I'm just going to say it: I don't care if the game has more than one race. I don't think the game design lends itself well to causing the player to care, like we did in MoM or MoO2. The different races' characteristics add extra complexity that I feel could simply be folded into empire characteristics. Streamlined. The different races might make more sense if they were all genetic humans with different cultures.
We can't touch and move population units (ex: like MoM, MoO2) so it's tough to guess what math is going on behind the scenes. When we conquer a city, does its population change to be your race?
You can build cities on vastly different parts of the globe. How is it that ONLY Amarrians, for example, seek out these cities. Do any cities have mixed race populations?
In Civ games everyone's human so it's easier. Conquered populations immediately take on your empire's characteristics, could build your special units, etc. EWoM currently 'feels' like all the peoples are the same as you play it but is telling us that behind the scenes, abstracted, different empires are different races. I already don't see much difference between empires.
Thanks. Yea, in Elemental, it's a big more complicated because you build housing yourself. So we don't want a situation where players feel like the "best" path is to eliminate the "foreigner" housing and replace it with their "native" housing. That's just tedious and would lead almost certainly to users asking for a way to "automatically convert foreign housing" (i.e. automated genocide) which is a pretty strange thing to be programming UI for.
Not if you're making Terminators
The only game that I know of that has two races living and growing side by side is MoO2. I thought it was really neat how it was implimented too. I'm not sure about MoO3 because I forget that forgetable game, but I always thought it added to the realism and fun of the game where you could have populations of other races and transplant them to wherever willy nilly.
On the planet Orion, I used to always transplant 2 of each captured race to that planet to essentially make it my universal world where all races can share in the glory of the greatest planet in the galaxy.
Sword of the stars race managing system is not excellent but quite interesting : you have in the tech tree some xenotechs to improve the understanding between your race and the others. If you don't research them, when you conquer the city, they start leaving the city so it is a clear loss of taxpayers. On the other hand, if you research those techs, you get some diplomacy bonus, more chances for a planet to surrender and a possibility to keep foreigners happy on your planets, which mean a moral and production bonus (in sword of the stars, multiracial planets are better the monoracial ones).
One last interesting thing, if you destroy a planet inhabited by a race, all the citizens of your empire who belongs to this race would suffer fom a drop of moral, which was logical and makes you think twice about genocide.
Building on that, a basic way to deal with races would be to have some kind of penalty for conquered cities of a different race - lower taxes, increased cost of training troops, chance of rebellion, etc - and reduce these penalties via a line of Diplomacy techs, perhaps even add bonuses (unlocked later in that tech line) for multicultural/racial cities. The whole diplomacy tech area needs the help anyway, I have difficulty envisioning any situation where I'd research it over civilization or warfare, this would put it right up there with warfare if you're conquering enemy races. Plus it would be a good way to slow down the landslide effect where a player conquers a couple cities, becomes more powerful, able to conquer more cities, etc.
But as I said that's a pretty basic way to deal with races, tax penalties are bland, if you folks at Stardock want to invest the time into something more elaborate - say ability to create units or buildings unique to the conquered race that are somehow different from your own, I'm all for that too.
I'd say two main options. One gives bonuses for Non-National Race population, while you can only recruit military from National Race population.
The other option gives no inherent bonuses or penalties for race, and you can recruit both races for military purposes.
Extra: Perhaps a third option (Fallen Only) where the Non-National Race population is enslaved and used as a food source. Such Non-Nationals would be not using any housing (or rather foreign housing wouldn't "take up space"), and the population also proportionally increases available net food (+1 food for every 20 enslaved humans). This would, of course, lead to potentially disastrous consequences, like attempted slave revolts, rampant murder/pillage/looting in the Breeding-Slum ghettos, and severe diplomatic repercussions for human factions.
I guess one would need to define, what races are to be IF multiple ones are included. Standard fare, Men, Elves, Dwarves, etc. ? Can there be Minotaurs, Vampires, etc. ? Also another question that needs to be answered, is each race going to have a special unit/trait/ and/or building that only they can make?
My take is a yes on multiple races. I would also have minotaurs, vampires, demons and undead along with Man, Elf, Dwarf, Orc. I would also give them each a special trait that is theirs alone. As for units this one can go either way for me. Building I'd like to see done also, and have it so gives the player bonuses. Possibly to offset penalty for the race (but only partially). I think to truly make each faction unique, multiple race is the way to go.
And thats my 2 gilders. [e digicons]B)[/e]
Races (as genetically different) are Human, Urxen, and Troggs
Troggs!
Will their racial music be "Wild Thing"?
[e digicons][/e] [e digicons][/e]
I really hope to see a strong racial system in the game, and I know modders will want that. I love some of the ideas here. One of the big parts of Elemental is supposed to bee character, story, etc. If the different races aren't well, different, then I think the game will lose out on much of the possible charm and character. Nothing will feel more bland in a fantasy game than generic races that aren't really different. I want to be able to create units from different races so I can create an awesome multi-cultural empire and military! That would also be a huge boost to the games character, and would add a great layer of strategy. Players would have to make the choice of integrating other races, which would likely be difficult, but ulttimately have good rewards.
Also Stardock seems to like to do fresh and new things like the Dynasty system maybe for those races that would be incompatible there can be some sort of a hybrid (race tree) that one can access once one has the correct tech building (say Advanced DNA research) allowing the invading forces to use the DNA of the race they just conquered to make units that can only be obtained after such conquest and the results would be random and unpredictable production of units like the dynasty system. For us Role Players this would be a great way to expand our stories. Say... after an out of control unit is created by our actions and now we have to deal with the consequences etc...
I just googled Trogg and got this as the first result.
http://www.wowwiki.com/Trogg
A big difference between MoM and MOO2 when it comes to different races is that in MOO2 you could mix races in your city, but your military units were always of your own race. In MoM, each city kept it's own race but then you could hire their special units from that city. For a fantasy game, MoM's method is very simple and fun.
As cephalo said, MoM, MoO2, and Civ 4 are structured very differently with regards to how different races are handled. I'll outline them here to get everyone on the same page.
In Master of Magic, races are handled at the city level. You choose a race for yourself at the start of the game, but it has no (or very minor?) effect beyond choosing the race for your starting city. The race of each city determines what buildings and units can be constructed, the race of the population that lives there, and any bonuses the city receives (pop growth, gold production, etc.). When capturing a city, you have a choice of capturing it and dealing with the unhappiness caused by the city having a different race type from your own or razing it to the ground and replacing the city with one of your own race (I can't quite remember how much you had to destroy to switch the race type).
In MoO2, races are handled at the citizen level. The race you choose at the start of the game confers two types of bonuses, global and citizen. Global bonuses are things like "faster ships" or "better diplomacy", citizen bonuses are things like "extra production" or "better researchers". Each population point (a citizen) belongs to a specific race, these citizens can be moved around among your planets as you wish. Citizen bonuses are applied to each citizen of that race, regardless of the player that is currently controlling them or what world they are on. Growth of all race types on a given world is tracked individually. Citizens of a different race that yours have a slight penalty and mixing multiple races on a given world has a more significant penalty. I don't remember what options you are given when conquering a world, I think it was a choice of wiping out the population or not. Regardless of your choice, it would take several(many?) turns after conquering a world before it was fully productive for your empire.
In Civ 4, races (nations) are handled at the player level. You choose your nation at the start of the game, and that determines the capabilities of all the cities in your empire. When capturing an enemy city, you might choose to raze it for strategic reasons, but when you keep it, all of its capabilities will be of your nationality (buildings and units that can be produced, bonuses it receives, etc). The only effect of having citizens of another nationality is to increase unrest if you go to war with their original civilization.
One of the many things I really liked about Master Of Magic was the buildings and Units that were unique to each race. I'm sure all this could done by modding. Or maybe they are planning a "fantasy creatures" expansion in 12 months with a bunch of new magical races - some magical units (i love the griffins etc) some racial buildings and some racial spells.
Somehow I'm betting the modders will beat them to it - but then Multi Player will be a matter of what game mods are allowed etc. because of game balance...
Some really good points in this thread by the way - personally I liked the way MOM handled taking cities of other races... raze it or keep it - if you keep it then you get to build the units and buildings of the conquered race... Personally I think that, for example, a elven city being conquered by humans slowing becoming a half elven city then a human city might be really interesting but a bit too complex.
Wow! what a cool idea! good way to keep the old and mix it with the new (dynasty algorithm system random mixed units).
It seems the Devs are leaning more towards what is easy to implement and some of the more zealot SD fans agree. To hell with that! I want complexity! There is something to be said for the replayability that comes from a game with layers of cool stuff going on, even if it is hard to implement or makes your brain hurt to try to get it right. The easy way seldom yields the best results.
Yeah, now that the beta is coming together and starting to be fun, I want them to fix this and make it good and well thought out. Don't care how long it takes, I'd rather this wasn't swept under the rug.
Why reinvent the wheel? MoM's system of no race mixing is the simplest and makes the most sense strategically. When you capture a city, it maintains its race. Any units built at that city maintain that race. Building a settler at any city produces a settler of that race, allowing you to found new cities of that race.
This simple system gives you a great deal of power and flexibility, allowing you to build armies of unique units from many different races.
True, it might be better to make the race of a city Static. Heck, a Kingdom might take over a fallen city of Urxen, and get Urxen troops, as well as potentially an Urxen Champion!! It would be VERY hard to recruit an Urxen champion though.
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