Please change the texture of Chinese units in future versions

Why does a modeler paint the armor with color? Chinese armored units should use silver metal textures like other civilizations, rather than plastic toy like visual effects. This colorful armor makes Chinese units look like comical clowns, without the texture that military units should have, and also makes players’ visual experience suffer: filled with uncomfortable large areas of color blocks (excessive player colors).


If the modeler takes note of this suggestion, you only need to modify the texture, and only units that are clearly armored need to modify the texture, specifically: the four units of era3: Spearman, crossbow, knight (lance), and Palace Guards (Chinese Man at Arms).
As for the units of era4, there is no need to modify them, as according to real history, the Chinese military of that era generally used colored cloth armor, so there is no problem.

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Welcome back, @Ahioz9426!

I actually never noticed that their Castle armour was meant to be metal. I figured it was some sort of fabric because of the excessive colour, as you put it.

Ottoman’s Lancers display a slight amount of their team colour. It feels subtle, and looks good in my opinion.
Maybe they could dial Chinese unit’s metal texture back to match Ottoman lancer’s example?

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It still looks like metal on the Ottoman Lancer. On Chinese, the colour really made it look like fabric IMO.

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Is it even supposed to be metal? Or is it leather scale armor?

It is a bit of a mix. Most of the chinese armour in Castle age is made of plate Lamellar armour. We know it is plate because for instance, look at the shine of the Castle Palace Guard’s shoulder. Couldn’t be fabric or leather.

In Imperial, we see something else as well as plate Lamellar. For instance, some units switch from Lamellar to Bumianjia armour, a type of Brigandine which is plate, but is covered by fabric and is held by these dots you see. So that armour shouldn’t be shiny. But, many units stick with Lamellar and some even have both.

Take the Horseman for example, while his horse is using this Bumianjia, the man himself wears Lamellar. You can tell by how shiny his armour is compared to his horse. Zhuge Nu, Crossbowman, Spearman, Handcannoneer also still wear plate Lamellar. Palace Guard, Fire Lancer, Lancer and the Horseman’s horse switch over to Bumianjia however.

So compare those to the examples above of the Ottoman Lancers and you can see how much more intense that metal team colouring is on Chinese units.

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Every texture in Essence looks like plastic.

Wood? Plastic wood.
Metal? Rattle-can painted plastic.
Stone? Also plastic.

The palette, general blurriness and overall art style don’t help either.

I got some images for you to make it really obvious. Reminder that the Imperial version on the other hand does utilize a type of armour that isn’t metallic on the outside, but that the Castle age Lancer does–yet is coloured as if it was fabric.


So here is how it currently is in the game, the metal is coloured and looks like fabric from a distance.


And here is an example where the colour is absent, and how the metal bits are meant to look like.

A point of reference is how they’ve done the Keshik (Mongol Lancer), where the metal looks like metal, yet player colour is reserved for fabrics like in this image;

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(Keshik)