With the recent additions in the game, like Chronicles for Greece having same units (spearmen and militia line) but different visual, cultural monks and unique castles, we hope that the game will become even more ‘‘interesting’’ if we talk about visual/immersion side.
Back in the old game, it wasn’t that problematic to have one unit for everyone, but since the game has more regional units, unique units and have better graphics overall, I think it would be nice to add different base units (depending of their ‘‘major culture’’) such as : villager, militia, spearman, light cavalry, knight, horse archer, archer, javeliner, handgunner, bombard lines of units. So no regional units reskin of course, just base ‘‘common’’ ones.
The idea would be to use the same animations and overhaul models but just reskin and change the style of the unit, like this screen (using base models but making them more diversified for the middle eastern design) :
(credits to the creator of the picture, idk who it is since I found it on internet)
I think it’s not something necessary NEEDED, but would be a great plus for the game, I always liked more immersion. And when you really tink about it having medieval knight for a japanese, malian or inca is… weird.
If we go deep, it would be cool to have a unique design for every architecture type, but it would need 11. It’s a lot to be honest. So I think it’s better to introduce 5 of them and maybe why not expand them later on but even 5 like that would be way better than right now and could be even definitive and still worth. We need to not asking too much content at once, and also allow players to recognize them before adding to much variety.
Oh and europeans would keep the ‘‘old’’ models. The models who are right now in game.
5 differents types of cultures :
-European : Franks, Britons, Burgundy, Celts, Teutons, Goths, Vikings, Huns, Armenians, Byzantines, Georgians, Italians, Portuguese, Romans, Sicilians, Spanish, Bohemians, Bulgarians, Lithuanians, Magyars, Poles, Slavs (21)
-Eastern : Berbers, Persians, Saracens, Turks, Tatars, Cumans, Bengalis, Dravidians, Gurjaras, Hindustanis (10)
-Asian : Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, Mongols, Vietnamese, Jurchens, Khitans, Shu, Wu, Wei, Burmese, Khmer, Malay (13)
-Mesoamerican : Aztecs, Mayas, Incas (3)
-African : Malians and Ethopians (2)
I based the choice on the actual cart model/skin variety. Because reskin a lot of units is harder than making unique priests/kings for example.
I think most of them are good with this visual ‘‘identity’’. Yeah if we go in detail Indians are a bit different from arab/eastern design but they have huge links with arab world and it’s the closest to them, same for asian and south asian, they are closer to ‘‘chinese’’ people. Same for Europe, they have some differences (especially armenians/georgians) but overall they share a lot the same design/technology and culture linked to christianity. Mesoamerican are too different to have any other than their own, same for africans. If they bring more africans or mesoamericans civilisations in the future the units would be there aswell for them.
Is this the best ? No but it’s the best compromise beetwin ‘‘more skins variety/immersion’’ but also not too much work and still put civilisations close to what they look like.
I hope the community will like this idea and upvote so maybe the developpers can see it and think about it. It’s something I would love to see at least as a mod, but in base game that would be even better and we know they can do it. Maybe they could make a dlc about it (i would rather have them free for everyone but… I want them so bad that even paying for it im up !)