It might be a bit of a pointless diversion, but let's speculate on the characteristics of factions based purely on their names (which is pretty much all we have right now). It might throw up some good ideas/stimulate some detail leakage from the developers. You could also contribute smaller faction ideas you have, or things you would like to see. If you have a full blown faction idea it probably belongs in this thread.
Kingdoms of Men:
Empires of the Fallen:
Now as far as I can see the only mention of any of these names elsewhere is that Calax is a Dread Knight, last seen falling off a balcony. Now apart from the fact that the Empire of Calax are going to be slightly bitter about the whole balcony thing (irrespective of whether Calax survived or not), I'm speculating that they are a highly militaristic empire made up of hosts of unswervingly obedient grunts. Their magic is of the sort that gives their troops a distinct military advantage, allows them to produce larger numbers of troops quickly and instills fear in the opposition.
I'll take a swing.
I think that Ithul is the most evil faction of the men. I think Tarth is the runners up.
I think that the Dol-Sirion are major traders of the Fallen. Turzog is the most aggressive of the fallen, possibly of all of them.
Altar are religious nuts, Tarth are ruski-inspired, Ithul is a forest kingdom.
(Closes eyes and concentrates) Something is coming to me...The kingdom of Yoren are the religous goody-two shoes who prefer extra cream in their coffee. And....aawee man...it all faded to gray. Well, thats enough mind reading for one day. Speaking of coffee...I think I need some...Im tiiirrreedd!
If there are good and evil humans and Fallen, then the Calax are the good Fallen--the Flower of Death.
There could be lots of good stuff here. I hope this thread develops adequately.
Hmm, very interesting...
- I agree that the Altar seem to be religious, for obvious reasons
- The Yoren are obsessed with xenophobic robots who want to take over the galaxy and spread us on their toast... which evidently they eat?
- I imagine the Kingdom of Gildren being a quick to act nation of chivalrous knights
- Tarth sounds like a trader nation to me
All the Fallen sound like orcs...
- The Uthugul sound the most barbaric
- The Calax sound the most noble (as far a noble-evil can go )
- The Dol-Sirion sounds like an evil cult!
I also find it disheartening that there is no "Empire of the Crimson Bear" or "The Luckmannite Kingdom".
C'mon. Varenus Luckmann. Who can resist that as a leader-name?
There is island of Tarth in George Martins A Song of Ice and Fire,so my first association for Kingdom of Tarth was big island or some sort of archipelag.They would be advanced sailors and good ship builders in that case...
Fun fact: Dol-Sirion in Sindarin is roughly translated as Head River, or Hill River. Perhaps "headwater" would be a better translation, however.
Which brings up the more important question: will there be rivers, and will they be navigable? Rivers were the highways of the world until recent history.
The early word I've caught on naval matters has mostly been that we shouldn't expect serious naval combat. But the new economics is supposed to involve trade routes, and it would be really sad not to have rivers be a part of at least that layer of the map. Plus, rivers as substantive map elements would enable situations like fleeing a Horribly Scary Monster that can't cross moving water or even summoning the spirit of a river to guard your back after you crossed it while being chased.
Top marks for fun fact! This is exactly the kind of reading-too-much-into-things we need. Could it be waterfall? The fortress of Dol-Sirion sits behind a giant waterfall and they have an affinity with water magic?
I had Gildren as the forest kingdom - but I'm probably just thinking of Gilden Silveric from the Fall from Heaven mod.
Capitar can be the proud and aloof knights. Sounds like a proud name to me.
Ithul/Uthugul sound like two sides of the same coin somehow...
When I hear Gild(r)en, I think "High Elf" rather than "Wood Elf". So I'm going to peg Kingdom of Gildren as a kingdom of nobles and.. stuff. You know what I'm getting at here. High magic, high towers, high horses.
I'm also going to go ahead and peg Capitar as the "sprawling cities" and "wordly" humans. Big-city boys with a "damn, the rest of you are such idealistic PEASANTS"-complex.
And lastly for this post, I'm going to peg the Uthugul as quasi-civilized barbarians, very orc-like.
The Dol-Sirion are high-magic fascists.
Here's the thread where Kael, who leads the FfH2 team, discusses Elemental and how the FfH mod may have helped inspire it. Interesting read, particularly where Brad drops in to correct them:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=297964
Fall from Heaven 2 is more than a mod really, it's a whole new game when compared with Civ4. Anyone who hasn't tried it is doing themselves a disservice.
Back on topic...
The Empire of Korin are ninja-style assassins specialising in stealth and subtefuge.
It's hands down the absolutely best mod I've ever seen, all categories. The sheer ambition, and actually achieving that ambition, is staggering. I wasn't much of a fan of Civ4, but FfH2 completely blew me away.
On the subject of Fall from Heaven, it is interesting that most of the factions themes described so far in this thread (apart from the xenophobic robots) could be covered by the Fall from Heaven factions:Amurites: Magical SocietyBalseraphs: Mad Murderous ClownsBannor: Lawful CrusadersCalabim: Aristocratic VampiresClan of Embers: Barbaric OrcsDoviello: Chaotic BeastmenElohim: Spiritual MonksGrigori: Forsakers of the GodsHippus: Horse-borne MercenariesIllians: Worshippers of the God of WinterInfernals: DemonsKhazad: Gold hoarding DwarvesKuriotates: Child King leads Cities of outcastsLanun: PiratesLsosalfar: Nature ElvesLuchuirp: Dwarven TinkersMalakim: Desert PeopleMercurians: Militant AngelsSheaim: Bringers of ArmageddonSidar: Detached ImmortalsSvartalfar: Dark ElvesThe diversity of factions is one of the great strengths of the Ffh mod. Elemental could do a lot worse than draw inspiration from some of these, but it would be great to see some original faction themes as well. I guess the problem is that it is next to impossible to come up with something original in a fantasy context. The best you can probably hope for is an interesting combination of what has gone before.
Maybe I'm too old and have read too much, but it doesn't strike me as a problem that the fantasy genre is so extensive--it's an asset for a project like Elemental. So-called originality is a bit overrated in the arts, in part because it is not nearly as common as one might think (Shakespeare 'borrowed' frequently). It's not whether you're the first one to tell a story of X does Y to Z and ends up Q. Its how well you tell that story for your present audience.
So for me, it's not "the best you can probably hope for," it's just what I hope for.
I have to say, while all the nations in this mod are amazing, the Kuriotates and the Lanun imo are completely awesome ideas that would be nice to see in elemental
Agree with your points completely. I dislike originality for it's own sake - that usually results in rubbish. I'd rather see something done well, regardless of how much of its inspiration that has been drawn from other sources.
Back on the factions. After the text assets journal I'm wondering whether Stardock are waiting for input from these professional writers before thinking about game mechancis. After all Brad says, "Each of the 12 named factions will have its own history and back story", and I'm fairly sure very little is set in stone at this early stage.
What do you like about them in particular?
(I think the Lanun are cool, but if GW is right about no serious naval combat then a seafaring race wouldn't be that fun.)
They haven't confirmed much about naval combat, but its assumed that it won't be much more than 'can build ships'. I'm not really sure what 'serious naval combat' means in a TBS game like Civ or Master of Magic, so I wouldn't rule out any ideas. I mean pretty much all TBS games that arn't ONLY focused on combat at sea (some pirate games for example) have simple naval combat. Either it is ship to ship (the battle field is literally two ships with planks between them) or the ships just count as regular units the way a tank or monster might.
In which case we shouldn't limit our ideas. I'd really like to see a seafaring race. Whatever the details of the magic system, Water magic has got to be more interesting when rivers, lakes, seas and ships are involved.
Master of Magic had some interesting aquatic races (lizardmen, naga, and such) and I'd hope that we could at least mimic that much with our custom content
In a way, I detest originality. There's a thin line between being original and being a flaming attention whore.
On the flipside, though, Kuriotates and Lanun aren't really my favourites by far, nor do I find them very original. That's not to say that I find anything -wrong- with them, but I'd much prefer Doviello, My Order-worshipping Calabim, or Amurites.
Most "seafaring nations" tend to be some spawn of Umberlee, or Pirates, worshippin' da seee, arrr. From what we know, sure, seafaring will most likely be fairly limited. But if there's going to be one, I'd love for them to mix it up a bit. Like Late Age Marignon, in Dominions 3 (which suck, but that's beside the point).
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