I think this thread still holds water.
There is something to be said about Elephants not feeling as “cool” as they do in say, AoE3 or even AoE2. This goes for every other unique unit in the game.
A lot of the designs, whether it be their “portrait” (if you can call an icon that), their abilities and even model kind of comes across as neutered. Like they were holding back for the sake of either balance or historical accuracy, and end up feeling quite mundane losing the fun and style in the process.
I don’t particularly think that these cannot coexist, but I definitely think a lot of the units fun factor have been secondary to their priorities, ending up feeling somewhat deflating. All is not necessarily lost, the Ottoman and Mali update did many things to go against this initial notion of AoE4.
Looping back around to the Elephant, something that has been relevant lately; it is a great analogy for what is wrong. The War Elephant is slow, deals almost no aoe damage and has a very tame attacking animation–all while costing a fortune to make. Sure, it functions as a decent ram…but, why stop there?
Make it run quicker, make it cheaper, reduce its armour and damage and give it splash. Let the players have fun with it, even if it ends up being an oversized Horseman with splash–at least it ends up being FUN.
THAT is how you make a cool unit.
EDIT: I would say this even extends to buildings. While there is some great design work and modelling done for every single civilization, there are at times issues that hurts “coolness and personality”. Think for instance how Keeps are the same shape with stylistic differences. It seems they opted for this as to make Landmarks more unique and special (also because it would cut down the immediate amount of unrecognizable buildings to new players), but whereas Keeps are not mandatory and so are not everpresent, Landmarks despite their cool functions and unique looks become mundane from simply being required. The logic that is meant to make them each feel special is very much being held back in how they fit into the game and the frequency of which they appear. I would argue that you can still have a very much recognizable KEEP building that deviates from the current building layout they have. I would even go as far as suggesting replacing Landmarks whose buildings look too much like Keeps/Castles to amplify this effect, although I believe you can make Keeps to unique enough (yet still recognizably Keeps) to not warrant that.
Going back on the Ottoman and Malian comment, walls used to (and many still are) carbon copies of each other. They should have their own models for each civilization to properly express that civilization’s personality through material and style, just like Malian’s new walls.
well said
