This is so weird, why all the very distinct asian cultures have the same Japanese-looking castle while these civilizations that are very similar to existing civilizations get new castle sprites? I know the answer already, to make the new civilizations more interesting and thus making the DLC more appealing, but from a graphics consistency standpoint it makes absolutely no sense…
Don’t get me wrong, I like the new castle graphics, but these civs are not the ones they should have got the unique castle treatment
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its to make the new civs unique and stand out, another selling point of them.
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Just hope each civ will have their own castle architecture in later updates but that might take some time. FE is hiring a 2D concept artist who knows 
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Probably to get peoples attention on the dlc.
Kinda expected that all civs get unique castle graphics. Would be kinda hard to find some for Nomadic peoples like Cumans or Huns though.
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Actually, it’s already well-known that East Asian Castles are weird as the design was exclusive in Japan historically. At least other East Asian civs can have their own Castles as they had their defense buildings (especially as forms of gates in China and Korea). But the problem is nomadic civs. They maybe have no choice but to have imaginary Castles.
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Nomadic civilizations could get ruined/captured castles of the lands they once conquered.
Like the cuman wonder for example:
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I support the idea of unique buildings and skins for every civ.
Currently this is only possible by making a data mod, which isnt allowed for ranked play. If you restructure the DB, it much be possible to allow graphical mods for unique buildings / skins for every civ, while still be able to play ranked.
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i don’t know about every building and unit having unique skins, but i think monks, castles, and kings should all be unique. at least regional monks/kings.
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We need Tibetans as a civilisation and they and the Mongols can share a buildset including the castles. See the Mongol building set by Omargg/Abejin on AOK HD (Steam workshop). That set would work well.
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It is up to the devs how far they want to go.
I think a good first step is to change the DB, so every unit/building belongs to a civ, not to a region. This will already opens the way for modders to more easily mod these things (they dont have to alter the full DB, which in result makes sure there work is also useable for ranked play, since it dont need a data mod any more to alter the skins).
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I think a good first step is to change the DB, so every unit/building belongs to a civ, not to a region.
It’s already there partly. You can choose architecture styles by civs instead of regions on the Editor. When I saw this, I strongly felt that they already had started their first step to develop individual architecture DB. As it turned out, they really developed separate Castles for the new civs.
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Or to have “borrowed castles” just like their wonders …
Diferrent unit skins is too much. I know it would look cooler, but it may stop looking like aoe 2.
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Agreed, the current East Asian set is based on Japanese architecture, which only suits the Japanese and not other East Asian civs. I wish there could be a new generic East Asian set for Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese.
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I remember the Mongols event had an event-specific function to build both Yurts and Houses on the same hotkey. Is there a way to enable Yurts for the same civilizations that have Steppe Lancers (Mongols, Cumans & Tatars)?
Yes, currently it can be done, but the end result is a data mod, so you cant use it for ranked / quick play. If the dev set up the DB in another way, then i think these kind of mods can be made as graphical mod. Graphical mods are allowed in ranked (think of the daut castle mod). So if unique buildings / units for each civ can be a graphical mod, then i expect more people to make these kind of mods. As result the devs can already see how popular they are.
I can understand this opinion. Therefore i think this feature needs to be optional. For example: the devs make official mods for each civ and you can enable the visuals you want. Forcing everyone into unique buildings / units for each civ isnt the way to go for AoE II. I agree with that part.
There could be a toggle on/off architecture or skin sets in the options perhaps?
Firstly it costs money to do anything.
Secondly people moan about reskinning anything. And then other people complain when something isn’t reskinned. Who is more valid?
Point one takes priority. They’ll get there in time, but not with the attitude of “i won’t buy the DLC, devs can’t have any more money” which seems so prevalent from certain loud people…
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