I like the idea. As you mentioned above, the minor races in GC were entirely at the mercy of the player..usually the AI in most of my games, as I liked having as many factions around as possible, to keep things organic and interesting. What I'd really like to see is that the minor factions not only have teeth, but claws too! Kinda in the same spirit as Star Trek: Birth of the Federation, the minor races in that game were rather..scary. Go to Eden and declare war, I dare ya! I double dare you.

In regards to the factions being able to give you benefits via diplomacy, could that extend to include swearing fealty, and/or becoming a protectorate? Instead of just being absorbed into your civilization, they'd keep control and such, but you'd still get whatever perks they provided. Or you could also just attack the city that is protected by the drakes, only to have a rather large and angry drake discuss with you that it wasn't the best of ideas to attack that particular faction. Either way, so long as the minor races aren't on the same level of fodder as the GC ones, I think all would be well. Though in my own GC games, I rather enjoy giving the minor races advanced warships, primarily for defense, but in some cases they have taken these ships and gone deep into enemy territory and sacked several fleets...but I digress, keep up the awesome work.

I like it. The only way for minor factions to succeed at being anything more than a glorified goodie hut (in GC 2 this just meant a great planet, really) is for the benefits of keeping them around and being on good terms with them to be as worthwhile as the benefits obtained by conquering them. I don't really mind that minor factions don't expand, to be honest; I think the mechanics governing minor factions should be substantially different from those governing the major players.

For example, perhaps you encounter a minor troll faction. If you capture the unit-producing building you can recruit a troll once every 10 turns for a significant cost (trolls are strong, after all). If you instead build up your reputation with this minor troll faction you can strike a mutual defense agreement; the trolls will then attack any enemy of yours that comes too close and will produce one troll every 20 turns for free. Building up a good relationship with these factions should require some work, and could be done through quests. The cost of maintaining such an alliance could be a small quantity of food or other resources, or even free - after all it's a mutual defense agreement and if you let someone else come in and capture it you not only lose that defensive ally, occasional free troll unit, and now someone else can recruit trolls instead.

Some system like the above would be a great deal of fun. Not all minor factions need be unit-producing, either. Some could grant research points, resources, spell points or even spells.

As far as I'm concerned, "minor factions" are not minor factions until there are good reasons to keep them around instead of overrunning them. Until then, they are just fancy goodie huts or resource nodes, or points of interest on the map. Hopefully you guys will come up with something innovative here! This is actually the main thing about Civ 5 that has me really interested; it looks like they might finally implement true minor factions that are worth having around and that are worth warring over to keep them around (vs. warring over their charred remains).

Excellent idea with the guardians.  Now we just need an Orion faction and we're set.

Their should be a way to incress the strenght of them over time, perhaps each fraction shoudl get a new Tech from Magic every X turns so they grow strenght over the game, This would be multipled by Difictily and such..

I found the GalCiv minor races to be at the mercy of the player, but not because they lack magic or couldn't expand. Rather, they had excellent economies and produced decent enough ships. The problem was more that they suffered from many crippling bugs in their implementation. One thing I tried to do several times in GalCiv2 was to utilize the minor races in a proxy war against the majors and test out my new ships. The problem was that the minor races appeared to have a bug in their implementation that when you gave a ship to that minor race, even if you also handed them a bunch of cash for its maintenance, the ship would just sit there in space with 0 move points. No way for it to attack the enemy or mount a defense of their homeworld...

There were others, and probably bugs in their AI as well, that made it essentially useless to use them as anything but a source of resources or a way to declare war without being aggressive. My primary tactic for minor races ended up being to surround their homeworld with constructors or freighters and blockade the major races attacking them until I built up enough trust with them to form an alliance, and pay off anyone currently at war with them. Once the alliance was formed, I just had to wait around for one of the major races to declare war on them, follow up on my treaty obligations, then wipe that race out. 

Sounds good to me.

One thing I noticed in Galciv II was that in some circumstances where invasions occured, particluarly where a major civ was at war with several other civs, and a minor. The minor civ conquered a few planets and became a real threat, at least in that sector of the map. It was at this point that I realised the line between minor and major civ's became rather blurred.

Is there any way that after successfully invading several cities, a minor civ could activate and become a major one, or is that just a pipe dream?

Isn't there a way to tie NPC's into this?  Example, a mercenary becomes extremely wealthy in his travels, builds up a bit of an army, and then uses some of that money to build a keep somewhere.  As a player, then you can go and purchase troops from him, or you can attack him to take his stash of contract money.  Or a wealthy administrator NPC finds a mine or quarry that currently isn't being used.  He sets up shop, buys some protection, and then you can begin trading with him for the resource.  Or say a successful adventurer happens upon a small village.  He is elected as leader, and now that small village has made the jump from minor power to a major power, just minus the sovereign.

I would assume(I know, I know) that to take a Minor Village, a player would have to dispose of the Guardian unit? Otherwise it might be possible to sneak in the back door and take the Village, and the Special unit producing structure, without a fight.

Another point, just from looking at the Pic's, it would seem that even if you have a Minor right next door to your starting position, quickly running over a Minor will not be an easy task in the early game given Drakes and the likes (what is that long nosed thing in Pic #1?) being the protectors...

I'd like to see at least some of the minor factions as expansive, where it applies anyway. It'd be really cool if it worked something like this:

Giant Spiders:

Expands: Slowly

Location: Expansions must be located within 2 tiles of a mountain tile or be within 1 tile of a forest.

Diplomacy: No/Communicate via magic instead? Allows recruitment

Raids: within X tiles of nests

Dragon:

Expands: Never

Diplomacy: Difficult/Magical  Allows recruitment (one time)

Raids: within X tiles of nest

Goblins:

Expands: Moderate, capped at one level 3 city and up to 3 level 2 cities.

Location: Typically located near mountain ranges or elevated areas, also inhabit forests

Raids: Organized raiding parties target weaker villages in neighboring empires.

Diplomacy: Yes, Allows limited recruitment

Conquered cities remain of the goblin race and only have access to those improvements, size limitation remains in effect. Subjugation of the village allows limited recruitment, lesser quality than diplomatic relations. (larger quantities)

Werewolves:

Expands: Light, small villages (level 2), typically only 1-2 of them per faction.

Location: Within forests

Raids: Defends home forest fiercely

Diplomacy: Yes, Allows recruitment

Conquered villages retain limitations and tech of the werewolves, lesser quality units than diplomacy creates ( larger quantities)

Rogue warlord:

Expands: Never, main city is typically a fort or fortress, military improvement focused, troops are tough.

Location: Anywhere

Raids: within X tiles of home city

Diplomacy: Yes, Allows recruitment, gold is best for gaining trust.

Conquered city tailored to produce units, both yours and a few set types available to the warlord originally, nothing super special though, maybe grants a champion/warlord NPC that submits once you conquer the city and joins your cause.

Wasteland Tribes:

Expands: Often, Typically villages of level 1-2 with rare cities level 3-4. Troops are lightly armed and armored, move great distances at high speed.

Location: Barren terrain, often near oasis or other food improvements on the map.

Raids: Within X tiles of town, defends local resources viciously

Diplomacy: Yes, allows recruitment, may get better tech for greater benefits from food improvements.

Conquered cities produce lesser quality units, sometimes discover the tech improvements.

Necromancer's tower:

Expands: Never

Location: Anywhere

Raids: Within x tiles of tower

Diplomacy: Yes, usually requires magic technology, even offering of access to certain shards, necromancer will raise units for you, quality increases with better negotiations.

Conquered tower is destroyed, perhaps they can be built on a site of magic power so the conquering nation can take control of it after victory.

These are just examples, races and whatnot can obviously be altered to fit into elemental lore, the idea was to give a baseline of the different kinds of "minor factions" there could be and the behaviors that I think would be neat to see. I think it would go a long way to making the world feel more fluid and alive, especially on larger maps where you might not run into another major faction for awhile, it'll add some extra flare to the early game and give you things to deal with in times of peace later on.

Will minors have special economic bonuses, leader traits, resources and diplomacy behavior to offset their relative weakness?

Will minors play a roll with quests and random events?