But doesn’t that apply to the other civ unique castles as well?
A castle should feel “generic” for its civ’s architecture, while everybody would recognise the Tower of London when seeing it. For the same reason I would not have picked something like the Mont Saint Michel for the Franks.
The generic western european castle is already an english castle, well only its central gateway to be exact.
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Actually, I think every single unique Castle in the game is based on a real building.
I think I knew that, as I first encountered the castle while working on a Normans civ concept. It was their Wonder.
Yes, that does seem to be true, but I think the rest are more loosely based on them than the Bohemian one. Maybe I’m wrong. There’s definitely something about the Bohemian one that makes more than one of them look odd to me. When I first saw it on the DotD preview screenshots, I assumed it was their wonder.
If I was picking a castle for a Norman wonder, I guess I’d pick the Tower of London, since it seems the most “wondrous” somehow. I’d probably pick a Romanesque church though, e.g. Durham cathedral (or, if I decided I didn’t care about picking something well-known, Tynemouth Priory).
Nice list. Would be cool to get some more unique castles, although I agree with those who’ve said that castles ought to be roughly inspired by these buildings rather than being exact or even close replicas. The oddity of this is apparent even in your list, where you have specific buildings for most civs contrasted with something like “Default Middle Eastern” for others (even if some of those “default” castles may be largely inspired by a specific building from one of those civs). Wonders make sense as specific buildings because of their rarity, expense, and irrelevance to most normal gameplay. But for castles, what you’re gaining in civ-specific historicity, you’re losing in being over-anchored to a specific building in a way that would be immersion breaking. Whereas IMO castles ought to be an approximation of the general style of fortifications that civ built during an iconic period, even if it takes heavy inspiration from one particular identifiable structure. I’d rather have 3 somewhat generic but clearly Maya-style Castles than three “Pyramids of the Magicians” to spam my Plumed Archers from.
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Having played Kingdom Come Deliverance (set in Bohemia around 1400), some castles look of the exact same style as the Bohemian castle. So even if it is indeed a real castle used for the AOE2 castle, its style still looks common enough not to stand out too much.
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That’s why I’d prefer unique monasteries based on real buildings to unique castles (at all). I cannot confirm this, but I have always had the impression that it is easier to find monumental architecture in temples and mausoleums (and even palaces) than in castles. After all, not all civs used fortifications.
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The reason I kept the original Castle designs for some of the civs is because I didn’t want to remove them completely. They’re iconic and classic for a reason, and it wouldn’t feel like AoE2 if they weren’t there.
I agree that it’s reasonable to keep the old ones. Although doing so IMO is more compatible and consistent with using the structures on your list as points of broad inspiration for new castles rather than as precise replicas. I dont mind the idea of (somewhat) faithful copies of real buildings in the game, but I prefer them as Wonders or specific campaign/editor objects like Poenari Castle.
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So I’ve been thinking what it is that I find weird about this castle, and I think it’s actually the way the different parts of it are angled. In the other castles, most of the walls are parallel to the isometric gridlines. The Bohemian castle has only one wall parallel to the grid, and everything else is curved or not at right-angles to the rest. I assume that’s because the real building has those angles. In any case, I think that’s what makes it stand out to me as a specific building. (I’m not actually familiar with the building in question, and can’t really tell from the photos I’ve seen how accurate the in-game version is.)
That said, the Hindustani castle has similarly odd angles, but doesn’t seem to be closely based on a real building, so I don’t know. Maybe what I actually care about is that castle graphics should align with the grid.
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Having to make it fit inside a 4x4 grid is an constraint for the architect, indeed.
Some have to be cut (western european), others compressed.
Glad to see many of us agree unique castles should take inspiration from rl castles and not to be a direct copy of them.
Garrison flags wouldn’t work properly.
Some civs already have castles as their wonder building. So if these become the unique castle model, they will need to have entirely new wonders as well.
The Nasrid dynasty that ruled the Emirate of Granada from 1230 to 1492 and built the Alhambra was arab not berber.
Ingame Berbers cover all the Maghreb and Andalusia, not only ethnic Berbers. While the Saracens are Arabs in Egypt Syria Mesopotamia and Arabia.
Still, the Alhambra is too emblematic, commonly used as a wonder (it’s the case in Civilization and Europa Universalis), so too high profile to be a castle, same reason why I would not pick the Tower of London for the Britons. I’m sure we can find a lower-profile castle of moorish defensive architecture.
Garrison flag cannot be set for multiple buildings like House. You can set them based on one of the variants only.
Oh.
Then I guess my idea of several castles models per civ was excessive.
Ethiopians could have Fasil Ghebbi. I feel the standard African castle fits better Malians.