Ethnically Diverse Units (4/16/06)

[Willowmound]

Right-o' then!

[anjf]

I like this! Its great!

But I was wondering are you going to change all units where you can see humans to different groups? If you do you would make me very happy .

[Rabbit, White]

Originally Posted by Mayan Raptor

Those are the modern Egyptians you're talking about. For a few thousand years, many populations from west Asia and southern Europe have migrated into Egypt after the pharaohs; Greeks, Romans, Persians, Assyrians, Arabs, and Turks. This is why olive-skinned people occur in the nation today, especially in the north near the Delta, which has received the most immigration. Of course, that doesn't make those people less Egyptian, any more than non-indigenous blood makes pale-skinned Americans less American.

In southern Egypt, which has received substantially less immigration, African phenotypes and dark skin appear more often. These more African-looking people as a rule of thumb have the most pharaonic blood. I know this because I have received this information from Egyptian friend from Aswan who has studied his own history. He insists that he does not look olive-skinned, nor does he have Arab ethnicity!

I don't like to use "black" on any people, even Africans, because people tend to disagree on that word's meaning in my experience (besides, most Africans have brown skin of varying shades, not oil-black skin). However, the ancient Egyptians, as brown-skinned elongated Africans, would probably count as "black" by those who apply the term to people like Halle Berry or Rosa Parks.

Back on topic, I really think you should work on making more African and Amerindian units before moving on to Asians or Arabs. I agree with you, when playing Mali, Egypt, or the Aztecs, I do NOT want Caucasians working and fighting for my empire!

While this may be true I think that most people (including me) perceive Egyptians as olive skinned and would be confused if I gave them the African look. As for making more African and Amerindian (shouldn't that be just Native American?) I don't think there is a need for that. I realize that Aztec don't really look like Inca, and dark-skinned Egyptians don't really look like Malinese, but there needs to be a compromise between authentically looking units, playability and just plain need. It would strain the system too much to have every single civilization to have all unique units and there's no need for that either. So, I feel that the current Native American and African looks are sufficient to represent the various Native American or African civilizations and if you really want to have truly distinguishing units then that's what unique units are for.

@anjf: No, I don't see a need for it. What does an Incan infantry soldier look like? What about a Persian Grenadier?

[Sevo]

Heya Rabbit. These units look great--I wanted to put 'em into Sevomod but FileFront has been @!)(&#$ up for over a week! Any chance you could post this someplace else so I can d/l it? That would be a lot easier than re-creating all the units!

Edit: Nevermind. Finally got it. Just had to leave my computer here for 20 min!

[Rabbit, White]

Originally Posted by Sevo

Heya Rabbit. These units look great--I wanted to put 'em into Sevomod but FileFront has been @!)(&#$ up for over a week! Any chance you could post this someplace else so I can d/l it? That would be a lot easier than re-creating all the units!

Edit: Nevermind. Finally got it. Just had to leave my computer here for 20 min!

I'm glad you got it. I think I'm gonna do some research and find a better place to store files (why hasn't google done it yet? seems like a no brainer really ). In any case I do have my own server but I don't usually upload files there because I can't have it choke up on me suddenly, but you can always send me a PM if you can't get the files here and I'll post them there temporarily.

[Sevo]

Originally Posted by Rabbit, White

I'm glad you got it. I think I'm gonna do some research and find a better place to store files (why hasn't google done it yet? seems like a no brainer really ). In any case I do have my own server but I don't usually upload files there because I can't have it choke up on me suddenly, but you can always send me a PM if you can't get the files here and I'll post them there temporarily.

Great. Thanks. Also, I think I found a bug: in the Formation info's file you repeated "Found City (4)"; the second entry has the appropriate 7 unit positions so should read "Found City (7)". Easy fix, just wanted to let you know.

I'm obviously incorporating this into Sevomod--I really love the flavor it adds. Such a simple idea but it adds SO MUCH to the game to have a little "flavor" with your basic units--makes you feel like you're really playing a difference civilization, you know. That's part of the reason I go to so much trouble to have civ-specific diplomacy music and whatnot--little things go a long way.

Anyway, this will be a great addition, and I'm thinking about whipping out an Asian and Middle Eastern variant, and possibly a North Eurpoean variant just to round things out as they seem to be the most needed. I know you had mentioned maybe doing these so I thought I'd see if you have any done; if not I'll bang out 'em out.

[The Great Apple]

I hadn't noticed this before, despite hearing several referances to it. Looks great so far!

[Rabbit, White]

Thanks TGA.

@Sevo: Hmm, yep I did have the second "found city (4)" instead of "(7)" though I guess it's just a name 'cause the formations work. Anyway, I fixed it and it'll be in the next release which might be tonight but more likely tomorrow or Tuesday night.

I'm working on asian and arabian settlers right now, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't work on these too In fact, I encourage people to contribute, whether it'd be models, skins, more interesting/deteailed formations and even complete units. Heck, even suggestions would be nice since I'm running out of ideas for other ethnicities Otherwise, progress will be very slow.

In fact, if you have a solid idea about how to implement middle eastern settler then you should do it because I'm not very sure how to go about that. Also, what do you mean by North European, I mean the vanilla ones are pretty much the standard all european looking fellas?

[Impaler[WrG]]

This makes me think, should we use the SDK to make it easier to do a per Civ graphical over-ride on units without creating huge numbers of Unique Units?

I am thinking each Civ would have some tags like

<Unique_Graphic>
<Unit_Type>
<Alternative_Graphics>

The game then just displays the special Graphics for each Civ, if their arn't any special ones the ones specified in the Units.xml is used. Would that be usefull?

As for the Units I like them a lot, one thing I would add though the Native American and African Settlers dont realy have much in the way of Cargo vs the Caucasians, kind of skimpy and not very "Were loaded up with 100 Hammers worth of materials for a new City". I would give the Native Americans another Horse and give each horse an A frame dragging on the Ground loaded with bundles (ever seen Dances with Wolves you will know what I mean). African group could also use some kind of cargo though I dont have any good ideas or historical knowlage of what is/was common.

[Sevo]

Originally Posted by Rabbit, White

Thanks TGA.

@Sevo: Hmm, yep I did have the second "found city (4)" instead of "(7)" though I guess it's just a name 'cause the formations work. Anyway, I fixed it and it'll be in the next release which might be tonight but more likely tomorrow or Tuesday night.

I'm working on asian and arabian settlers right now, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't work on these too In fact, I encourage people to contribute, whether it'd be models, skins, more interesting/deteailed formations and even complete units. Heck, even suggestions would be nice since I'm running out of ideas for other ethnicities Otherwise, progress will be very slow.

In fact, if you have a solid idea about how to implement middle eastern settler then you should do it because I'm not very sure how to go about that. Also, what do you mean by North European, I mean the vanilla ones are pretty much the standard all european looking fellas?

Yeah...I figured it was just a housekeeping thing. Anyway, I'll prolly wait for your next release as I'm frenetically working to polish up version 3.0 on my end.

I actually changed the units a bit: I removed the horse from the Native American settler (Horses are not native to the Americas--they came with the Europeans!) and added a second female instead. As Impaler states, they aren't loaded up like the caucasian settlers are, but the vanilla settler wasn't loaded up either, so I'm okay with it.

The Caucasian settler I used the NIF editor to drop the wagon size without changing the horse size...the wagon isn't exactly to scale anymore, but it seems to be not so imposing as part of the unit.

Anyway, for middle eastern I was considering taking the vanilla settler and adding the pack-camel from the merchant unit, maybe 2 of 'em. That alone, possibly with a reskin for skin tone would probably do it. I had no ideas whatsoever for far east settlers!

As to the Eurpean variants, I thought it might be nice to have a more rugged looking group for the Norse/Celt/Viking/Scottish grouping...it was just an idea to make 'em distinct from say, the Greek or Egyptians which use the same vanilla/caucasian grouping.

[Rabbit, White]

Originally Posted by Impaler[WrG]

This makes me think, should we use the SDK to make it easier to do a per Civ graphical over-ride on units without creating huge numbers of Unique Units?

I am thinking each Civ would have some tags like

<Unique_Graphic>
<Unit_Type>
<Alternative_Graphics>

The game then just displays the special Graphics for each Civ, if their arn't any special ones the ones specified in the Units.xml is used. Would that be usefull?

Very much so, and if you can make it work I'll make like A'nold in "Junior" and carry your child

Seriously though I tried it, using a similar concept to how "LateArtDefine" and "EarlyArtDefine" tags work, but as far as I can see the code that comes in the SDK isn't enough to do that (basically I can get access to the function that decides which tag (early/late) to use but I can't modify it in such a way that it uses different graphics for different civs). TGA has a kind of a workaround but I have yet to really look at it and it might be a bit of a performance hog.

If you're interested in trying this out and want to take a look at my work so far PM me.

Originally Posted by Impaler[WrG]

As for the Units I like them a lot, one thing I would add though the Native American and African Settlers dont realy have much in the way of Cargo vs the Caucasians, kind of skimpy and not very "Were loaded up with 100 Hammers worth of materials for a new City". I would give the Native Americans another Horse and give each horse an A frame dragging on the Ground loaded with bundles (ever seen Dances with Wolves you will know what I mean). African group could also use some kind of cargo though I dont have any good ideas or historical knowlage of what is/was common.

Well I'm not much of a history buff but I believe Native Americans traveled light, at least in comparison to the Europeans. Although I was thinking of adding a backpack to the horse. As for the African ones, I think they represent fairly well the large nomad tribes that didn't stay in the same place for long and was always ready to move at a moment's notice - a large bulky wagon just wouldn't fit there. Now, something like a Bison with stuff on his back might work but I haven't figure out how to create one yet.

Originally Posted by Savo

I actually changed the units a bit: I removed the horse from the Native American settler (Horses are not native to the Americas--they came with the Europeans!) and added a second female instead.

True, but as it stands these Native Americans really look more like, say, Cherokee, rather than Incas, and as such I think most people will easily accept them with horses. Of course based on the civs we have I would say that a "Incas" look would be much more accurate than "Cherokee" for the Native American civs, so if anyone wants to create some units with that in mind I would switch to using those.

Originally Posted by Savo

Anyway, for middle eastern I was considering taking the vanilla settler and adding the pack-camel from the merchant unit, maybe 2 of 'em. That alone, possibly with a reskin for skin tone would probably do it.

That's what I was thinking of doing for the Arabian ones. Of course they (arab and middle eastern look) could be one and the same. I mean what do we have in the area there? Greece, Arabia, Egypt and Persia, am I forgetting anyone? Egypt should probably have its own look. Don't know much about Persia but I think it could use the same look as Arabia and then Greece could use the vanilla ones.

Anyway, good discussion, keep the ideas coming.

[The Great Apple]

Originally Posted by Rabbit, White

Seriously though I tried it, using a similar concept to how "LateArtDefine" and "EarlyArtDefine" tags work, but as far as I can see the code that comes in the SDK isn't enough to do that (basically I can get access to the function that decides which tag (early/late) to use but I can't modify it in such a way that it uses different graphics for different civs). TGA has a kind of a workaround but I have yet to really look at it and it might be a bit of a performance hog.

About this:

From what I can tell the graphics aren't called/refreshed anywhere we can see them, but the call seems to be to the unitInfo, which is not specific to each unit.

If it helps, the bodge I did involved changing the unitinfo globally, respawning the unit, and then changing it back. I'm not sure how well this will hold up in a game though (I don't know how many times the graphics for units are reloaded... it may not be feasable). It worked mostly alright in the brief testing I managed to get done, though I didn't try combats, or anything very complicated at all

[GeoModder]

Originally Posted by Rabbit, White

Heck, even suggestions would be nice since I'm running out of ideas for other ethnicities Otherwise, progress will be very slow.

Well... make some alien settlers/units... The progenitor unit from SMACX comes to mind.

Originally Posted by Rabbit, White

In fact, if you have a solid idea about how to implement middle eastern settler then you should do it because I'm not very sure how to go about that. Also, what do you mean by North European, I mean the vanilla ones are pretty much the standard all european looking fellas?

For a middle eastern settler, I would use a bedouin-alike unit. Something like the Persian immortal unit with a cameltrain. 't Might be a challenge to skin the female settler in a burka.

Edit: and the early merchant's camel could do well as packed camel.

[Ballisto]

Great work! I'm all for an asian set!

A lot of the other units you could easily reskin with different skin tones - modern age worker, infantry, marines to name a few. In our modern, post-imperialist world, clothing is pretty uniform. Japanese businessmen and African ambassadors wear suits and ties; soldiers from just about every country wear similar, green fatigues.

Also, you could make some subtle changes, like giving asian riflemen rice hats...

Ancient unit suggestions:
Asian knight: make it like a mounted samurai - the horned armor and all.
Asian longbowman: a samurai's primary weapon was his bow...
Asian pikeman: and his secondary weapon a spear (third weapon was his katana, but swordmen in this game are in a different era)

(Now guess my race! I'll give you one shot!)

[Ballisto]

And we definately need a spy with chopsticks in her shiny black hair

[Redking]

These more African-looking people as a rule of thumb have the most pharaonic blood. I know this because I have received this information from Egyptian friend from Aswan who has studied his own history. He insists that he does not look olive-skinned, nor does he have Arab ethnicity!

This level of misinformation deserves rebuttal, lest more people fall into its lockstep.

Ancient, "pharoanic" Eqypt was polyglot. Characterizing ancient eqyptians as "sudanic" or "black" is an unsupported claim, popularized by a few pseudo-scholars and modern African-American pop culture. I have no doubt your friend is dark-skinned or "african" in appearance, but that hardly acts as evidence for all other egyptians, regardless of Arab or non-Arab descent. His skin color is no more evidence of an ancient uniformity than is the singularly Semitic Coptic language that pre-existed the Arab expansion, nor the reminiscently "capoid" physiognomy of the long-attested Berbers that neighbor non-urban Lower Nile communities.

As far as remnant pre-desertification populations are concerned, keep in mind that Africa, as a likely divergence point for the human genome, harbored a host of "races", more than any pre-modern continent, and not just a monolithic "black" or "congoid" population. Furthermore, regardless the skin-tone of the earliest city-state denizens (which I don't believe anyone can confidently declare), the subsequent dynasties pulled in denizens from among both the neighboring lighter skinned peoples of southern Europe, southwest Asia, and the North African coast, and the darker skinned people of the Upper Nile and the Sahal.

When I visit the Egyptian wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, I see original works that depict a multitude of skin hues - exactly as you would expect from a civilization at geographical crossroads. Again, credible sources depict a polyglot civilization, regardless what opinions you've received from your friend or from any Michael Jackson video.

[Rabbit, White]

Ok ok come down Redking. You know, you could've said all that without putting down the original poster I do agree with you however and if and when I make Egyptian units they will stick more or less with the classical, "pop culture" concept of ancient egypt.

@Ballisto: As far as the modern era is concerned, I'm not really concerned about it - for one, as you point out the differences are small and I don't think they're worth the effort and game's resources. Moreover, in modern times most differences between civs (as they appear in Civ4) would come in their war machines (tanks, planes, ships, etc.) and there are already plenty of people working on those.

I like your suggestions for ancient units, but the ones you mention, I will not get to them in a while, right now I'm basically dealing with settlers, warriors and archers. Now, if you could suggest an interesting Japanses/Chinese version of warrior and archer that'd be great.

[Houman]

Just my two cents, since I am very much into the Middle Eastern history:

The Persians belong to the Indo-Aryan people that originally came from North Asian Steppes. They separated into three groups and moved into the South East (India) South (Iran) and West (Germany).

Even until today the basic structure of these languages, despite of changes during these centuries are similar. This is why the scientist calls these three groups Indo-Aryans that share the same roots.

Arabic language and culture for example is a Semitic one and has nothing in common with Indo-Aryans. The latter didn't know even a Camel or Burka, so why take it into consideration for Persians? (according to the comments above).

If this ethnically diverse Settlers Mod should be realistic then the Persian settlers from Cyrus the Great should not come with Camels and Burka look.

Here some pictures how they looked like:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...roskynesis.jpg
http://kaave.ka.funpic.de/woman_1.gif
http://kaave.ka.funpic.de/woman_2.gif
http://kaave.ka.funpic.de/woman_3.gif
http://kaave.ka.funpic.de/woman_4.gif
http://kaave.ka.funpic.de/woman_5.gif

Of course you could also take something more general look and put all Middle Eastern countries like Egypt, Persia and Arabia (what’s about India?) into that pot. But then again I would not call these settlers ‘Arabian Settlers’ but ‘Middle Eastern’ Settlers, which is a general term rather than the first one. Calling them Arabian Settlers is like calling the Asian Settlers "Chinese Settlers" and using them for Mongolian and Japanese Civs. I hope you get my point.

Just my two cents,
It’s a great work and I always have appreciated Rabbits work. Also I think of implementing these into the Realism Mod. Excellent work

Many thanks
Houman

[Redking]

Ok ok come down Redking. You know, you could've said all that without putting down the original poster

Putting him down was not the intent. Strenuously refuting his assertion was.

I do agree with you however and if and when I make Egyptian units they will stick more or less with the classical, "pop culture" concept of ancient egypt.

This is exactly why I posted. The "classical" image of Egyptians ("olive-skinned" he called it) is not the same as the current "pop culture" image that I referred to, which is increasingly informed by modern African-American roots mythology.

Dynastic Egypt was polyglot. And the substrate tribal (pre-dynastic) racial "type" is not only unprovable but irrelevant (though evidence, so far as I can see, best suggests people of vaguely berber appearance). What is important, however, is that this notion of ancient egyptians as entirely (or even majority) "African" rather than "Mediterranean" in appearance is complete revisionist hocum.

[JFogg]

I was thinking that, when you eventually get to doing Indian units, the Fast Worker might be a good thing to use. For that matter, the regular Worker's cloth hat looks Middle-Eastern-ish enough that you might want to consider using it as the head model for Middle Eastern units.