"I was thinking — wouldn’t it make more sense to replace the wild chicken skins with more region-appropriate birds and have them spawn in different biomes? Seeing regular domestic chickens wandering around in the wild feels a bit out of place.
White wild chicken → Willow Ptarmigan** (European or snowy maps) * Black wild chicken → Guineafowl (African or desert maps) * Brown wild chicken → Red Junglefowl (Jungle or Asian maps) **“This way, each region could have its own unique wild bird variant, which would feel more immersive and natural.”
I’d also add grouse (for Europe) and curassow (for Central America) to that list – although I don’t actually know which of these animals were hunted for food historically. I see we now also have peacocks (but no peahens) for South Asia.
Also, how about the original penguin: the great auk? Definitely historically hunted for food, and with quite a wide geographical range.
I’m more used to them being called peccaries than javelinas – didn’t realise for years that these were the same thing.
I only knew about them through Age of Empires, so for a long while I thought they were just boars (which were brought to America, and are still an invasive species to this day), which made me be weirded about them showing up in the Montezuma campaign before the Spanish arrive.
Ever since I learned about the real animal, I’ve wanted the Brazilian translation for them to be changed to caititu, which actually is a term for peccaries.
Also, peafowls can use the green variant (in the game, the blue peafowl only exists in India, while in reality the green peafowl is found in Southeast Asia).
or maybe Perhaps white and black swans could be added as well?
Hmm, this is not a hill I can be bothered to die on so… sure, black swans would be weirder than penguins!
(But really I think it depends if we’re interpreting the penguin as representative of a particular species, or a particular genus, or whether we’re interpreting it as representing all penguins.)
The most recent addition isn’t one I would have expected. Though this “myth unit” isn’t really usable beyond eye candy since it lacks proper idle, moving and attack graphics.
Actually, I wished for a mythical creature, a dragon or something comparable, as a cheat/editor unit. Now there’s Nessie, but due to the way its sprite works, even in a fantasy-themed scenario, it cannot be used as a full-fledged unit. Bummer.
