This actually reminded me of some memories I had with WarCraft II back in the day. As a kid, I thought it was so cool that every color had its own nation and clan. Blizzard put a lot of emphasis on that in that game (and in StarCraft I), but it's pretty much lost it now as the human nations' borders have blurred and stuff in WoW and WarCraft III.
I actually made a concept map based on this where you not only choose your core race, but also a specific nation, clan, etc. within that race, just like Age of Empires, and each different color denotes a different technology tree. For example, humans have Azeroth (blue; variety of races, balanced units), Dalaran (purple; magic emphasis), and Alterac (orange; traitors, with bandit units).