The older ones also have the issue of being designed for the CD version which ran at lower resolutions, hence the blocky design when you compare to the newer models. They all are one big block while newer ones usually feature courtyards with multiple buildings around it.
But they are protected by nostalgia, getting rid of them entirely would be controversial.
The balconies on the EA castle are not that egregious. Castles irl were more than just defensive fortifications, they were also living quarters. And I have seen such places for Japanese lords where they do have balconies or similar structures.
Umm… the problem with having it represent a Japanese castle is not about the proportion, I think.
It’s about having the wrong structures at the wrong places.
Maybe it’s because you are more familiar with other architecture style than the East Asian one so the East Asian bring you a special feeling.
To me, those buildings other than East Asian ones are all beautiful too — regardless of inaccuracies.
This topic said a current one is going to be replaced, therefore I stand for replacing the East Asian one because of those wrong designs I noticed and mind. That’s it. People may stand for replacing an other one.
I won’t mind if all old castle visuals get replaced. Anyone with nostalgic tendencies or a preference for the old castle visuals can individually maintain the status quo via mods, since after the oncoming update one castle visual will only serve one civ. To be honest, since we know that the East Asian castle is likely reserved for Japanese, I would try to find a mod to replace it if there is one suitable.
According to the Japanese Wikipedia, the tenshu is seldom for daily living, with only a few exceptions. The lord and his family might live in gorgeous houses near the tenshu in the castle complex with gardens, reasonably having many balconies for views. However, as long as the castle visual refers to a tenshu, then I’d say that’s inaccurate. Having a balcony at a tenshu is not egregious, but it should be at the topmost floor only like every tenshu with balcony I have observed.
Yes I am well aware of this. But the AoE2 castles are very squished and condensed.
True, but I’m talking about the DE one. This isn’t really the right thread to post about it, though (especially since I’ve ranted about it before in more relevant threads).
And those courtyards are inevitably awkwardly squished because, as @Skadidesu pointed out, things have to fit a certain size of square on the building grid.
Yeah, we can talk about the accuracy of these graphics all we like, but at the end of the day, AoE2 should look like AoE2, and that means preserving the AoK graphics (or at least the DE versions of them). If anything was going to be completely replaced, the release of DE would have been the time to do it.
This may be an unhelpful suggestion but there is a mod for The Conquerors called Sengoku, where the castle looks like this:
If you know how, you could extract it from there and mod it into DE. (No destruction animation, though, so it depends how much that matters to you.)
Something I’m not sure anyone else has picked up:
The Lithuanian, Magyar & Cuman wonders are also castles or parts of them:
Lithuanians: Ducal Palace of Trakai Island Castle
Magyars: Corvin Castle
Cumans: Sarkel Fortress
Does this mean that those models could be used as unique castle models & those civs get new wonders?
Agreed, although the current East Asian castle may not be a perfect match for a Japanese castle, it’s still much more similar to a Japanese castle than to other fortifications on the East Asian continent. Thus the current East Asian castle should be given to the Japanese, whereas the continental East Asian civs need to be given a new castle (or castles).
No because the wonders are way to big, just scaling them down would look wrong.
I think the new castles should be based on other real life castles then the wonders and the wonders should stay the same as they are.
There are more then enough cool castles to choose from.
This Japanese castle looks amazing!
We just need a setting that changes the civ (and maybe age) of an individual object visually, iirc you can do it trough triggers, but it’s just needlessly complicated
Triggers for changing an entire building and unit line for a particular player could also be cool (so it affects every newly created one and not just the existing ones, this could also be used to have a player use feudal architecture regardless of age when appropiate)
Oh that would be cool indeed.
You can manually set the sprite ID for a specific unit/building (plus death animation) but that is pretty annoying.
In one scenario I wanted to have relic victory without wonder victory but still the ability to construct a wonder.
So I gave everyone the Arc of Constantine (which happens to have Wonder cost and construction time), set the build location to where usually the wonder is and then gave it the sprite of the wonder of that specific civilisation.
Possible but annoying.
The Siguenza Castle was originally built by the Visigoths. It was later expanded by moors and spanish, but they could base the Goths castles out of it anyways.
One disadvantage for buildings is that you can’t set the graphic IDs for garrison flags and damage-indicating flames with triggers alone. I wish it was possible to change those with Modify Attribute, too.
When I replaced the Mediterranean Monastery with the ancient Greek Temple, the flag and multiple flames ended up floating in the air. A workaround was using the Shrine as a Monastery replacement (flag and flames are placed low enough).
Speaking of abandoned and unused Castles, these are the Western and Central European variants in the pre-alpha version (where the East Asian one posted by TommoChocolate is also found):
Castle designs posted by Matt Pritchard (source):
They could use it as a base but with more roman elements, as Visigoths continued the roman architecture.
Based on what I could find online (admittedly only Googling this briefly) none of the remaining building is Visigothic, except maybe the foundations – the current building seems to have been built from the 12th century onwards. I agree it could still serve as part of the basis for the Goths castle, though.
I might have mentioned before, the Goths, Huns and Cumans castles are the ones I’m most interested to see, since they have the least existing buildings to use as a basis. (I suppose this is true for Khitans, too, if they’re one of the new civs.)
Thanks, I have never seen these before! I’m glad they didn’t go with this style though – the second one especially looks like a plastic children’s toy. (And the first one has no entrance!)
By the way, one nice feature of these castles was that they looked more heavily fortified in Imperial Age:
Unfortunately the extra bits didn’t quite line up for the central European one:
which means they decided to ditch that castle style, possibly to switch to the definitive one, very shortly after that version. Adding an offset to the image might have taken 5 minutes
The Castle after correction:
Interestingly, it can be found in this form on an ancient fansite from 1998.
Later in development the big western European castle gained an extra level:
Interesting that it has a different, smaller castle just to the right (mostly cut off the screenshot). Looks like there were two types of castle in this version of the game.
Lots of Joan of Arcs visible too.
