[GRAPHICS] Revised Dutch Leaderheads

As glad as I was to see the Dutch Republic as one of the playable factions in this amazing game, something bothered me greatly about two of the three leaderheads..

The Dutch king looks like he's trying to kick three addictions at the same time and is unsuccesful at pretty much every attempt, which would pretty much explain his mood swings. Furthermore, the Dutch Republic was a country full of notoriously monotonously dressed people; mostly black, with a few small decorations, but nothing that would be considered an ostentatious display of wealth..

Given that, I decided to revise the graphics for the Dutch King and Peter Stuyvesant. The Dutch King looks like a regular human being of sufficient means, but not nearly as wealthy as his other counterparts, whereas Peter Stuyvesant looks a lot more like the only portrait that we have of him..

I hope you'll enjoy this little modification!

P.S.; I have been unable to change the icons for both leaderheads, so if someone could help me out with that, I would be immensely grateful!

Changelog:
v1.1: Changed appearance of the Dutch King and Stuyvesant.
v1.2: Changed beard of the Dutch King.
v1.3: Added custom backgrounds for Dutch King, Stuyvesant and Van der Donck.

Before and After shots:

Dutch King - v3



Peter Stuyvesant - v2



Adriaen van der Donck



Installation
I've also included a readme file in the .zip file, but here goes:

Download the file here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=10809

Copy the contents of this file to My Documents\My Games\Colonization\CustomAssets\art\leaderheads (create the folder structure if it doesn't exist yet) and voilá; you can now enjoy the revised versions of the leaderheads for the Dutch King and Peter Stuyvesant. If you decide you don't like them after all, you can simply remove those files; they don't overwrite the original ones. Furthermore, if you prefer the original backgrounds, simply delete the files that are labelled as [Subject Name]_Background.dds..

Lastly, if you intend to use this in one of your own mods, please give credit..

Credit for the creation of this mod also goes to ColdFever and his changes to the Colonization Leaderheads for Blue Marble. I used his versions of the Dutch King and Stuyvesant as a template to work on..

The Dutch Republic never had a King, obviously. The Prince of Orange, the closest thing, was Stadtholder ("City Holder"), in service of the States General, i.e. the assembly to which all provinces sent their delegates on a more or less regular basis. The Raadpensionaris (Council Secretary) or Landsadvocaat (State Advocate) was the highest official, as the Stadtholder's functions were primarily military in nature. (As I don't own C4C: do the Dutch really have a King in-game?)

I'm completely aware of the existence of the Stadhouders (fellow Dutchman here)..

Yes, the Dutch have a King in-game; I assume because it might otherwise cause confusion among other players. So that's why I referred to "the Dutch King", because that's the way he's referred to in-game..

So what did you think of them? I'd really like to hear some feedback and comments / constructive criticism!

I noticed, but a lot of people may never have heard of them (and Holland did become a kingdom in 1815).

The "king" looks better, but with Stuyvesant I don't think the black cloth - which was in fashion for a time for officials - makes them look rather gloomy,* which fits in with the faces, but that's perhaps why they were clothed differently originally. If you look at 17th century portraits quite a lot of people didn't wear black, especially with the increase in riches at that time.

Otherwise: Rule Batavia!

*He looks like a Dutch Reformed minister/priest, Stuyvesant does.

I think this is a great idea, I would love it if this change made it into an official (or more likely the standard unofficial, whether that end up being snoopy's or someone else's) patch!

Thanks for the comments, guys!

@JEELEN: I modelled Stuyvesant after the following painting of him (the only one of him in existence):

I didn't have the time (nor do I have the experience yet) to give him a suit of armour, so I simply went with the black cloth, which was very common in the Netherlands back then. But hey, nobody's forcing you to use it, right?

@Becephalus: Thanks! I've already contacted the creator of Blue Marble for Colonization. That mod also has a specific section for leaderheads and I was hoping he'd be interested in incorporating this into his mod.. Haven't heard back yet, so I we'll see!

Now, a quick update.. I wasn't quite happy with the fact that the Dutch King still looked too much like Willem van Oranje from Civilization IV, so I did some work on the beard. I shorted his beard and made it whiter, so as to make him look somewhat older and I cut down on the size of his moustache, making him look less cartoony. (It was primarily modelled after Admiral Michiel de Ruyter's beard) .

Here's the old Dutch King:


And here's the new one:


I will update the file in a minute and edit the first post to include both images (finally figured out what I did wrong up there).. Please keep the feedback coming!

JEELEN said:

The Dutch Republic never had a King, obviously. The Prince of Orange, the closest thing, was Stadtholder ("City Holder"), in service of the States General, i.e. the assembly to which all provinces sent their delegates on a more or less regular basis. The Raadpensionaris (Council Secretary) or Landsadvocaat (State Advocate) was the highest official, as the Stadtholder's functions were primarily military in nature. (As I don't own C4C: do the Dutch really have a King in-game?)

Click to expand...

As a matter of fact, 'Stad' in Stadhouder does not have anything to do with City. The Stadhouder was the steward of the Spanish King in the Netherlands. Stad means 'in plaats van' as the German 'Statt' or the English 'in stead'. IIRC, Col1 did refer to the leader of the Dutch as Stadtholder, too bad this bit of historic accuracy didn't make it...

Haha, more debate going on about what the position of Stadhouder actually entailed than how my mod is being received..

Anyway, I've been tinkering once more and this time I'm pretty sure I'm completely finished. I felt the standard backgrounds were a bit of an eyesore, so I decided to change them into something that might be more pleasing to the eye.. (You'll have to decide for yourselves, but I like them!)

For the King's background, I used a still image from the wonderful HBO miniseries "John Adams", when the main character has arrived in the Dutch Republic to ask for a loan from the Dutch bankers. The set that they constructed looked magnificent and was very true to the somewhat dark atmosphere in 17th and 18th century Dutch upperclass residences.. Plus, I prefer the look of a 17th/18th century civilian home to that of the medieval inner chamber of the Binnenhof which was used for the original background..

Stuyvesant's background is a part of the painting "View of Dordrecht" by Aelbert Cuyp. I removed the rather large church tower from the view, so that now it seems as though we're looking at the smaller scale buildings of New Amsterdam and a visiting Dutch merchantman in the background..

Van der Donck's background is from the painting "View of The Hague from the Delftse Vaart" by Cornelis Springer. It includes a windmill and the hint of a cityscape in the background. Again, trying to keep in mind colonial conditions, with a little imagination, it might look like the outskirts of New Amsterdam..

Here they are:

Dutch King - v3



Peter Stuyvesant - v2



Adriaen van der Donck



I will also update the first post with these new images and will replace the file on the download page..

If you prefer the old backgrounds, you can always choose to discard those files included in the .zip archive. They're clearly labelled as [subject name]_Background.dds, so all you'd have to do is delete them..

I hope you'll enjoy them!

They look really good, especially the "king". They look better than the originals in my opinion.
I've been trying to figure out who they used as reference to model the "king"-leaderhead. None of the stadholders seem to match at all (maurits the most but he doesn't have long hair). Does anyone have any idea? I am thinking of using it in Civ4 to have an extra leader for the dutch, but don't know who to use for.

After playing my first game of C4C as the Dutch, I immediately made myself a text-only mod which changes some of the historic aspects of the Dutch:

- Created a new city list, with names of actual cities (as opposed to states/regions/rivers/islands) with actual Dutch names -- 2/3rd of the names on the default list fail to meet at least one of those criteria;
- Renamed a few English and Spanish Founding Fathers to replace them with Dutch figures, because there are like 20 English and Spanish FFs each but only 2 Dutch ones -- the new guys are Piet Hein, Adriaen van der Donck, Kiliaen van Rensselaer, Adriaen Block, Cornelius Jacobsz Mey and Johannes Megapolensis;
- Replaced Van der Donck as Dutch leader by Johan Maurits: Van der Donck was a political reformer and as such a great Founding Father but he was never a real leader like all the others in the game, who were all governors, presidents and/or leaders of independence movements; Johan Maurits OTOH was one of the most important and ambitious political leaders in Dutch colonial history (who sadly saw many of his grand plans cut short by the lack of vision of the WIC board);
- Renamed the "King of Netherlands" to "Stadtholder of the Netherlands".

They're all only name changes though -- if I had the time I'd come up with appropriate graphics, civilopedia entries, localization, etc and I would publish the mod, but as-is it's rather barebones. (And I suspect the French could do with a similar make-over, which I'd like to throw into such a mod as well, but I'm not as familiar with French colonial history so that would take a lot more time to put together.)

On the actual topic of the thread though, I like the new Dutch 'King' and Stuyvesant, but for my game of course Van der Donck's new graphics are just as inappropriate as the original -- neither the leaderhead nor the background fit Johan Maurits particularly well. That's of course hardly your fault though

Berenthor said:

I've been trying to figure out who they used as reference to model the "king"-leaderhead. None of the stadholders seem to match at all (maurits the most but he doesn't have long hair). Does anyone have any idea? I am thinking of using it in Civ4 to have an extra leader for the dutch, but don't know who to use for.

Click to expand...

I don't think the Dutch leaderhead was actually based off any specific Dutch leader to be honest. I think they simply took Willem van Oranje's graphics from Civilization IV and added long hair and a few more details in his clothes to form a generic leader that didn't actually exist.. (In fact, while I was working on the king, I also worked on Willem van Oranje (another mod for the future perhaps) and the graphics are almost identical)..

As for my own model, I think the closest historical figure he might come to is Jan de Wit, although obviously he looks too old and far too similar to Willem van Oranje. In any case, thanks for your comment!

Locutus said:

After playing my first game of C4C as the Dutch, I immediately made myself a text-only mod which changes some of the historic aspects of the Dutch:

- Created a new city list, with names of actual cities (as opposed to states/regions/rivers/islands) with actual Dutch names -- 2/3rd of the names on the default list fail to meet at least one of those criteria;
- Renamed a few English and Spanish Founding Fathers to replace them with Dutch figures, because there are like 20 English and Spanish FFs each but only 2 Dutch ones -- the new guys are Piet Hein, Adriaen van der Donck, Kiliaen van Rensselaer, Adriaen Block, Cornelius Jacobsz Mey and Johannes Megapolensis;
- Replaced Van der Donck as Dutch leader by Johan Maurits: Van der Donck was a political reformer and as such a great Founding Father but he was never a real leader like all the others in the game, who were all governors, presidents and/or leaders of independence movements; Johan Maurits OTOH was one of the most important and ambitious political leaders in Dutch colonial history (who sadly saw many of his grand plans cut short by the lack of vision of the WIC board);
- Renamed the "King of Netherlands" to "Stadtholder of the Netherlands".

On the actual topic of the thread though, I like the new Dutch 'King' and Stuyvesant, but for my game of course Van der Donck's new graphics are just as inappropriate as the original -- neither the leaderhead nor the background fit Johan Maurits particularly well. That's of course hardly your fault though

Click to expand...

That's an impressive list of changes; if you find the time, be sure to release it! I for one suck at editing the XML, so I'm mostly stuck with graphical modifications..

Oh, and a funny little factoid; I'm a history / American studies student at the University of Amsterdam and I actually wrote an essay last year about Johannes Megapolensis! Glad to finally meet someone who knows his name..

As for the Van der Donck graphic, we don't really have any reliable reference material as to what Van der Donck looked like (there's an image that 'might' be him at his Wikipedia entry and this leaderhead looks nothing like him). As for Johan Maurits, I don't know what he looks like, but if you have a few reference images, I might give him a try..

Yeah, the Van der Donck leaderhead really just looks like a mashup of Dutch stereotypes from different eras, what with the Calvinist clothing, really friendly dutch guy attitude, and since Dutch=orange, he has orange hair.

Oh yeah, and your leaderheads are awesome, Lionheart, though the picture for v3 of the king doesn't show up in the thread.

Reveilled said:

Oh yeah, and your leaderheads are awesome, Lionheart, though the picture for v3 of the king doesn't show up in the thread.

Click to expand...

Thanks! As for the picture; strangely enough it is showing up when I watch the thread..

Is anyone else experiencing this problem? I just cleared my cache and temporary internet files and the image still shows up.. In any case, even if you can't see it; there's a preview on the download page and in the .zip file as well..

Can anyone tell me if they've discovered some kind of flaw with this mod?

I've just checked the file over at the download URL (here) and noticed that it has an 'F' rating..

Clearly I'm a little dissapointed at that, so if anyone rated it low (and still remembers), please tell me what's wrong so I can correct it.. If there's nothing wrong and this 'mod' has been the victim of trolls (or whatever they're called), does anyone feel up to helping me get the rating up?

It's perfectly fine

I don't see any reason for van der donck not to be a leader. Wasn't he the leader of the Board of Nine at one point? He is also one of the most recognized people in New Netherlands. Civ isn't that strict when it comes to leaderheads: Look at Gandhi and Ragnar!

It'd be awesome if you released the file editing the name off FFs. Is there a way to make it apply to only the dutch?

I had made my own post in which I wrote:

Hello, I'm not a modder but I am a historian and one aspect of Colonization that has bothered me since it released was the title "King of Netherlands." Besides the obvious oversight that it is "The Netherlands" in colloquial English, there was no "King" of the Netherlands during colonialist times. The Kingdom of the Netherlands did not appear until the Congress of Vienna in 1815. Before that time, it was the Unite Provinces of the Netherlands and the military leader (for he was not equal to a king) was the "Stadtholder of the Netherlands" (or of the individual provinces).

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Seeing this thread, I removed it. However, I do have some ideas I'd like to express:

First, I think that this leaderhead mod, being a mod after all, should use either the term "Stadtholder of the Netherlands" or "Leader of the United Provinces" or something similar, especially if the leaderhead appears to be one of the Nine.

Second, I'd like to propose that the William of Orange leaderhead from Civ4 be used as an alternative leaderhead for the King of Netherlands, since no one really likes this strange leader anyway.

Finally, I was thinking it would be interesting if a group of leaders were created for Netherlands, instead of just one (naming them "Council of the United Provinces" or something similar). I don't know if that is possible, but if perhaps eight other leaders (either animated or static images) could be seen along a table behind the leader of the group (the current leaderhead). That would make it feel a lot more like the United Provinces of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Just some proposals for this small mod. I really dislike the current way that the Netherlands is organized in the game and I think something should be done about it. Cheers.

Has anyon else noticed that the background music for the Dutch Leaderheads is an English Folk song called 'Over the Hills and Far Away'.