Making your own unique races is fine but you really have to give it a lot of thought. Most efforts tend to fall short or fit too well with one stereotype. Just google "our elves are better" for some examples of what people do.

Our Elves are Better

To that, I'd like to add how much I loathe the rule of cool. I'd also like to raise the issue of Viewers are Morons.

There is nothing wrong with the rule of cool unless you apologize to people about it yet use it anyway. At that point it becomes an easy cop out rather than the acceptable refuge in audacity.

Well to be fair I personal enjoy originality whether that is taking a classic and revamping it or coming up with something completely unique. Fantasy races can add a lot to a fantasy game but are far from mandatory in my opinion. Besides the most vicious and tragic wars are fought between brothers (aka civil wars) and since the two factions are kin if the historical, diplomatic, and story have the proper depth and scope I would guess no one will be disappointed. On a side note however we don’t know what role if any the powers that previously ruled the world will play. All we really know about them was they weren’t human and they were really powerful. I would be interested to know if they were all the same race or if it was a war fought between numerous races. Of course they could remain nameless faceless ghosts of the past but that’s up to Stardock.  

I like the basic idea, Brad. Obviously there's room for more complexity and i assume that you're keeping much of this from us but the idea of creating your own troops via that kind of interface is exiting. I liked Gal Civ and how you could build your own ships but tbh, I've always been a 'fantasy-firster' and that's why i'm looking forward to this so much. And you have improved on the GC version too by including the availability of resources, that rocks.

I'm not overly concerned about originality, as long as the game mechanics are smooth and the game itself is a good ride but obviously you are going for originality with the 12 tribes of man. and i like that idea, reminds me of the 12 tribes of Galway (where i studied for my Uni degree)!!

So, basically, looks intriguing, with a small dose of exciting thrown in. show me more!!!!!

You'll only be able to customize your units to a certain extent - limited by what magic and technology you've researched. They've already stated that they're planning for each faction to have its own spellbooks, so it's not too wild of a stretch that each faction will have a different tech tree (they could be mostly the same with minor distinctions, or there could be fundamental differences). Likewise, I'm sure the different factions will have other distinguishing factors, like special abilities and traits.

Basically you'll only be able to customize your units as far as your knowledge and resource availability allows you to; that goes for both the ability to create a certain unit at all, and the quality of said unit. A classic example would be longbowmen. The technology to make longbows wasn't really a secret - but only the British (and welsh, I think) really made them a staple; similar things could easily be done in the game by providing faction traits, or (semi-)unique technologies. 

See this quote from one of the other dev journals:

So yeah that's happening Hopefully these will be extensively different as for me variation of units is the only way of getting a nice clear distinction between factions. Civ's model of having just one special unit per faction does nothing for me at all but MoM was incredible with each unit (even the standard swordsmen/spearmen etc) being different from race to race.. for me that variety is a big part of what drives replayability and thus my love for the game as a whole

Each faction will definitely get its own spell book.

The unique tech trees will ceom from their keep. I'll be talking about how tech works in Elemental in an upcoming journal entry because it's radically different than what you've seen in other games other than, to a point, MOO 1.

You've got my attention! When you say the unique tech trees will come from their keep... That makes it sound like the city keeps are where you do your tech research. Or maybe there's a generic tech tree for all factions, and a second unique tree for each faction that is available through the city keeps... If that's at all what you mean, I can see how that would add a lot of possibilities!

*Impatiently waits for the tech tree dev journal*  

Oooow that sounds exciting! Are you excited? I'm excited!!!

I need to look up MOO1! STAT!

Anyone who hasn't played MOO yet should go dig it up off the interwebs and run it on DosBOX. There are so many oldies that no one has played or even heard about. They don't know what they are missing.

WoW,  thanks for pigeon and frogboy!   I think that've effectively eliminated my worry.

The diversities and unique spell books is something I feel HoMM4 better than HoMM3, though many of the fans don't think so. 

interesting!    certainly that will spice things up.

So does this mean that we won't be picking out tomes the way we did in Master of Magic I wonder?   My brain floods with questions.   Just how expansive are these spell books going to be?  Will there be duplicate spells?  there must be, right?

That's called "Hit Points with Extra Bookeeping."

Read any definition of hit points, and you'll see that they cover exactly that.

That is essentially what hitpoints are in DnD terms. It has nothing to do with physical damage on the character and everything to do with your ability to "avoid damage" whatever that means.