P5ych wrote:
Thanks for the rat love guys.



I was afraid no one would like the little guys because they don't really seem like a serious faction, but you proved me wrong.

I like the idea too. It is somehow lighthearted but still serious.

And the art is great too.





So many ideas.... And all those text walls... But I´m impressed of all ideas.

Does anybody know if the Faction Creation Competition for ES where the Automatons won had this many entries too?

Mal ira Naata



The Naatasin is a theocratic oligarchy established by the wandering prophet Naata.



Naata, a being no one remembers very vividly or with much detail, travelled the long stretches of Auriga in search of wisdom. When the voices of Isaera graced his ears he found the very future laid out before him. Knowing what was ahead, he ventured to the farthest of corners, spreading the word to the best of his abilities to warn everyone of the times ahead.



Today, Naata is long gone, but those who heeded his words back then now continue his work, gathering the peoples of Auriga under the teachings of their prophet to ready for the approaching doom.





The gameplay would be to spread your religion to the minor factions, bringing them into the fold of your glorious prophetic mission, with penalties to regular diplomacy due to the other factions obviously being heretics.







I saw this a bit late so didn't have more time to really flesh the idea out, but I think some good old fashioned crusading could fit in very well in the world.



I left out describing any specific creature since the religion should have spread to a variety creating a plurality of beings under the teachings of their prophet, out now looking to add more to the growing faith.



Best of luck to everyone, hope a good one is picked

Wintersong wrote:
Well, freaks for the sake of freaks is a very bad idea. Also, now we need everybody using plant-folks in their fantasy games and there you have your new "elf" (or "dwarf") equivalent.



While having something less used than human/elf/dwarf trinity is, potentially, a good thing, in the end is all about mechanics (unless you play for the lore alone!). If the plant-folk plays like elves and the stone-folk plays like dwarves, what's the point? I'd rather have some overused elves with interesting new mechanics, than some dust-enhanced seals that bring nothing really interesting/good.



That said, I think that most of the proposals deserve praise (humanoids or not, the devs have a good source of extra factions if they ever need more) and more than one a spot in the game. Some would shine more, I think, if they hadn't the minor faction theme attached by contest rules. If people are as creative for Quest 2, I'll be really impressed.

Very much agreed on everything you said

THE PROTECTORS OF [Minorfactiongroup]



Before posting my faction I want to excuse about errors en orthography or spelling. English is not my language.





Biography:



The protectors of [Minorfactiongroup] are a religion fanatic faction which follow their beliefs until death. The main believe, consists of a common ancestor with some of the minor factions of Auriga. The second main believe is that this common ancestor has a nemesis who creates another group of minor factions of Auriga.

The Protectors had been a lot of time living in the shadows and just trying to avoid confronting or simply treating with other races. Just following their strict believes in a theocratic hierarchical society.

But now, a change has started. As the winters are getting hard, other peoples are trying to assimilate, enslave, corrupt through bribes or even eat that ones who descend from the same creator.

Is in this moment when the Protectors came out from their hidings all around the planet, to get united, to protect their similars.



Gameplay idea:



Brief resume:



The idea of protectors is that they choose a common characteristic before the game start. This characteristic will defines which minor factions will be friends, foes or neutrals to them.

They will get a very strong bonuses when assimilating friendly minor factions or fighting with them, no bonuses from neutral minor factions and penalties if assimilating or treating with foes.



Why? Because it could change tactical decisions for the player and other players. If Protectors could assimilate all their friendly factions they will be an unstoppable machine, but if it is negated or the others players make they treat with foes, they will surely loss.



Expanded idea.



--- Choosing groups of factions.



You'll have to choose a friendly group and an enemy group (yet to be defined for reasons of game balance).

As an example you could define two groups: Sons of stone (who likes living underground: silics ericis & kanzaji) and Wilderness lovers (jotus, bos and urces).

The groups will have to be balances some way. And also defined in a manner which the player has always the same number of friend and enemy minor factions and at least 1/3 of minor factions remains neutral for them.

In the example you could choose be friend of Sons of Stone and enemy of the WL. This will define silics/ericis/kanzaji as friends, sisters/delvers/cerateans/haunts as neutrals and jotus/urces/bos as enemy. In thic case the complete name of your factions will be "The Protectors of the Sons of Stone".



--- Dealing with friends.



All assimilation bonuses from friendly faction are doubled and rounded up (consider an upper cap if some bonuses are unbalanced or unreal)

All assimilated friendly faction will give a +1 approval empire-wide per pacified village.

All non assimilated, but pacified village of a friendly faction into your borders will give a +0.5 approval empire-wide.

When assimilating a friendly faction you'll get a +5% FIDSI and +5% to attack/defence units values during 10 turns, and be immune to winter effects during this time



Also consider giving bonuses to FIDSI / combat if needed to mark better the character of this faction and balance.



A technology acquired during the faction quest which allows you to assimilate an extra faction per every two friendly assimilated factions.



When you contact a village, if you:

- Pacify through attacking will get a -5 approval during 10 turns.

- Bribe them or do nothing: no bonuses/penalties.

- Parley and accomplish their quest will get a +5 approval during 10 turns.



--- Dealing with enemies.



All assimilation bonuses from enemy factions will be halved and rounded down (no cap, they could be 0) (Second note: what the hell will anyone do this?? That's only to give more character to the faction).

All assimilated enemy faction will give a -1 approval empire-wide per pacified village.

All non assimilated enemy villages within your borders, pacified or not, will give a -1 approval penalty empire-wide (an interesting one if there's something which interests to you, like a resource in this regions, or you have to invade an enemy city, or your opponents are using this penalty to make unattractive conquering their cities)

When assimilating a friendly faction you'll get a -5% FIDSI and -5% to attack/defence units values during 10 turns.



Also consider giving penalties to FIDSI / combat if needed to mark better the character of this faction and balance.



The same previous mentioned technology will allow one less faction assimilation if for some reason you have been forced to assimilate two enemy factions.



When you contact a village, if you:

- Pacify through attacking will get a +5 approval during 10 turns.

- Bribe them or do nothing: no bonuses/penalties.

- Parley and accomplish their quest will get a -5 approval during 10 turns.



--- Dealing with neutral factions.



Just like any other player do. No bonuses/penalties.

A minor faction may occupy the extra slot acquired if you have the necessary tech and assimilate two friendly factions.



--- Other considerations.



The protectors start with the Language square tech.



Changing the influence cost to assimilate a faction depending if it is friendly/neutral/enemy should be considered, but I think that reducing the cost for assimilating friendly factions will be an exaggerated boost if added to the bonuses explained before.



To avoid tricking at choosing factions you'll have to choose before see the map, in a way you don't know which factions are in the neighbourhood.

To avoid early excessive bonuses or penalties this faction always starts in a region with a neutral minor faction.

In the same game there can be more than one Protectors faction with the same friendly minor factions group (I think this will be good for increasing competence), but not with the same enemy group (to avoid creating trash-like minor factions).

I don't remember if this is in the main game, but I consider that will be interesting not allowing the assimilation of the same minor factions for more than one player at the same time, at least when someone is playing the Protectors.



--- The tactical.



As said before, the idea is to create a competition for getting some factions, to stop the protectors turning into a winning machine, or to convert into it if you are playing with them. A part from this conside the use of their enemy factions to protect your territory or to make them take penalties.



The Quest:



The protectors quest will be most around helping friendly minor factions and fighting enemies. It will include:



- Locating a friendly minor faction.

- Do its quest.

- Assimilate them.



- Locating a neutral faction.

- Pacification of a village through bribe and left them alone.



- Locating enemy armies and villages.

- Attacking them.



------



And that's all about the first quest. A part from this let me go a bit into the second quests as I think that the units are an important part of this faction build.



Units:



The three units of the protectors should follow the next ideas:



- A basic ranged unit, which gets an attack bonus when firing at an enemy minor faction unit. This is independent from the rest of the composition of both armies.



- A era I researchable melee unit which gets a defensive bonus if the opposing army has at least one unit from an enemy minor faction.



- An era II support unit which gives a bonus to all your units if there are units from an enemy minor faction in your opponent's army. Also give a penalty if there are friendly minor faction units in the opposing army. It gives no bonus/penalty if the enemy army has both minor factions units or not of this units.



----



Okk that's all for now. Just wish me luck.

@ Polymathin

indigav, I am also taking into consideration the faction that have not been released yet. In addition to the 4 faction we have right now we will also get a faction of nomads, wizards and shape-shifters. To me all of these factions sounds a bit too human but hey maybe the devs will go crazy with them. I would just like to have more diversity in the game.

Who knows? Not me that's for certain



Wintersong makes a good point - it's about how the factions play. You can dress up any faction style to look human/elf/dwarf but that wouldn't make them so. Which is more succinct than my post



I do hope the dev team get the last 2 factions to look and feel different, and perhaps with all these fantastic entries they can use some of the ideas to modify and develop the existing factions too. Would like to see the Broken Lords get a tweak to their game play. They seem a little one dimensional for a chivalric race. Chivalry was a hot bed of intrigue and reputation boosting deeds. Could easily see the Broken Lords having some influence boosting activity allowing them greater empire wide bonuses. Ah - I digress though

"The lumbering Urces had been the first to smash into our lines, sending my brethren flying with ease as we did our best to hold our ground. Yet neither their onslaught nor the howling of the demons above was anywhere as terrifying as the silent advance of the legions surrounding them, or the crazed howling laughter of their cavalry circling our flanks. When I locked eyes with the haggard soldier who attacked me, and found only the cold glimmer of a dying star in his gaze, I knew we should have just surrendered as the other clan had." - Grimwald Stonehammer, Delver veteren





Summary

Driven mad by knowledge they uncovered inside Endless ruins beneath their home, the Sidhe were forced to adopt an ideal of strict discpline to stop their own demise. Armed with visions of the fate of Auriga, the strength of creeping dust contamination, and superior gear and tactics, they ventured back to the surface. They knew Auriga could be saved only if its people stood united, by force if necessary. Yet the Sidhe themselves are divided by petty strife within their own ranks, two powerful houses vying for control.

The Sidhe receive small payments of Dust or resources from villages they have pacified, and can construct outpost on these villages. The number and type of these outposts determines which of the two courts holds more power in the empire, granting additional bonuses. Furthermore, they can construct any minor faction unit without assimilating the faction, but only in provinces in which that faction is present.



History

Once, the Sidhe were a peaceful tribe of farmers and hunters living on a small, fertile island, until a group of warriors landed on their coast to plunder their homes and drive them off their land. Who these warriros were has been lost even to the Sidhe, as they could not mount any resistance against the invaders and quickly fled into the caves under the hills of their home, to places once forbidden. Deep underground, they stumbled upon the ruins of an Endless facility containing vast stores of preserved food that allowed them to hide until the attack passed. They could not have known that the food had been contaminated with Dust - not enough to kill them from exposure, yet enough to gradually warp their bodies and minds.

When a small troupe of explorers ventured deeper into the laboratories and accidentally set off a transmitter, the activated the Dust in their bodies and flooded their minds with knowledge of the Endless. Every last member of the tribe found themselves faced with glimpses of the vastness of space; the cold, uncaring emptiness of the void; and the innermost workings of the universe. Not prepared for this sudden understanding, most of them went mad instantly, and those few who managed to hold on to their sanity followed when the Dust left them slightly out of tune with time and space even as it rendered them near immortal.

Though they had lost their minds, they had found the will to fight and the means to do so. Returning to the surface, they reclaimed their homes and slaughtered the invaders. However, the farming and hunting life could no longer satisfy them, and they soon grew restless as their descent into madness continued. While some threw themselves into great feats of engineering and construction in defiance of the impermanence of life, others disregarded any sense of duty or reason to seek pleasure in everything, the two groups coming to a head about the future of the tribe. Luckily, the most gifted - or perhaps most insane - individuals of the tribe realized that neither group could survive without the other, nor would the tribe be able to survive the future of their visions all on its own.

Once they had risen to positions of power through trickery and violence, they formally established the two major groups of the tribe as the Courts of Summer and Winter, along with a system that would ensure neither the maniacal feasting of the former nor the detached, borderline omnicidal streak of the latter would doom their people. They imposed strict discipline on their people to slow the creeping madness or at least ensure their society would continue even as individuals succumbed, and drafted any capable person into a standing army to be prepared for any future conflict. With internal stability, though not necessarily peace, assured, they turned their attention outward in search of strong allies and useful vassals for their future. Now, the Sidhe have left their ancestral home to lay claim to other lands and avert the fate of Auriga - or possibly to seal it.





Appearance

The dust took a toll on more than their minds, leaving their bodies withered, though not weak. A typical Sidhe stands barely 5 foot tall, their body emaciated, their hair wispy, and their skin dry, leathery or cracked, and discolored to sickly hues, yet they can match strength and endurance with much taller races. Every Sidhe is trailed by a faint after-image, an effect of their cracked connection to time and space, an effect which only grows more pronounced with age. Some Sidhe are even surrounded by numerous spirits of themselves as their minds open to the many possible universes.

In spite of their frail, sickly appearance, a Sidhe legion arrayed for war provides an imposing sight as their soldiers march in disciplined ranks - even the giggling lunatics - side by side with their often monstrous allies. From the gleaming strips of overlapping metal covering leather shirts and cloth tunics that serve as their armor and their curved, rectangular tower shields, to the short swords, axes, spears, and javelins they wield, their finely crafted gear is easily equal or superior to that of most other armies on Aurgia, and they readily share their arms and armor with their allies.

Their cities are equally as impressive and unsightly. Towering brick buildings constructed with central courtyards, pillars, arches, and domes and painted in lively colors proclaim their mastery of building techniques. Yet the cities are crowded, the streets narrow, and the short bridges connecting the buildings many storeys above the ground keep most sunlight from reaching the cobblestone roads. The summer court may attempt to ignore these problems in favor of the lavish gardens in their courtyards and on their roofs, but the Winter Court make their home in the dark, dreary corners of the city, with no intent to beautify them.





Gameplay

- Rule of the Courts: The Sidhe can construct outposts two different types of outposts on top of pacified minor faction villages, aligned with the Summer or Winter Court. The number of these outpost int he empire at any given time determines the ruling court, which provides an empire-wide bonus (either a fixed bonus only checking which court outnumbers the other, or a bonus and penalty by outpost that cancel each other out on a 1 on 1 basis.) Outposts could be upgradable to provide FIDSI bonuses, extra population, or tile access, or prevent enemies from gaining the benefits of a pacified region until destroyed by force.

- Provincial Auxilaries: The Sidhe can construct minor faction units with basic gear (e.g. iron chest armor and weapons of a tier appropriate to the era) without assimilating the faction, provided that at least one pacified village of that faction is present in the region constructing the unit.

- Tributaries: Regions in which all minor faction villages have been pacified provide a small income of dust or a strategic or luxury resource per turn.





Unit ideas:

- Outriders (Cavalry): Scouts, couriers, hunters, the hammer that crushes the foe's spirit, and often enforcers of the will of the courts, the Outriders are essential to maintaining order within the provinces.

- Legionaries (Infantry, Era 1 research): Clad in heavy armor and usually carrying a massive shield, these disciplined troops often formt he main body of Sidhe armies.

- Lost Spirit (Support, Era 2 research: The wailing and laughing of these Sidhe who have succumbed utterly to their madness unnerves enemies and often leaves them paralyzed.





------



Talk about cutting it close with my entry...

Just to be sure, in case my description is unclear: While much of the bio and the whole idea of rivaling (seasonal) courts re loosely based on faerie myths, I picture their aesthetics as heavily inspired by ancient Rome: lorica segmentata and scutum for their soldiers, insulae making up the majority of their cities.

Now, to go catch up to 31 pages of replies I haven't yet had the time to read.

The Nereides



Biography:



The Nereides are an amphibious female only race, whose bodies are adapted for salt and freshwaters.

They live near and inside lakes, seas and oceans, but are bound to mates from other races to propagate and as such are found near land. In the oldes times their history can remember they would have hunted tribes for mates and resources. But with the art of diplomacy and an ambition to get hold of a steady count of mates they started to form alliances with other tribes or enslaved the ones opposing them and conquered their homeland a small island in a few years with the help of their allies. The Nereides promised the tribes the land away from the waters while the Nereides lived at the shores and inside the lakes and the ocean around the island. They promised to protect and help each other and the tribes became part of the Nereides Nation but with an autonomy on their land.

But space was limited and the Nereides had to look for new lands to settle and new allies to make or new slaves to capture and so they send adventurous settlers across Auriga.



Gameplay:

• As an amphibious race. They can build districts on water tiles. These Tiles are connected with each others for landunit movement. The City has to be founded on land. The Districts on land don’t produce any Food from any source unless it is produced from the village bonus (see blow).

• Since they are a race that likes the closure of water they start each game near a body of water. (Lake, sea or ocean)

• The Nereides can either pacify a minor faction with parlay or quests and let them cultivate the land in that region as well as some willing mates for the Nereides or they can conquer a minor faction and build a slaveden where the village was to produce workers and unwilling mates or rebuild the village.

• Pacified villages (parlay, Quest or rebuild) are self-sufficient and produce a militia as neutral minor factions do. The militias tech level is era 1 (tier 1) when produced and the maximum number of unites in it is based on tech research (a new tech or the one already implemented for army size) of the player. The player can pay as for normal unites to refit them to a newer design. They help the player to defend a city if it is attacked inside the region where village with the militia is stationed. They give a food bonus on districts in the region. The boni stack with more villages inside the region.

• On conquered villages can either be built a slaveden (gives a bonus of industry and a low amount of food to the districts, but wont produce a bonus for pacified villages) or a destroyed village can be rebuild with an assimilated minor faction, changing the minor faction living in the village and counts as a pacified village as noted above. The boni from the slaveden stack with more villages inside the region

• Roads are canals (visually) and trade ships can cross them to reach inland lakes and roads but take longer to build and got a higher upkeep if that is planed.

• The player won’t produce any resources from extractors unless a minor faction in the region is conquered or pacified. The slaveden produces 1,5 times the resources while an assimilated minor faction produces the normal 1 resource per extractor and an minor faction not assimilated to the faction produces 0.5 resources per extractor of that resource. The boni stack with the number of villages inside the region.

• Assimilated villages give a research and science boost like a trade route (unless trade routes with minor factions are to be implemented in that case it will give a slightly bonus to those with assimilated villages)



Starting options

- Parlay tech is unlocked at the start

- Starts near water



Personal Notes:

1. Sorry for my bad english and confusing way of writing.

2. I am sorry for the name, but i am not really inventiv in that regard and i am okay with changes on the name.

3. I had a dozen of ideas and had to make alot of thinking...still not sure as i am not a gamedeveloper if it maybe a bit to strong or to weak. So the actuall balancing is to be done if choosen or considered to be choosen. but writing all ideas in the faction would be really powerful i am sure of that...so i tried it with this one.

4. I had left alot open since i didnt want to take to much away from the other Quests to come. So it may look little in comparison to other entries.



I hope it is readable. thanks alot for reading the post and good luck to all the entries. (I didnt read all but alot and most of them looked like fun)

Huh, two more and its hundred ._.;

Closing this thread: we're not accepting submissions anymore but thank you for your participation.



We'll set up the poll so you can all vote for your three favourite factions.