Regarding having shared building models and differentiating between races, could a simple system be put in place where the generic building models are given primary colors and/or a highlight color or two that are automatically applied to that race's buildings? Then, even if those models are the same, Burlust buildings have red and black trim, Andor buildings with blue and white, etc? That might be a nice little visual spice that could be scripted and not require additional art assets. *shrug*
I suppose having an additional layer or two to buildings that is based on race colours - beyond the previously shown hex borders- would let you tell the race cities apart if they somehow managed to grow into one another (and therefore had no undeveloped edges to show race ownership). I'd certainly welcome it.
It's... a possibility. It requires a lot more in the way of extra draw calls just for this, but only for those kinds of tiles, and the payoff might be substantial. So... I don't know, maybe. Combining these in the main dictionary actually means it wouldn't be any more draw calls at all, come to that, but rather it would be more on the pixel fill rate. Though probably not much at all.
I'm not sure. It's certainly a possibility, and it wouldn't require us doing a complete retool of the art or anything. It would be something that we'd probably add later on if there seems to be a need for it.
Aw, I'd wanted to play as the spire. The rest does sound pretty interesting, though! Terraformer races in Master of Mana were my favorite, and it sounds like everyone is doing it here 
You bet!
YES
About how much of this post do you at least want to try to make work?
No satellites, but there are some ground-based buildings you can use to adjust the temperature on the planet, as well as the atmospheric mix.
Temperature fluctuations cause deserts to expand and contract, same with ice/snow, and for sea levels to rise and fall. You can flood out coastal buildings with rising seas if you drive up the temperature enough.
You can't raise mountains, and there's no concept of height in the game (unlike SMAC, and like Civ:BE). I know that bothers some people, but representing that in a way that was attractive and clear was something we tried and failed to do. And in the end, we're able to get at the same sort of resultant gameplay without that.
You can clear forests and certain other kinds of terrain, but you can't raise back up natural forests. However, depending on your race you have one of three kinds of terrain that is unique to your race that you can seed. So you can draw all the phallic obscenities you want.
I've thought about having land expansion onto water, but I'm not sure yet. I have a couple of models in which it could work, but I worry that it would trivialize certain aspects of the game. At any rate, if you find yourself stuck on an island, you can expand your empire via docks, airstrips, and helipads with ease.
In terms of making yourself resistant to atmospheric poisons, that's an interesting concept, and not one I've thought about. Although, I guess I kind of implicitly have. The atmosphere is by nature going to be hostile to at least some of the races, because the races have a mixture of partially-compatible or completely-incompatible requirements. Those that are ill suited to the atmosphere don't just die, but it will slow them down a lot because of their need for rebreathers and other things. So you can push the atmosphere in ways that will help you (and implicitly some other races that have some similar needs), while pushing out other races. I suppose that part of that would be to potentially have some expensive tech to increase your tolerance of specific atmospheric elements, although I don't want that to get in the way of the primary push and pull too much.
You can't see the sky, so color picking wouldn't have much use.
So it sounds like a lot of the things you wanted were already things I had planned.
Bear in mind that I haven't had time to actually prototype any of the environmental stuff yet, except for the temperature changes and how that affects coasts/deserts/snow/ice. And basic clearing of land, of course. But the more sophisticated atmospheric manipulation, and the planting of your own native flora/terrain isn't something I've gotten to yet. I have plans, many of them quite detailed, but it's a matter of making sure that they actually survive the prototype intact based on them turning out to, in fact, actually be fun. SOME form of those things will survive, I'm certain, because that's really a cornerstone of how you can compete with the races non-militarily in this game.
Having other ways to interact with the races other than just military blows and cheap diplomacy is something I'm definitely driving towards. So many strategy games focus on the military above all else, and kind of let the other elements wither. Heck, with AI War I made the conscious choice to do almost nothing BUT military -- there's nothing wrong with that approach. Here I wanted to make the military no more attractive of an option than any of the other playstyles, but at the same time not making it so that the factions are isolated -- they should be in constant competition even when not militarily engaged. Even if you never actually fight anyone in an entire game, it should be a bitter "battle" the whole time on at least a couple of fronts.
