i remember reading that you could play the game as the other factions.
heh. it's funny. people are still into this game. i played it a while back and got stuck on the 2nd or 3rd city. it was mildly amusing, and really nice to look at, and the soundtrack was one of the best i've ever heard in a game :-\. it just got too tedious for my tastes, though, and it really reeked of scripting. this shows if you deviated even a little bit from the objectives the game thrusts at you.
apparently they were working on an mmorpg also, but it got canned. elixer is now out of business. :-\
Well, both Republic: The Revolution and Evil Genius were good ideas flawed by lackluster execution (very nearly the same problems between both games as well).