Hi there,

Just got the game a few days ago; lots of fun but I don't find any real difference between the three factions. Being a big Civ4 fan, I'd like to play this game with other new factions that have definite advantages and disadvantages. I guess it'll depend on the mod tools on how easy that would be to do, but here's a few ideas I've got floating around, feel free to chime in with more;

-civs that have bonuses on harsh planet types like volcanic or ice (ie lizard like fire creatures, crystalline artic civs, etc), but are unable to colonize the opposite planet type, at least not until maybe the 4th level of research

-maybe some kind of energy based faction that can colonize any world type but is limited to a small pop (might be hard to balance it though)

-possibly retooling the existing three so that the strengths/ weaknesses are more pronounced


Along with this, maybe some additional resources aside from crystal and metal that are required for some of the more advanced units, so that it matters where you colonize. And also the ability to trade through diplomacy. I find the current diplomatic model frustrating.

From the looks of things, the developers are pretty commited to making all this relatively easy. In my mind, things like the ship models would be secondary, because I personally usually have it zoomed out too far to see the individual ships anyway.

I think something like this would add a lot more life to the game. Like I said, I don't really find much difference between the three factions right now, aside from how they look. They're all based on Terran planets, and can all colonize the same types of planets, so I'd like to change that around to add in more of a strategic element. Fortunately it looks like the engine should allow this, and with the dev mod tools plus being able to use the free version of XSI for modeling, I'm looking forward to playing around with it.