I think the point is that these factions are supposed to be philosophically divergent and not specifically morally divergent. The general notion in most western cultures is that two opposing philosophical positions can be represented as good and bad/evil with the focal philosophical position representing the good and the outer position as bad or evil. One might look at the philosophical distinctions of the Empire and Kingdoms as being fundamentally similar to the industrial v. agrarian distinctions seen in the early 19th century or the Athenian v. Spartan distinctions in the 5th Century BC before the Peloponnesian War.

It's mostly due to visual presentation that players come to the conclusion of good vs evil.  Why not change the ashy dark land to a different color like a yellow plain?  It's all so cliche.

I agree --^^  And consider another mixing of 'good and evel.'  The nazis had a famous Christian scholar, one of the founders of the reformation, as their guiding 'saint.'  They chose his birthday to stage their nationwide attack on Jewish stores, the 'night of broken glass.'   This founder of the Protestant Reformation wrote in his book about Jews, that Jews are detestable vermin, and all should be killed, their synagogues should be burned... etc.   The nazis loved this and enshrined Martin Luther as their patron Saint.  Nazis used Luther's later writings to justify their brutality.  Sadly, they were not mis interpreting what Luther wrote.  So, I agree with the above quote, on a whole other level - good and evil are often 'mixed' together..  

Obviously your point of view didn't make it into your game.  For *most* people...

Death magic, domination, slavery, portrayal of Fallen landscape, etc. = EVIL.

Life magic, Beacon of Hope, renewal of the land, etc = GOOD.

Oversimplification?  YES.  Portrayed as such in the game?  YES again.

Not to sound like a lore apologist, but maybe the empire folks have a different mind set than kingdom.

Maybe they eat horses and don't like to ride them because of it.

Maybe they don't find the horse ferocious enough or tough enough compared to the warg.

Pretty thin, I admit, but not as much as some other rationalizations I have read here.

Some of these things could be easily resolved by a small change to the description.

Not likely to happen, but how about allowing the opposing factions to use the other's mount with a penalty.

If you do not partake in the Diplomatic possibilities available in the game that leaves but 2 choices. Conquer or be Conquered. Now I don't see how, even if it were 2 pristine Angel factions doing the fighting, one will always consider the other Evil, because they are the ones getting conquered, and as such consider themselves the Good guys/gals.

This whole topic is so sourly "deja vu" it tortures my senses to read it "ALL" again. Somewhere in here (like 2 years ago), probably before some pre-forum wipe, a discussion like this transpired exactly, hell the OP may have been in that one as well, and look what we ended up with?

It seems very strange that now we get word that possibly, those things we sought back in EoW early early days, will be made available like we wanted then? A lot of new Empire Art be forthcoming one would guess.

And what happens if the EF story does not water down the whole Good/Evil thing enough? Do we wait another 2 years? There seems no really good reason to throw out ALL the existing Lore now. What, "beige flavored" Empires? (come on)

Good vs Evil, Light vs Dark whatever already. Can someone just decide that one faction killing off another to meet some unknown end game plan, of thier own making,does not constitute either being Good or Evil and neither hides nor enlightens either side already...

Besides, make friends with the Empires/Kingdoms, pay their stupid tribute demands, and just do the whole "Group Hug" thing. Then every one wins and there is no Dark/Light Good/Evil BS to worry about. Just because when the Empires had their Colors done and came out all Earthy, doesn't mean they are Evil, that's just crazy talk. LOL

Yeah I agree with this. Im tired of all that "ooh they are all shades of grey", Its becoming cliche its so overused. I want the bad guys to be bad, and be deliciously evil at that. Then when you play your own custom civ, you can ally up with the good guys or the bad guys depending on how you want to play that game. Galciv 2 handled this perfectly.

Incidentally, we want more differentiation between factions, not less. They are already sufficiently bland and indistinguishable, if you arent going to have non-human races, you need to make the factions polar opposites to at least make them feel a bit different even if they all look the same...

I think the problem is the game strayed from the core concept Brad laid out initially:

The Kingdoms were about collectivism in general, whereas the Empires were about individualism.  You can have good and evil within both those concepts.

You could easily have good/partly good/netural/partly evil/pure evil for both, and use the base 10 factions for that.

My humble suggestion is that the Fallen don't want to destroy the land, they just alter it so that for the kingdoms it appears lifeless. For example the fruits become poisonous, shrubs become brambles, forests are gnarled and withered, basically everything becomes a corrupted and hostile version of itself. But that's the way Empires like it, that's how they feel at home. Their land is not actually dead, it's just a really bizarre ecosystem, which is incompatible with normal "Kingdom" stuff.

That's what I tell myself when I play at least, to help with immersion.

(Ya, the lava pools are actually some kind of strange water, where they can go fishing in)

I think the reason why the tropes are so useful, is that you can quickly and easily, upon a premade foundation, tell your own fantasy story. It might not win any prizes, but its yours, and thats whats fun about it. This is one thing that games can do that movies and books can't. When there's other fiction you have to deal with that you are less familiar with, it can get in the way of this process. Theres nothing wrong with a very thin backstory in a game, I think thats why people love MoM and AoW:SM. It's all the stuff you know and love, ready to act according your own imagination.

Indeed.
And pardon me, but I don´t need ideas of how I could interpret that what the game shows me to help with immersion.
Either the Empire spoils the land or it doesn´t.
If it doesn´t, just leave that aspect out of the game and replace it with a "guardian spell" that gives you the combat bonus that you get when fighting on your respective type of land.
If it does, this really should reflect in gameterms.

Don´t get me wrong, I kinda like that spoiling/replenishing theme.
It just doesn´t make much sense as it is now.
So either have it matter and integrate it better into gameplay, or rather leave it out entirely.

I mean, there would be so many cool ways to handle this.
First off we could assume that Kingdom vs. Empire is not about good vs. evil but about order vs. chaos.
This way we would have a duality without the moral implications associated with the former.

Then you could go and introduce life and death and/or order and chaos nodes (hasn´t something like this already been in the game at some time?) that would relate to the landscape around them.
You could use them to spoil the land around a death node or to replenish it around a life node, either profiting from the essence that was drained from the land by getting additional mana or crystal, or simply getting more food and material.
The respective ressources could be "harvested" from the node if it was in your possession.

This way you would have a real reason to spoil or replenish the land, and it would somehow make sense.
Just to give an example...
However, I´m not at all happy with how this is handled now.
Either I have an evil faction that is believably evil and a good one that is believably good, or I don´t need them at all.

My point is that people are not simply good or evil. They sometimes do "good" or "evil" things.
For this to be believable, there has to be a reason to act accordingly.
If spoiling the landscape doesn´t give you anything, why should you do it? Just for flavour?
On the other hand, if there was some kind of reward for spoiling the landscape, it would be much more believable that there are people who would do this.

So my point doesn´t necessarilly have anything to do with removing the good/evil or law/chaos duality, primarily it´s about making this duality more feasible.
On the other hand you could, to stay with my example, of course leave this duality out of the game and let the player decide how to act; do I go down the path of spoiling the land or do I nourish it, or do I perhaps do both?