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I wrote a lovely long post, it was brilliant, it had calculations and examples and all sorts in it, and then the internet died and it disappeared into the warp. Now I've cooled off enough to write a new one!

How do you tend to go about designing Factions for your wargames? The key ways I can see are:

• Concept and then mechanics - work out which factions you want to make, then work out mechanics to make them unique but, hopefully, balanced. Historical games or games on existing franchises would be covered by this - making a WW2 game is going to define your factions for you, and historical accuracy will define how they work.
• Mechanics then concept - work out the fundamentals of the factions you want to make - fast & shooty, slow and durable, etc., then flesh out the factions around these core mechanics.

I find myself in a situation where I'm combining the two - I have several factions I've been visualising since the start, and after laying them out I felt I needed more, so I categorised their traits (fast or slow, high damage or low, durable or not, etc.) and started looking for gaps to introduce new factions.

I will not be adding new ones until my originals are all together, but it made me wonder - how do others design factions for their games? theme then mechanics, or mechanics then theme, or another way?

Most of my games are Historical so the Factions are pretty easy. I don't get much of a choice!

I personally prefer to start from the nations/creatures/races. Their economy, place in world how their battle doctrines and preferred tactics work. Then write mechanics, unit lists and such.