I am not opposed to this, AS LONG AS IT’s OPTIONAL. I don’t think they should force new skins on everyone like they did with castles, monasteries, monks etc
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Because the game is now “unreadable” right? jjjj 8888 kkkk
it’s less readable, not unreadable. But mostly I just like what we have, a huge part of why I like(d) this game is nostalgia. So why take that away from people? Making this optional should be super simple
I once made regional skins for villagers. Obviously, this is just a suggestion, as the official skins shouldn’t deviate too much from the original.
Africans also do not use buffaloes as burden beasts, oxen or donkeys would be more accurate.
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As a blonde enjoyer, I wouldn’t mind some blonde representation in the game. It’s a total shame that the objectively best (just kidding) hair color is completely absent from the game.
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Good suggestion except for the western european because I am tied with the actual one since the release. 26 years with this bare chested men and this women. There is too may cultural products, memes, videos, with this two villager skins; than we need to keep those two villager’s skins in he game for western european civilizations.
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Adding regional castles, monks, units so it only make sense that they would keep it going. Just has to be subtle.
It’s “[Omkar] Historical Units and Architectures”
But the mod needs to be updated regularly. Which is a huge task. It’s not just a reskin, there’s a lot of data work involved in separating the units for each culture. And the latest version of the mod is not up to date.
In fact, it’s practically impossible for a modder who does this in their spare time to keep up with Age of Empires 2 DE updates for this kind of mod. Unless they want to go mad.
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Only the jarl has blond hair ingame.Adding another barbarian type european civi can have a uu with blond hair.
I’d say for each architecture set, a unit set.
It could be an issue for the European sets, but they don’t have to be drastically different, just flavoured. It would be fun for the artists, for sure!
Anyway I found units from Chronicles to be easy to recognise even with the new skins. The levels for each unit are known and colour coded.
It would be very important to preserve the animations as much as possible. Think of the Militia line, every unit has a distinguishable pose, walking and attack animations. That helps a lot.
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I don’t think every civ’s skin should match with their architecture.
Like I’d switch Hun’s architecture to the Eastern European set with Central Asian unit skins. Turks could keep the Middle Eastern architecture but get the Central Asian unit skins, etc.
So architectures are accordingly with geography, while skins are accordingly for the people.
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I see your point, but if we talk about pure nostalgia. The nostalgia of old graphicals are not the one from DE, at least for me. Don’t get me wrong : I love AOE2:DE but a big part is also the ‘‘new’’ stuff. And this thing could be one of thoses.
And if we talk about the pure nostalgia design of the old models, they are not removed, still there for the europeans. And with my actual proposal (if we don’t split even more in the future) it’s most of the civilisations that stay with the ‘‘base’’ models.
I really love this game, and im not a ‘‘PVP’’ player only (I do play a bit but it’s not my main focus), but also someone who love to spend time in editor/custom maps, campaigns and even against AI, so this part would be a great + for the immersion part.
Indeed the idea would be to preserve the animations, and the ‘‘style’’ of the unit. We need to know that this unit is a heavy rider (knight line), light rider (hussard line), or a pikeman or a swordman, etc…
It’s why I used this picture, I think the one who made it made something very ‘‘eastern’’ while keeping the original design, so you know who is what with ease.
This is really well done.
It would be nice that villagers follow an upgrade in each age up.
Absolutely yes. Regional or even unique skins for a civilization could be turned on with a toggle, similar to the “allies and enemies” color toggle. This way if you are in ranked if you don’t want to see regional or unique skins, just toggle them off. If you do, toggle them on.
You could even change the name of the units. An example unit for the Aztecs could be named: “Bowman (Crossbowman)” that way you will know what that unit is, even if it has a regional or unique skin on it (Heck, make that a toggle too).
This would increase immersion, make units and civs more historically accurate, and even be an opportunity to generate sales for AOE $. Make each civilization unique unit skins a few dollars each (and run sales on bundles periodically).
In the interim, regional units would be huge. Having knights and crossbowman for civs that obviously never had those is a huge immersion breaker. Regional villagers would be amazing.
I have been preaching this for years!
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I absolutely agree. The developers have already embarked on the path of “regional skins” and must bring it to its logical end by giving us different regional skins for the basic unit lines, this will make the game much more beautiful, enhance immersion and attract masses of people who are repelled by the same appearance of the basic units of all factions.
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This could be fine as a mod or a change specific to single player or some new game mode. A definite no for ranked games. Its going to be hard recognize or differentiate between some of the units with such skins. Let the base symmetric units of the game look the same way. I wouldn’t mind changes to Elephants, Steppe lancers, Fire lancers etc that are more niche to a few civs but not for the common ones.
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Yes, its going to be so hard 
, incredibly hard , like, there is no way anyone can understand whats going on, thats why Age of Mythology uses the same unit for…wait…
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No idea wrt AOM or what your sarcasm is about but 4-5 different skins for 5-6 different unit types is definitely going to make it very difficult in ranked games. I also have no issues if this becomes a feature that can be toggled - like “Use new skins for generic units yes or no” and if I choose no, I see the units the way it is right now.
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Toggleable feature, everyone’s happy.
Whether it’s an official mod or a full ingame settings option, but it should be maintained by the devs.
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