and it gets better and better...

It's looking like Stardock's vision is pushing towards a model where pre-game choices weigh less than they do now, in return for more in-game choices?

My largest concern with this direction is that the factions/characters become generic/repetitive. For instance, the new hero system sounds like every faction gets all the same heroes? Which also means that every hero is as willing to follow any faction as any other. They don't have any particular drive that the world should be one way, and not the other?

I also have a sense that more different factions make the world seem more alive. Where later in the game, territories controlled by different factions present different threats, different opportunities, and simply look different. I have a sense that the system as currently presented causes most of the world to become generic “enemy territory” by the time the player reaches it, and all AI factions will look and interact with the player in the exact same manner.

This seems like a less moddable experience. Strong factions create a lot of levers for modders to introduce their own stories, mechanics and aesthetics, with the largest barriers to this being systems which can do stuff, noting particularly that the current random event system simply is not set up to be a load bearing system that works locally and per faction and that the AI is not set up to handle weird and somewhat arbitrary rules.

In terms of proselytizing faction unique content, per-alignment content might make sense instead? Where factions/characters choose between say, three inbuilt alignments, and arbitrary additional alignments could plausibly be modded in? Then quests/hero recruitment/etc could vary on alignment, making it easier to generate a basic new sovereign or faction that reuses more pre-existing content, but also giving room for more in depth mods?