!

 

I wonder what impact Custom Races will have on the multiplayer game. A super-cheese race/faction combo might turn the game from being about the strategy during the game, to how well you pick and choose complementary traits at the begining of the game. I guess we'll have a button to disable custom races, and custom factions, when playing multiplayer, if we choose.

 

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

RE: in the current beta, you can create your own custom faction. It's done through point buy and I believe you can even customize the default peasant appearance slightly. You get to pick a bunch of special abilities and drawbacks. I don't think that's going to ever go away.

Reply #7 from Elemental Forums Top

Part of the confusion for me at least was was that all the Empire factions except the Krax looked the same but with apparently differant ethos. I assumed beforehand that the fallen were all of a dark-elvian type rather than seperate races. Given they were supposed to be created by the Titans I thought they'd have more variety.

Reply #8 from Elemental Forums Top

Frogboy, what's the Urxen model like? Can they actually wear the armour models designed for humans right now?

Reply #9 from Elemental Forums Top

No. Those would be champions. You're training soldiers. You could recruit units that have those abilities but you can't just make them.

Hmm... so you can't have a unit of backstabbing, stealthy thieves? Shame. Can you at least give equipment which grants these abilities?

Not that this is on topic...