Medieval china didnt look like in chinese propaganda medieval fantasy movies anyway.
According to the thread Which Civilization Are You Most Excited to Play? the Chinese have at least popular right now despite having the very interesting gameplay mechanics and the most unique units.
I think that has a lot to do with how the Civilisation feels.
Chinese Architecture feels a bit wrong and people noticed that.
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None of the players know enough about the different civilizations or even the game to form a solid opinion about how the civs are designed.
One can certainly be most excited for a civ, but the responses to that question is not in any way a helpful reflection of how the civ will actually feel to play relative to the rest of them. It is at best a reflection of their opinions of what information they have been told and of that information, what they’ve interpreted correctly.
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That’s why I used it as an indicator for the quality of the Architecture.
A lot of people like playing the Chinese but the Chinese in AoE4 don’t look as good as other civilisations visually.
And visuals is most we got so far.
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very good, I understand!
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Watching the interviews by the developers they mention multiple times that they had experts in history while creating each civilization while also visiting a lot of different places based upon each civilization so I’m just wondering if they really are that off with the architecture for the Chinese?
As I previously mentioned in a post here, my girlfriend is Chinese and she was alright with the look of it, so perhaps it has more to do with the way graphics works rather than the architecture itself? Also, I’d like to point out that it’s one thing to see pictures and very fast-moving clips and to actually play the game on your own PC with max settings and all so maybe it will play and feel much better then?
reality can be a moving target. it is totally possible that every single chinese building in AoE4 is grounded in actual chinese architecture and backed up by experts in history who consulted with them, but still possible that players who are themselves well versed in chinese history do not recognize certain styles or find some of it to be inartfully chosen over other, subjectively better, styles.
reasonable minds can disagree on this stuff
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It depends of the model again, did you show her the castle for exemple, it appears on some video, and it’s just an european castle with chinese roof.
A friend of mine said to me than it had a large explanation about the innacuracy of chinese architecture on discord, but I was not able to find it.
Like some entrances of model don’t appear in any dynastic architectures highlighted in the game, but are something we can see in chinatown…
这个画师的作品确实是好看，但想象成分还是比较多的，我觉得还是参考古人的画比较好。
要更准确的话就得看专业文献了，类似《中国古代建筑史》，之所以要准确，是因为开发团队说了想尽可能符合历史嘛~
Modern paintings always have more imaginative elements, and it is more accurate to refer to the paintings of the ancients. If want to be more accurate, you have to look at professional research works.
我找到了一些比较值得参考的古画：
I found some ancient paintings could be used as reference:
Scenic Attractions of West Lake
《西湖情趣图》
It shows the shore of Hangzhou’s West Lake in Song Dynasty, though drawed in late Yuan Dynasty.
《南都繁会图》
It shows Nanjing during the Ming Dynasty.
Prosperous Suzhou
《姑苏繁华图》
It shows Suzhou during the Qing Dynasty, somehow out of the game’s timeframe but still informative.
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This is a very beautiful painting. I like that so much grey was used, and yet it is still colourful, as it reminds me of foggy mornings, which I favour.
I have a friend studying in Chinese ancient architecture. After I showed him the game trailer, he said that those Chinese archiectures are more Chinese when compared to AoE1 to 3. However, he also mentioned that details are still far from to be called accurate, those elements you can find on the architectures are mixture of elements from different time and area of ancient China, and some of them are even used in the wrong way.
I think it is such a mixture that makes us feel it weird. Devs should really think about it if they stick to make the game historical.
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I have collected some pictures of ancient Chinese buildings. It’s easy to know which kind of buildings belong to which dynasty. It is difficult to preserve a large number of Chinese ancient buildings due to the wood structure and the war. Only the buildings of Ming and Qing Dynasties are more.
Tang Dynasty architecture.
Song Dynasty architecture.
Ming and Qing Dynasty architecture. The Qing Dynasty inherited the architectural style of Ming Dynasty. Ming Dynasty likes the combination of gold and red architecture, which means resplendence.
These pictures can be used as a reference for modification!
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Feel like a lot of this might just be in relation to China being one of the first civilizations developed for AoE4 when they were still figuring out “the look”. The texturing, modeling styles and proportions does differ slightly. They’re one of the few civilizations whose Dark Age houses are reused all the way to Castle Age with very, very minor added changes.
It is disappointing though. Most of their landmarks look really off. Barbican in particular being pretty bad in its depiction. The new civilization, Japan, just showcases how nicely the textures of rooftiles can look, whereas China’s rooftile ridges are very worn down and flat looking. Had they planned out Sultan’s Ascend better with their variants, maybe Zhu Xi’s Legacy would’ve gotten some real new models for their Landmarks like Lancaster, instead of blindly kitbashed bits and pieces of other assets.
I can’t say I’m a fan of their Keep either. The layout feels like very forced European style fortification with a vague Chinese skin on top of it. Japanese Castle and KT Fortress just looks infinitely more interesting.
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