Will I have to choose them, or can I be ‘independant’?
@Quel as far as I understand them, you will be able to pick one of them with “The Ascendancy” reminding me most of the actual settlers look-wise. Each one has some perks, which they might be is up to guesses right now but likely they get some kind of bonus like faster work or more hitpoints and such. In addition I would guess, they get their own style.
Just think of Northern viking-style for “The Northmen’s Alliance”, western/european style for “The Ascendancy” and eastern for “Raya’s Children”.
Aside of that, you will be on your own. I would suspect though, every faction can randomly pop up in your world like goblins and the Rabbit faction, giving opportunities for trade, quests and so on.
Edit:
I looked at the Story-like descriptions and would put them down as following:
The Northmen’s Alliance: explorers and fighters, favoring small independent settlements, bonus for things like defense and walls
Raya’s Children: Traders which prefer sprawling settlements and due to their history need less food while gaining a bonus when trading with NPC’s
The Ascendancy: your average guys without a real bonus so no inherent real strength and no real weakness
The Northmen’s sounds like my thing.
But pretty much, in the look of people and perks and such, there won’t be much else?
@Quel As far as is known… no… but there is nothing else known as far as I could see, aside of the short text and picture on the KS right now.
Something that is easy to miss, they made even a short fun-script which is linked below the picture in the KS.
The whole thing strengthened my idea of the focus somewhat, with making The Ascendancy maybe a bit more tending towards being crafters and getting a bonus there.
Though with the bonus I would think, the cultures are for example 10% faster or better in a certain field. Like crafting 11 chairs while the other 2 craft 10 in the same time or receiving 11 goods in trade instead of 10 and having 11 HP instead of 10. Always given we look at the exact same situation when making a comparison.
Be happy if it isn’t Mass Effect diversity where having a choice between red, blue, and green settlers really means choosing between red, blue, and green. =P
And I hope it’s not just +/-10% here and there.
To make these “kingdoms” play differently, they need to have some qualitative differences.
For instance, the nordmen don’t use bows at all but only short range throwing axes. They also don’t get the ability to fertilise fields - they only irrigate.
If every faction plays the same way (+/-10% here and there), there’s not much point in having more than one.
The factions are not really meant as different races, those are planned for a time clearly past release.
So, they should not be to different, as they are meant to be different thanks to some ‘perks’.
The idea wit hjust a small percentage as bonus were just an example and idea and to point out on how I would think about the perk’s considering nothing else was stated as far as I could see. I would not let them go wit hjust 1 bonus, this would clearly be not enough.
Otherwise, the idea with throwing weapons instead of a bow is interesting, giving each culture some more difference without making them a whole new race.
I hope though, that either @Tom or @Ponder could bring some more light into this 
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@Sheenariel has the right idea. Each faction will get a few bonuses that are “nice to have” but not essential. Maybe a few unique crafting recipes, or a discount when trading. But they will all fundamentally play the same way. We just don’t have the time time make them play differently.
This is why we made them different factions of humans and not different races. Long term we can potentially add new races, but when we do we want them to play radically different – elves should not go around chopping down trees for instance.
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I love to be on the right track 
… just wish I would be more often ^^
Bah! Who decided that elves love trees! I want a faction of elves that are burly mountain warriors that, rather than fighting the enemy will run over to the nearest tree and set it on fire, and then continue fighting!
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Some people would call them dwarfes ^^
Dwarfes of the sort who need a huge amount of charcoal and thus run for the next tree ^^
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This is one major problem I see with a lot of made up races. People do a “But our orcs are spelled with a ‘K’” kind of thing, where they just take an existing racial archtype and give them a new name or take parts of several races and stick them haphazard together.
Instead I think the traits of a new race should be designed around their motivations. Why does your race hate trees? Maybe because they are short and are offended by anything taller than them. So you start off with a short race that hates all tall things: trees, mountains, the sky, etc. Then how would they go about destroying everything tall? Maybe they have giant hands like shovels that they use to cut down trees and level mountains. So they are really short guys with giant shovel hands half as big as they are.
Then you start thinking about society traits. Maybe the shortest of this race get to be the leaders because they have the most hatred. There is lots of treachery as subordinates try to kill off superiors so that the subordinates will be the shortest (living). Now you think up a name that is easy to read and say, like “Pugwump,” and there you have it: the treacherously short Pugwumps with huge shovel hands who fight will fight a tree as much as fight another enemy.
I realize that I forgot about setting things on fire, but maybe someone else can do a better job than I can.
I’m glad the dev’s want to make new races actually play differently instead of just being a pallet swap or a head change of the humans.
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I agree that designing a race from the ground up is admirable and can have awesome consequences, but… your pugwumps don’t sound like they’d survive the real world. 
Children would rule, folks would kill their taller neighbors, they couldn’t have any aboveground houses, and they would always be picking fights that were terrible ideas.
Like I said, someone could probably do better than I did.
Take the Drow. Underground elves so they have grey skin. But rather than just making them dwarves, their creator said, “Let’s make them matriarcal. What sort of things live underground and have dominant females? Spiders. So maybe they are matriarcal because they worship a Spider Goddess. The men are subservient to the women. …” The Drow are more than just dwarves that look like elves, because their creator thought about their motivations and how they would shape their look and society.
And maybe the Pugwumps are lone-wolf creatures that are very solid and hard to kill. Maybe they don’t mate but are formed from green mold by some malevolent energy that pursues the equalizing of all things. Of course the Pugwumps wouldn’t make a very good playable race, but as a monster they might be interesting to fight, especially as they would run off to drop trees on your head as you’re fighting them. But I’ll repeat myself to say that I’m sure the dev’s could do better than my 30 second effort.
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A race of robots please. Thank you.
Something steampunk, maybe?
I could have swore that, technically, Drow are just the D&D version of Dark Elves. And, as confirmed by the beloved Wikipedia, “The drow (/ˈdraʊ/[1][2] or /ˈdroʊ/)[3] or dark elves are a generally evil,”, which “In Norse mythology, Dökkálfar (Old Norse “Dark Elves”, singular Dökkálfr) and Ljósálfar (Old Norse “Light Elves”, singular Ljósálfr) are two contrasting types of elves; the prior dwell within the earth and are most swarthy” (Wikipedia again!). So, the creators of the Drow really didn’t create anything unique, just a new name for a race that’s been around for a long time in Mythology.
As for the matriarcal part, that does seem to be a creation of the Drow creators.
Sorry, I just had to get that out there
Though, I do agree that a well created, unique race with a deep, rich history is better than a generic race that has the same history in most every game/media.
I don’t pretend to be an expert on the Drow or D&D.
My point still stands, though, that in D&D they are more than just underground elves or dwarves that are called elves. Their creators set out to make a creature that had specific motivations and then build the racial characteristics around those motivations, even if they borrowed heavily from existing mythologies.
Sorry, I was just kind of pointing it out to show that great races are easily built off of existing, established races And, any time I play D&D, I tend to play a Drow so that kind of played a roll >.>
And I entirely agree with your point, the more you extend upon a race, whether through unique benefits, items, buildings, personalities or technologies, the better the history, lore, and potentially gameplay, can be.
i cant wait to play as airbenders ;D
@nmd216 Let us ignore the Sequel and state… the last one was caught as well and thus… they are extinguished 