[poll] Do you want Regional Unit Skins?

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
1

Now we have gotten unique Castle skins for every civilisation, new Elite Unique unit skins in the last patch and regional Monk skins.
Therefor half of the things I asked for in my last thread [poll] Cosmetic DLC have already been added to the game now.

Do you like the existing regional Trade Cart, King and Monk skins?

  • Yes
  • No
  • Some of them
0 voters

Do you want regional villager skins

  • Yes
  • No
0 voters

Do you want regional military unit skins

  • Yes
  • No
  • Only if they are readable enough
0 voters

Do you want regional names

  • Yes
  • No
  • Only if the original names don’t make sense anymore
0 voters

For example if a regional skin for the Crossbow uses a regular bow the unit gets a different name.
In Chronicles the names are:
Bowman → Laminated Bowman → Recurved Bowman

Some other example is Lancer instead of Knight or Raider instead of Hussar.

Changing the names makes it harder to talk about the units though.

Readability

  • Focus on historical accuracy
  • Focus on readability
  • Balanced approach
  • No regional skins at all
0 voters

Focus on historical accuracy

Units get the correct clothing, armour, skin colour and weapons according to the different regions of the world.

Focus on readability

Units get the correct skin colour and clothing is changed but weapons and armour are as close to the original as possible.

Balanced approach

Focus on readability but corrects the biggest historical errors.
Americans don’t have Crossbows and Plate armour anymore for example.

How doable would regional unit skins be

A few years ago a dev was asked if unique skins for every civilisation would be possible and he gave rough estimate for how much file size that would have been.

  1. His estimate was wrong (not criticising him it was in an interview)
  2. We want regional skins not unique ones for every single civilisation
  3. The game uses a different format to store the unit sprites now that is more optimized

Just mentioning that before someone will 100% guaranteed bring it up again,

Chronicles has regional skins already

Chronicles adds regional skins for villagers, all military units, besides siege and of course also Trade Carts, Monks and the King.

21 military units are getting a unique sprite. 7 Infantry, 8 Archers and 6 Cavalry.

For AoE2 we would need +1 for Infantry (Two Handed Swordsman) but -1 for Cavalry (Paladin is only European)

But it also added:

  • Palintonon (Packed) as Trebuchet replacement
  • 19 new civilian and military ships
  • 4 unique units
  • 2x2 regional units with upgrade
  • 13 visually distinct scenario editor exclusive units (not counting heroes)

64 unit skins overall!
Not counting Priestess (already unique in AoE2) and Villagers.

Elite Unique Unit Skins

This update just added over 50 new unit sprites

How many units would have to be changed

I counted 21 for Chronicles but there are some units that we can probably also exclude.
First the Militia as a Dark Age unit doesn’t really need regional skins when there isn’t even regional architecture in Dark Age.
(Heavy) Cavalry Archer don’t really need a regional skins either.
Some units already look pretty generic like Archer and Skirmisher.
Units like Camel Rider or Steppe Lancers are regional so they don’t need to be included anyway.
Siege units also don’t really need to be included either.
Some units don’t exist in some regions like no Cavalry in America and no Knights in India.

So I would estimate 15-20 units need new visuals per region.

How many regions would there be?

There are 11 Architecture Sets, 9 different monks, 7 different Kings but only 5 different Trade Carts.

Reasonable List:

  • America
  • Europe
  • Africa
  • Islamic World
  • South East Asia
  • East Asia

This list could obviously be much longer.

Overall estimate of number of skins

High estimate would be like 20 units times 10 regions = 200 skins.
Low estimate would be half of that.

The size of the update overall would be about 2-4x as much as the addition of Elite Unique unit skins.

In overall size it’s comparable to Chronicles plus the Elite Unique Unit skin update we got.
Definitely doable and definitely not too much for the game to handle.

8 Likes
2

Villagers are definitely the most needed one, they are the unit you will most in game and the one who is most obviously wrong, as their skin is more clearly visible than other units. Having white villagers for american, african and indians is very immersion breaking. And It would be easy, only two units per architecture set (or less if europeans are grouped).

6 Likes
3

For the balanced aproach : have the equipment as right as it can be, while the colour scheme remains close from what it is.

For example the spear line :

  • spearman : light armour, mostly leather or brown
  • pikeman : mostly white (be it a surcoat, painted armour…)
  • halberdier : mostly dark metal

As weapons remain similar (a big pointy stick is a big pointy stick), the shape shouldn’t be an issue. Sure, Aztecs don’t have zweihanders, but having a big 2h wood + obsidian club would keep the shape of a 2h swordsman.

Cavalry would be further helped by keeping the same horse colour as it is now.

2 Likes
4

Someone made some drafts a while back. The skins are very close to the current skins but show a bit more the style of that region. I think the devs could and should go a bit further than this, but it is a start to show how it could look like.

India Units Skins Set

Middle East Unit Skins

American Units Skins Set

10 Likes
5

No 26.
Every job as it’s own visuals plus no job. And then double for both genders.

Well maybe some jobs look the same not sure.

I would personally make the division based on climate and of course culture.
Northern European men should get some warmer clothes and the ones from the shout maybe a hat against he sun.
Also give those women some cover for their head, before the Church complains. We have the Spanish inquisition in the game now!

Those are some nice proof of concept images.

We already got Monks that look a lot more unique than that and the Middle Eastern Paladin is not needed anymore. Maybe for the Cumans.

1 Like
6

You only need making the 3D model once, then run the same animations

7

Oh right, the jobs. I don’t believe It’ll be that much difficult anyway, they would use they same animation and tools.

8

The actual villager skin is perfect for western Europe

I think we can take the driver of the trade cart

We need :

African
East asian
Islamic
Mesoamerican

Andean
South asian
Steppe
Eastern european
Central european
Southern european

Based on trade cart we already have

African
East asian
Islamic
Mesoamerican
West european

Trade cart

Actually we have 6 trade cart skin

African
East asian
Islamic
Mesoamerican
West european

Ancient trade cart (Return of Rome)

First give the ancient trade cart skin to the civilizations of Chronicles.
Maybe also for the Romans, Byzantine, Armenian and Georgian. For the later two this will fit well with their mule cart. Or maybe a trade cart for the south european civilization with a brown donkey like the mule cart.

Make a trade cart skin for south asian because Bengali and Dravidian having a trade cart with a rider with a chinese hat is not good for those south asian civilizations.

Steppe trade cart : Because having mongolian trade cart pulled by a buffalo is weird. This trade cart can also be given to the Cumans, Huns and maybe : Khitan, Jurchan

Andean trade cart : pulled by a llama.

PS : also regional sails for south Asia

9

I mean, I wouldn’t mind that. As optional dlcs on top of regional skins

Guess I shouldn’t be too greedy, but Total War: Medieval 2 managed it well enough

10

They all look awesome. The artist did a good job differentiating unit skins while still keeping them recognizable—though the Middle Eastern skins might be questionable for some civilizations.

11

Taking advantage of the discussion, what do you think? African version of the swordsman line.

It is historically accurate, although given the nature of the sources I used, it follows a more geographical than temporal progression. That is, M@A = Wolof; LS = Mali/Songhai; THS = Hausa/Kanembu; Champ = Nubians)

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7 Likes
12

I dont think it makes sense to put the Nubians after having only western African civs.

If anything, I believe East Africa should share ukits with the middle east

13

Yeah, that’s a good idea, I hadn’t thought of that. But since the various peoples from Lake Chad to Nubia use similar armor, there won’t be much of a change in appearance.

1 Like
14

Ethiopia is fairly to the east of Africa. Just upriver of Nubia (following one branch of the Nile).

Still it would be an improvement over western european troops & central asian horse archers.

1 Like
15

I would celebrate maximum regionality. For a Viking scenario, I “created” the following units:
Hadrada → Einherjer
Rollo → Ulfhednar
E.-Huskarl → Herse
Nordic Warrior → Huskarl
E.-Serjeant → Jomsviking
Jarl → Hermadur
Bohemund → Ridder
Serjeant → Hirdmen
Dromone → Busse
Leif → Dragon Ship (instead, I deactivated the Elite Longship upgrade to have two visually distinct types of longships)
I deactivated all other regular units.

Of course, you can’t judge this from a balance perspective. That’s completely OP, I know. But I’m only concerned with visuals and flair.

That’s my personal idea of ​​game flair. But it would never happen in this extreme form anyway. That’s why I am/would be satisfied with minor adjustments.

16

In the case of Villagers, absolutely! Having as many variants as for the Merchant would be the bare minimum.

Military units would be nice, too. Some are generic enough (e.g. Militia, Petard) to need fewer skins than others. If there were regional skins for the Scout Cavalry line, all starting units in a standard game (including King in Regicde) would have an appropriate appearance for every civ.

Regarding “original names not making sense anymore” - for certain regional Monks, the name “Monk” is already not fitting well. And not every “Monastery” actually looks like one.