Not really about bigger or smaller, it’s about proportion - maybe I should explain it more clearly,
For example, in the first picture I posted, the longbowmen could walk into his castle easily, while the Chu Ko Nu needs to lower his head down. And that is supposed to represent a city gate.
And the second picture, the Mangudai, is straight taller than the first floor of the castle. Also, the size of the stairs when compare to the Japanese castle, which also has stairs in front, the Mongols are not even wide enough for a person.
Again, It don’t have to be accurate, but at least it should be believable, and stay consistent with all of the other existing buildings.
Yeah now I realise your point. Especially the doors on top of the castle are tiny for a orthographic projection game. Problem seems to have already started with the Bengali Wonder. It also has small trees. It was clearly miniaturised to half it’s original size.
They must have reused assets to create the model quickly without doing research. Malay use Turbans, loose cloth or baju lamina armour which looks like the Indians.
Your description fits an AOE 3 Malay warrior post 1700s, not a medieval Malay warrior. Malay clothing before the 1600s is similar to the Javanese, most people go around bare-chested. This is recorded by the Portuguese, Dutch, and the English, even by the Malay themselves. Tome Pires ca. 1513 even said that the Malays of Malacca followed the Javanese style of dress.
“Ordinary people may not wear a hood” : The hood before translation is tengkolok, also known as tanjak or destar. If you’re more critical about the images, the Malay commoner wore some sort of headband or headscarf that did not cover the whole upper head, not a tengkolok or tanjak (the “turban” of your comment), as those are nobility’s headgear. The outfit in the photo below only fits for 19th century Malay, not pre-1700s Malay. In this era, the usage of tengkolok/tanjak/destar is more widespread, not only used by nobilities. Note that by this time, their clothing covered most of their upper and lower body.
As for the armor, I suggested Baju Lamina in my previous comment because it’s the type of armor confirmed to be owned by Malaccan Malays, but they do not necessarily wear it. The Portuguese explicitly stated that the Malays almost never wore armor, even the oval shields were scarce, and only used by officials. But to me, it is better than depicting Elite Karambit Warrior with Sino-Mainland Southeast Asian armor.
There are many Malaysian posts depicting Malacca-era Malay people with 19th-century clothing. It’s like depicting Joan of Arc era French with Napoleonic era French clothing. Worse, Malay chauvinists often depicted Malay warriors with “sophisticated” equipment like this (see below) instead of what was actually reported/recorded and what was actually depicted.
The book above said “The equipment of Malacca’s soldier according to the Portuguese”, no, it is not, the book cherry-picked sources and combined the equipment into one soldier. The depiction of the equipment in the image is very inaccurate too, had they referenced European depiction of Malay people of the same era, they would know that the Malay dressed lightly and lacked armoring (even round shields), and that most of the Malays fighting men were commoners drafted to war (levy) with the support of slave army. The Javanese, however, have a pretty good record about armor, including karambalangan (breastplate), kawaca (variable meaning but can refer to cuirass, chainmail, or jacket), siping-siping (scale armor), and waju rante (chainmail). According to the Dutch scholar Pigeaud, the armor depicted in the Penataran temple was chainmail, but it could also be a scale armor (siping-siping). For Elite Karambit Warrior I would suggest Malay armor like Baju Lamina instead of the Javanese armor mentioned above, since Karambit, a Minangkabau weapon, originated from Sumatra.
I’d like to take a stand for the developers. Considering everything they had to consider, all the interests they had to reconcile, they did a very good job.
For competitive players, all buildings and units are still easily recognizable; for players like me, who care about flair and authenticity, it’s also a quantum leap.
A new standard has now been created and can be gradually developed or revised. They can now incorporate feedback and pick out individual things patch by patch in the future.
Whether it’s entire architecture sets, individual buildings, old hero units… many things are conceivable.
So, I’m more than satisfied. For someone like me, who exclusively designs scenarios myself and then plays them, this patch and the DLC offer countless new opportunities to spend countless hours refreshing old scenarios or creating new ones.
The DLCs have now laid a new foundation. Now they can rework/redesign individual things piece by piece.
Whether it’s castles, entire design sets, or old hero units, they could tackle a few things for each patch and gradually introduce them into the game. I’m personally looking forward to it.
Poll would have been better with a picture attached for the new skins. Video is too long to watch. Some might have voted negative only after seeing one or two skins.
While I wasn’t happy about the DLC news, I’m very happy and grateful about the new skins for Castles, UUs, Monks, and Monasteries.
There’s bound to be inacurracies and stuff you can nitpick or want different, but I think it’s a huge improvement from before. And I appreciate the effort that’s been put into making all the new visual content.
I don’t think the scale is a problem, I mean, just look at villagers besides literally any house, the doors aren’t even half as big as the vill
Yeah some like the Centurion and War ele have too much gold
I would like a mod or something that made the gold parts black, which would still be fancy but more believable as steel
I do think it fits the “knights and chivaslry and stuff” theme that the Franks have going on in most aspects except for their unique unit. So in that way it feels appropriate. It also reminds me of the castle in Beauty and the Beast, which may be less appropriate, but at least that’s also French-inspired?
Here’s my overly detailed feedback on the castles that no one really asked for!
Berbers. Looks great, fits well with their other buildings.
Bulgarians. Looks decent, but doesn’t fit all that well with their architecture set or wonder. It looks better with the Mediterranean architecture, but still doesn’t match.
Burmese. Looks good to me – I don’t know how realistic the stupa-like section on top is but it fits while also looking very distinctive. The doors look a bit too small for a building that trains a cavalry unique unit. The wooden/thatched parts look a bit out of place, but don’t detract from it too much. Fits well with their architecture set.
Byzantines. Looks great, fits well with their architecture and their new monastery. The presence of the Legionary shield is a bit odd, given that they don’t get Legionaries. There’s an underscaled door part way up, but it’s not too bad.
Celts. Looks good, frustratingly neither the stone nor the roofing quite match their wonder or architecture set. The crow-stepped gables are probably anachronistic.
Chinese. Looks fine in isolation, but looks very underscaled compared to any unit or other building. There’s something off about the way it’s rendered or textured – looks odd. I’m not so keen on this one.
Cumans. Looks decent and fits pretty well with their architecture set. The entrance doesn’t quite look tall enough, and there’s something not quite believeable about the stonework.
Ethiopians. Looks great, fits well with their other buildings. I’m not that keen on the rocky outcrop on the left, but it’s ok. Their new monastery looks great too.
Franks. Mostly looks very good, except for the roof details (chimneys, elaborate gables, etc.), which look awkward and probably anachronistic. Feels very strange to train throwing axemen out of a building that looks like it was built quite late in the time period. Doesn’t fit well with their other buildings – not even the Imperial Age ones, which I wasn’t expecting.
Goths. Looks fantastic, a contender for my favourite building visual in the game! Fits better with their architecture set than I expected – fits better (but not perfectly) with the overused Mediterranean set.
Huns. Looks fantastic, a really inventive design. Doesn’t fit that well with their architecture set, and they now have a real mismatch between their castle, monastery, wonder and other buildings. Would love to see them get a full architecture set in this style.
Inca. A really nice graphic, but looks a bit small and unintimidating for a castle. Doesn’t fit their architecture set all that well, or even really match the wonder.
Koreans. A really nice design, but similar to Chinese, looks underscaled, although not as a badly. How does a war wagon fit through that entrance? I do like it, but I think the designer crammed too much content in.
Lithuanians. Looks decent but I think the layout looks a bit awkward, with several wonky sections. Goes well with their wonder but not so well with the rest of their buildings.
Magyars. Looks decent, fits well with their other buildings. The courtyard is must be tiny, though.
Malay. Hard to judge this one. The top wooden section looks fantastic, but only matches their Feudal Age architecture. The bottom stone section looks awkward but matches the rest of the Castle/Imperial Age architecture. I want to like it, but I think it would look much better if the stone part was more symmetrical – not so high on the right-hand side.
Maya. Looks fantastic, one of my favourites – very well done. One hell of a climb up those stairs.
Mongols. Exactly the same problems as the Chinese one – in fact, I think this one might be worse. It’s scaled like an AoE1 building.
Persians. Generally very good, but the entrance is too small, especially for a war elephant! Fits with their other buildings but would look better with central Asian architecture.
Portuguese. Looks great, matches their wonder nicely, and goes well with their other buildings.
Spanish. Similar to Portuguese, but I think not quite as good because of the tiny and awkwardly shaped courtyard.
Turks. Mostly looks great and fits well with their other buildings. The tiny doors in the upper section look pretty silly though.
Vietnamese. Similar problems to Koreans – I like it, but it has too much content and is underscaled as a result.
Vikings. Looks pretty good. It doesn’t go well with their other buildings, but that’s not really a problem with the castle itself.
Overall, I like most of them, and some of them I like a lot. My main gripe is that several of them have underscaled features – especially the east Asian ones, for which this seems like a major problem. My guess is that the east Asian ones all had the same designer, and they didn’t care as much about underscaling things as I do.
I have less to say about the elite unique units – they all look pretty good to me. Sometimes the designers went a bit overboard on the gold details. I think they’re all recognisable as upgrades of the non-elite versions – although the Conquistador and Arambai probably look more different than they ought to.
The war wagon looks ridiculously ostentatious – it’s not the direction I would have gone in with the design, but I really like it! It feels like two fingers up at the people who wanted more historical accuracy for Koreans, but I’m not one of those people so I don’t mind.
