Rename - Royal Knight

Age of Empires IV IV - Discussion
21

Not just a name but graphics also needs to change.

Original French knight looked like this

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This is Age4 version

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It looks preaty accurate. But that jousting Shields looks too cartoonish and it doesn’t have that much details(yes it’s 95GB game it must have better graphics). I don’t know if they used such a shields in battle but I’m damn sure they used it on jousting tournament Grounds.

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If anyone have idea why they used weird curved shields I would like to know.

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22

Absolutely right. These are knight’s shields and have never been used in battle. There were separate armors for tournaments in general, if we take the 15th century and later. For example, the helmet was attached completely to the shell, so that the head had rigidity when hitting it with a lancet, and it was not necessary to turn the head. In general, everything is mixed up to a heap in the game. I am especially killed by the golden helmets of many units. It looks terrible.

23

Why nobody is mentioning about the lance? If someone don’t like cartoonish stuff, they need to complain about the lance first, as it has too big lancehead, which didn’t exist at all because as it’s impractical, unlike the jousting shield. Also maybe removing vamplate is preferable too.

24

I would not call that an “Original French Knight”, because it’s a picture of 16th Century Gendarmes from NY metropolitan museum
The unit of AoE4 seems to be clearly based on them.

The big inaccuracy in AoE 4 are :

  • The shield : Gendarme didn’t need a shield, it was rarely worn OR they are really rarely depicted with a shield. → We can only see the leader of the charge having a small shield fixed on the arm with the main role of showing the coat-of-arms.
  • The Age of unlock of Gendarme which is way too early in the game. Again it’s 16th century heavy cavalry. Medieval french heavy cavalry were way more different. (no thicc lance but spear, no armored dress for the horse, not so much heavy plate armored)

So :

  • The spear is quite okay, a bit idealized, but there is a bunch of representation of Gendarmes with this sort of form of lance, STILL the most represented one is the one we can see in your picture, a thiccer and red wooden lance part. The most important points are here : It’s a thicc wooden lance with a metallic spear head at the end.
  • The feathers were sometimes worn by Gendarme (probably the most nobles ones), but it’s a game, so making the unit more recognizable with feather is okay ,even if rarely worn.
    -The golden helmets are used on every units of the game, probably to show the Elite upgrade, again not as aesthetic than aoe II, but I am not against the idea, just the shader could be less … “brutal”

Solution :

  • Removing the shield, eventually make the lance thiccer and longer to make them more impressive and fitting more with the Gendarme imagery, and renaming them Gendarme. They will be always unlocked too early ? but I guess than AoE was never a realistic game on this part. OR I am wrong and the royal knight is unlocked at imperial age, which is rather okay ?

Like I said earlier, I suspect than a part of their design (the spear and shields which is not that curved ingame) are not especially inspired by jousting knights but heavily inspired by Ajincourt battle representations : 15th Century not that far from from the gendarme BUT the mismatch looks always a bit odd

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25

I concur. Especially that lance should be longer to represent they are the special unit. Though just slightly thicker would be excellent. I don’t want to see lances which are too thick as it was never the case.

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26

Thats not the gendarme the person is talking about. First thats the modern Gendarme second this is the historical gendarme:

Gendarme (historical) - Wikipedia.

As you see they are noble people of birth who serve as cavalryman.

Also id like to point out even in your own link it is said:

“During the Late Medieval to the Early Modern period, the term referred to a heavily armoured cavalryman of noble birth, primarily serving in the French army”

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