Over all, Immortal Pillars is a huge improvement over Tale of the Dragon, but the new animals added are underwhelming compared to ToTD. ToTD gave us tigers, rams, monitor lizards, ducks and yaks. You could even count the salamander, even though it’s classified as a MU because it is a real animal. The few new animals introduced in IP are basically just reskins of existing ones, excluding the panda which is purely decorative. Why didn’t they just remaster the animals introduced in ToTD for retold? It feels weird that there are multiple tiger-themed myth units and gods but no actual tigers.
Also, predators still won’t attack villagers, despite what the compendium says. They’ve had plenty of time to correct that bug.
Minor quibbles, but it is a shame, because the Chinese biome with its unique wildlife was one of the more interesting and creative aspects of ToTD.
5 Likes
Where are the tigers and leopards!
1 Like
I don’t remember there being leopards in ToTD but tigers would be nice.
I really do like the four birds flying together on the peach blossom tree map. I hope to see this more often. Very beautiful touch and seeing birds flying in flocks(?) groups whatever is a nice more “immersive” touch.
I do miss tigers too tho.
But I think they had their points of emphasis and that was the civ itself. I think that had and still has the priority.
Also do you know how big their team is?
They have the tiger models already. Just make them smaller and add them to maps.
5 Likes
I agree completely. I feel really bummed out that we didn’t get tigers as wild animals in Immortal Pillars. Asian elephants, which TotD also added, would also be nice to see since they did roam southern China in ancient times (and there is a small population of them in one southern Chinese province to this day).
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I agree. It’s sad they didn’t add more animals, and the ones they chose were oddly specific. I wonder if they deliberately avoided adding Asian elephants and tigers so the game wasn’t encouraging the hunting of endangered animals, which is presumably why pandas can’t be killed. Maybe it’s something to do with the Chinese market.
(I know there are already endangered animals in the game.)
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I doubt that. Seems like plain laziness in that area to me. All of the new animals are just reskins of the animals found on other maps. The black bear, spotted deer and red-crowned crane are functionally identical to the brown bear, deer and crowned crane, respectively. The deer is a particularly odd case because, as the compendium entry points out, the species it is based on is native to India, not China. They really dropped the ball in this area of an otherwise excellent expansion. You’d think it would have been easier to just remaster the ToTD animals that already had compendium entries. They could even have reworked the salamander as a huntable since they removed the MU.
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In addition to those animals you named, I miss the jungle biome that TotD added. To be fair, however, it’s not a biome stereotypically associated with China, and it’s possible they’re saving it for another DLC (maybe a Mesoamerican or West African one).
2 Likes