With more and more DLCs, the Civs became more diverse with the time. Mounted x-bow, varangian guards, the champi line, eagle line, step lancers and all elephant lines have given the Civs a unique touch.
The problem remains is that especially knight and chevalier, the barack units and the x-bow archers look very European. (The ships as well, except for the sail)
Would you prefer regional units replacing these still very European units or only a fitting skin?
I agree that the game is very inconsistent in this aspect, but I think it all depends on how it will be implemented: How distinct will the skins be? Will they maintain a minimum standard of legibility? Will they be toggleable* and optional?
What will the regional units be like? Is their existence justifiable from a gameplay perspective? I think most players would agree that there are too many units, perhaps even too many exceptions to the countering rules; I personally think that every civ should only have one UU and its second UUs should be either naval units or regional units (if this is still possible to modify, I would vote for it).
A third, equally interesting option in my view is something that SirWiedreich and others proposed a long time ago: inserting new units into the editor. This way, we would enrich each region covered in the game without necessarily bloating each match.
I thought of something like this when reading about Idris Alooma’s campaigns, where several interesting peoples appear, but that, in my view, do not guarantee representation as distinct civs, but as units. An example I have in mind is this Massa (or Kirdi) warrior, whose armor I find visually cool and, believe it or not, it was quite effective as well. I would love to see him in a possible Idris campaign, but I don’t see how he could be a regular line for any civilization.
Or think about how cool it would be to see the various armor variations and even mounts (Mongols and Nubians had ponies, whereas Barb and Arab horses were taller and sturdier). An example by Seridio on DeviantArt (obviously it’s not possible to add all of them) and a photo of a Nupe horseman:
Readability becomes an issue. If you see a bunch of lance cavalry come at you you prepare your lancer counter only to realize oh fudge sickles! those are regional skin knights with their regional knightly lances/jousting sticks and now I lost
It’s called a Mandekalu and I think it would be an excellent almost lancer type variant for Cebtral and western African civs Riches of the Sahel DLC idea
As a SP-only player, either option is good enough for me. But, since there is a (very loud) MP segment, compromises have to be made. The two options, that could potentionally satisfy everyone: 1) Make regional skins optional and b) have separate unit rosters for campaigns and competitive MP.
Adding more regional units instead of skins is something I personally would also be happy with, but I am afraid the backlash from the MP crowd would be to great.
Readability won’t be an issue if this is done right. Here is one example how this could be done.
Regional Units should not be seen as a replacement for regional skins. It would be stupid if every region has a slightly different Knight, Crossbow and Pikeman just so they look less out of place.
Second I think the reverse because again if the changes are so miniscule then that’s effort putting a hat on a hat. Compare that to the aesthetics on league of legends skins or the ones from age of empire online which work better because you can customize your own
I disagree with the premise. Civs were already unique before that, if anything adding this many new civs has made the civs more samey. Civ diversity is going down the drain due to every civ being good at everything these days
For example, Monks are using regional skin, but they are the same unit (except civ bonus).
Villagers could benefit from a regional skin, to improve the civ immersivness.
Regional units like Champi are greate because they got a very specific role in the battlefield, replacing one key unit line. Instead of having a regional reskin of the militia-line, they bring a unique militia-like style which is pretty cool.
I don’t think regular unit should have regional skin just for the sack of having immersive style, it’s not the game base identity. I prefer some regional unit swap, or upgrade swap like the persian Savar, or the roman Legionnary, or chinese Dragon Ship, which are unique “kinda-like” variant of the unit they replace but are different enought to be named differently and have their own special design.
But things like Villager and Rams could benefit from a regional skin like the Monks, Kings, Merchant, Trade Cart and Sails.
would rams or any other siege engine look different based on the cultural sphere?chronicles has different ram skin but I can hardly tell the difference.
Having different looking villager skins is great but wont the workload needed for that would be a lot.Its pretty much a different military unit roster level undertaking.
I think the leak of regional skins is one of the main reason behind the Europa centric nature of the game. Playing any civ outside of Europe just feels wrong in some way. Of course if you are a competitive player you will probably not agree with that but many casual players, campaign players and especially new players value immersion higher.
Having civilisations outside of Europe feel wrong leads to people enjoying playing them less which leads to them wanting more European civilisations.
I’m pretty confident that good regional skins would increase the popularity of none European civilisations, though maybe not in ranked matches.
We can probably agree that most generic units look very out of place with the American and African civs. Having white skin units is just utterly wrong in Ethiopia.
So to make those civs not look like a carnival parade with completely unfitting unit combinations you would suggest replacing all of their units with regional units/upgrades? This would require totally rebalancing those civs and would make the game a lot more complicated.
Or do you want African looking villagers collect resources to build an army of European looking Cavaliers and Champions? Adding regional skins to half of the units and then leaving out the most European looking units in the game would really odd.
But regional skins could get deactivated in MP with mods like they already do with many things to make the Game uglier and clearer, we should not take ranked perspective into account in this conversation, this is a single player/inmersion thing mostly
