Some may not have noticed, but several American natives’ unit model did not resemble their portrait.
This is because before TAD, all natives use the same portrait for the trading post and the unit, but the unit model is based on some other design.
I guess that’s because they originally planned to make dedicated portraits for the native American units in legacy. You can find traces of them in the art concept, but eventually they dropped that plan before it was finished. Then after DE all new native units are modeled after the trade post portraits so there is no inconsistency.
Originally, DE uses the same look as the legacy model. But they eventually updated the inconsistent ones according to the portraits.
Maya
Legacy
DE (spearman)
DE (javelineer) → consistent with the icon
Cree
Legacy
Original DE model is not in the game anymore and nobody put it on wiki so it’s lost. But it looked like legacy.
DE updated → consistent, except the bow in the icon
(BTW Cree cdb now also has its own model and portrait)
Comanche
The opposite happens: the new portrait now matches the model.
Old portrait (same as trade post):
New portrait:
Unit model:
