As a whole, I think the devs did a good job on architecture, at least when it comes to the English. However there are a few annoying anachronisms, notably:
gothic architecture right into the Dark Age. Such architecture appeared in the 12th century, while the Dark Ages refers to the early medieval times… There are still a few extant Anglo-Saxon churches in England, why not taking inspiration from them?
Victorian-era chimneys on houses
I can’t really tell for the Asian civs, though it seems to me that Delhi have post-medieval architecture, just like their armors. Also I noticed something historically shocking: Muslim Delhi has hoardings with cross-shaped arrow-slits. Come on…
Medieval architecture is very rich, it’s an infinite source of inspiration for videogames. Here a selection of some striking medieval structures all across Europe and MENA (you may recognize a few of them as they served as a base for some AoE II buildings). Some literally seem to have been conceived for AoE. It gives a lot of inspiration to design unique architecture for each civ.
Arrow slits have a V shaped cross section because it’s a cut out bit of the wall. This isn’t a problem for bows, because you can get right up to the opening and the V shape lets you aim left and right. However with a crossbow, you can’t get close to the opening, hence the horizontal opening.
Are you referring to the Landmark building?
Because that is used for aging up so it makes sense when it has the architecture of the next Age.
You can see a 100 years war mission in the trailer that is limited the Feudal Age so Gothic Architecture fit’s into AoE4 Feudal Age.
Initially these horizontal openings in the middle of the slit (“croisillons” in French, don’t know their English name) were meant to provide a broader vision to the defenders (and not enabling crossbows which don’t require it). Eventually it lead to obvious religious symbolism.
Totally different from the AoE IV utterly Christian ones, which I just noticed were also present within Chinese!
Except that you don’t need to enter the V opening to shoot, all the more as it would reduce your firing range. In order to get the weapon closer to the slit, Plantagenêt’s architects placed arrow-slits into niches which reduced the wall thickness and thus the depth of the V opening, widening the vision and firing range. This scheme I made long time ago illustrates it:
Such arrow-slits were pretty useful in M&B Warband btw.
My bad, the “gothic church” is actually a romanesque one so failed that it looks like a gothic one.
All is wrong. I’ll open a thread specifically for it as it is a perfect example of what not to do when designing a historical building into a video game.
