Ludicrous Impossible Idea: Some Advice Wanted

[Grytorm]

Well, hello there. I had an idea to make a 4x game, which is a bit of a big project which will probably not happen any time soon. Especially since I have currently have ideas for 52 factions (though I have already forgotten some of them). The factions aren't largely based on real world groups, but I was thinking of representation and not a lot of actual representation going on. The closest to an African nation was a bit of a mish mash which for some reason I assigned the trait of being dark skinned. But the broader idea wasn't incredibly Africa specific.

So, should I actively try and develop them further in that direction and do research to make my idea authentic. wait and see how the idea develops without any specific attempts at guidance especially since it will probably amount to nothing. Or would it be worthwhile to specifically do some research into Africa and see if I can find any inspiration to mix with what I can find out.

(At this point all I am doing is writing out basic short tech trees and deciding how much to borrow from other games in the genre. ie. I like the level up thing from Age of Wonders)

[Chen]

Unless the factions are just repainted versions of one another, trying to get any type of balance with that many is going to be impossible. If it's set on earth I suppose there might be a reason to make them representative of real life groups but it's hardly a requirement. If it's not set on earth then it's completely irrelevant.

[Grytorm]

Oh I know that it would be unbalanced. Not set on Earth but more on a somewhat generic fantasy world. Most of the ideas are not really related to real cultures. Excepting the probably Latin American themed Orcs and the Scottish Orcs. Truthfully I want more factions because my approach to this was to write out a bunch of fantasy races and then move back and come up with a few factions for each of them. Which has led to among other things two different Dwarven cults. Both of them are actually somewhat evil. Which I didn't quite realize until now.

[Sian]

I would quite frankly suggest that you get to a stage where it that works Generic Boring Human versus exact same GBH, before fiddling with how many races there actually are supposed to be, unless they're so unique that you HAVE to think them into the system while writing it (in which case you could make a decent arguement not to care unless they're the primary plot-point)

[Grytorm]

Yeah this is pretty much working backwards from a sane point of view. About the only good reason to design races before mechanics would be to get a rough idea of the range of units I would want represented. The other reason for doing that is honestly this idea is probably going nowhere because I'm not really capable of making something like this I think. So I might as well start with the fun part.