ambrox62
Emperor
- Joined
- Mar 24, 2005
- Messages
- 1,294
Bronze Age Units (3000 BC - 1200 BC)
This thread contains Bronze Age Units for civilizations in the ancient Mediterranean zone, following the civilizations breakdown from TAM mod.
Reading this POST you'll understand the purpose of this collection, and you'll also find additional in-game screenshots.
In the ancient Mediterranean, Bronze Age begins at about 3000 BC and ends at about 1200 BC. During this period several civs arise and someone also disappear: Egyptians (3150 BC), Minoans (2800 BC until 1400 BC), Babylonians and Assyrians (2000 BC), Hittites (1800 BC until 1200 BC) and Myceneans (1600 BC). Look at this CIVILIZATION CHART for more detailed infos.
I chose a different design for Bronze Age units based on their geographical provenience: leather, grey metal and rough textiles for northern and western european civs, golden bronze and fine textiles for middle-east civs, leather and heavy bronze for hellenic civs. I considered Lydians and Thracians as hellenic civs because of the Trojan War (1250 BC) fighted in the Lydian future region by Thracian armies, and Nubians as a twin of Egyptians civ.
As usual for my production style, I've spent lots of time to make my units 100% playable with nifscope, because I like to download civ4 stuff and run it immediately. In the modder infos below, I'll explain the personal guidelines and choices about each type of unit released. Furthermore each unit comes with both shader and no-shader nif and the lesser number as possible of art files, in order to reduce memory usage. I hope you might enjoy these features.
I've made, collected and assembled these units using nifscope and blender tools, with models and textures released by firaxis and other forum modders. Thus credits go to EVERYONE who made ancient units before me.
Check this THREAD to visit my previous STONE AGE units collection
--> DOWNLOAD LINK <--
28 SPEARMEN
24 COMPOSITE ARCHERS + 2 SLINGERS
4 ANCIENT SPIES
GENERIC CHARIOT ARCHER - a archer on a chariot throwing arrows during ranged and close combat (using customized animations)
24 CHARIOT ARCHERS
25 CHARIOTS
24 AXEMEN
EXTRA UNIT
I've produced these units on request
FEMALE ANCIENT SPY
BABYLONIAN early SWORDSMAN
BUG REPORT
While I was testing my units in game, I spotted a weird graphic issue. It's a flashing dark strip while scrolling the map to look at units. It happens at certain angle, while zooming in or out, but not always.
Because it happens on shader units only, I worked on nif skinpartition, and all my packages above have passed a final test successfully.
However if someone has got the same fault (with these or other units) please report it below. I need to know:
1) if someone gets the same issue on his PC
2) if someone knows why this happens
Thanks
MODDER INFOS
SPEARMEN
From a historical point of view, you should consider these unit as early spearmen, equipped with light spear and rounded shield. I gave to hellenic units the real feel of "bronze spearmen" as described into homeric poems. Also middle-eastern region got historical spearmen, because of the early Egyptian, Assyrian, Babylonian and Hittite civs, and I made evoluted units for them. The still uncivilized northern and western europe got barbarian-style spearmen. The true "heavy" spearmen will come several centuries later, in the "Classical Age" (i.e in a set I'll do next year).
Using blender I built 6 different meshes, and using nifscope I put them into firaxis vanilla spearman nif. Looking at picture below, unit #1 is a european spearman, #2 a pre-roman one, #3 hellenic, #4 middle-eastern, #5 assyrian and #6 babylonian. Furthermore mesh #3 has a sub-model with a lower crest, while mesh #1 has a second nif type to enhance eastern bronze gloss instead of western grey one.
In addition to the 24 units representing the TAM civs, the set contains 4 more "hero" units with a laurel wreath on head, that you may easily remove with nifscope if you dislike it, reducing nif size by 30-40Kb (the wreath is a scaled version from Alexander LH).
A last minute modification (i.e. not showed in the picture above) involves the spear tip (a bit smaller) and the shield animation. The shield required a fix because the animations of firaxis spearman are slightly bugged (you may notice it when the firaxis spearman adjusts his shield during the fidget sequence). Notice that I fixed the NIF, not the KF files.
These units are fully playable with nifscope, have both shader and no-shader nif and all strictly needed art files. Use vanilla spearman artdefine for xml purpose. The package contains 1 animation folder for convenience, but you may use vanilla spearman animation for all models.
COMPOSITE ARCHERS
I called these units as composite archers because they are archers carrying a modeled bow. Technically a composite bow is a bow made from disparate materials laminated together. Composite bows may have been invented first by the nomads of the Asiatic steppe, and they were soon adopted and adapted by early Mediterranean civilizations, such as the Assyrian, Babylonian and Egyptian, who came into contact with nomads. Several composite bows were found in the tomb of Tutankhamun, who died in 1324 BC.
Using blender I worked on 6 different mesh types, and using nifscope I put them into firaxis chinese archer nif. Also I added a firaxis peltast as Iberian Slinger, following the unit breakdown of TAM mod. Looking at picture below, unit #1 comes from my previous stone age archers set, #2 is a firaxis peltast reskin, #3 is a new hellenic model, #4 is a firaxis egyptian archer, #5 is a assyrian and #6 a babylonian. Furthermore mesh #1 has 2 sub-models with short and veiled hair, #3 has a sub-model with lower crest and #4 has a nubian sub-model.
In addition to the 24 units representing the TAM civs, the set contains 2 more "hero" units (1 archer and 1 slinger) with a laurel wreath on head, that you may easily remove with nifscope if you dislike it, reducing nif size by 30-40Kb (the wreath is a scaled version from Alexander LH).
Use chinese archer and peltast artdefine for xml purpose. The package contains 2 animation folders for convenience ("anim_comp" for archers and "anim_slinger" for slingers - but you may refer to firaxis chinese archer and peltast respectively), and 1 "anim_effects" folder to manage the different kind of arrows when they reach the opposite field, otherwise a "custom" arrow starting from a archer turns into a "standard" arrow during its way (read HERE for more details). Also I included into "anim_effects" folder a detailed aco_arrows_readme.txt file to explain how to manage arrow effects.
ANCIENT SPIES
Because spies are hidden units in Civ4, I made very few ethnic models giving them teamcolored textures. Using blender I worked on 4 different mesh types, and using nifscope I put them into firaxis ancient spy nif. I took the spy head from this Chuggi mesh.
Looking at picture below:
unit #1 is a triple mix of Chuggi worker (body), Chuggi head and swordman legs,
unit #2 is a triple mix of hindu body, Chuggi head, engineer arms and legs,
unit #3 is a double mix of Chuggi head and treasure man body,
unit #4 is a double mix of Chuggi head and Bakuel archer-engineer.
I massively reshuffled each texture in order to fit all parts into a single dds.
Use ancient spy artdefine for xml purpose. The package above contains 1 animation folders for convenience, but you may refer to firaxis ancient spy anims.
CHARIOT ARCHERS
I introduced these new Civ4 units because chariot archers were really important units in the ancient times. Historically the chariots of the Egyptians and Assyrians, with whom the bow was the principal arm of attack, were richly mounted with quivers full of arrows.
These units consist of a single archer on a open chariot, with customized animations to manage bow and arrows. Using my previous released chariot archer unit, I replaced the generic archer with the ethnic composite ones that I made. Although there aren't new meshes inside, the package contains a valuable feature: I've painted horses with real colours based on the following charts:
My original plan was to produce 24 different horse coats (one for each civ), but I ended with 12 (one every 2 civs): bay, black, blu roan, buckskin, chestnut, grullo, liver chestnut, palomino, perlino, red dun, taffy and white. I'll finish the remaining 12 coats in a second time. There are all the "appaloosa" and "paint" coats still to do. How to assign coats to civs was a tricky issue because I searched everywhere on the web useful links about it, but nowhere I've found a significative help. If someone has a deep knowledge on horses and their historical appearence, plese give me some tips about my final choices.
In order to run these units into Civ4 correctly, you MUST use the custom anims included in the package.
I also provided xml code to insert it into your customized artdefine.
The package contains 1 "anim_effects" folder to manage the different kind of arrows when they reach the opposite field, otherwise a "custom" arrow starting from a archer turns into a "standard" arrow during its way (read HERE for more details). Also I included into "anim_effects" folder a detailed ach_arrows_readme.txt file to explain how to manage arrow effects.
Although anims aren't 100% polished, these units work fine during each anim sequence and they are fun to see when in action.
Special thanks to AchillesZero who helped me to solve a glitch on the bow anim.
Unfortunately a unresolved glitch is still present on these units. During the StrikeA anim, while the unit stops itself after attacking, sometimes the left arm disappears (it happens in a ranged attack situation mostly). I suspect the issue stays in the NiTransformInterpolator (index 15) which links the BIP L Clavicle node, but I wasn't able to fix it. If someone could get rid of it is really welcome.
CHARIOTS
After reserving the celtic "open" chariot to my previous chariot archers, I used ALL the remaining chariot models for these units, assigning each chariot type to a group of civs, as detailed below (following the picture order):
Chariot model : ewc-like (every 2 horses chariot type) - use "anim_ewc" folder anims
Civs using it : hittite, assyrian, babylonian, kolchis, nubian, egyptian and egyptian hero.
Chariot model : Civ4 chinese (reskinned with wood texture, charioteer equipped with spear) - use "anim_china" folder anims
Civs using it : persian and phoenician
Chariot model : Civ4 greek-roman (charioteer equipped with sword) - use "anim_gr" folder anims
Civs using it : greek, minoan, lydian, thracian, roman, carthago, gaul and iberian
Chariot model : Civ4 south-america (reskinned with "closed" wood texture, charioteer equipped with spear) - use "anim_celtic" folder anims
Civs using it : briton, german, goth, dacian, illyrian, scythian, tartessian and medes
If you wish to use these units into your own mod, you must follow the above instructions (or the animation guideline included in the package) in order to assign the right animation to each unit. Also you must refer to the corresponding Civ4 chariot type artdefines for XML purpose.
I reused my previous spearmen and/or comp archers as charioteer in the single-man chariot, while in the ewc-like models I had to work with blender to set spearmen and drivers with hands turned of 90 degree. I've also continuing to assign to each civ the same painted horses I did in my previous CAs set.
Special credit to Bakuel because I've reworked two ethnic ewc chariot models he made.
This thread contains Bronze Age Units for civilizations in the ancient Mediterranean zone, following the civilizations breakdown from TAM mod.
Reading this POST you'll understand the purpose of this collection, and you'll also find additional in-game screenshots.
In the ancient Mediterranean, Bronze Age begins at about 3000 BC and ends at about 1200 BC. During this period several civs arise and someone also disappear: Egyptians (3150 BC), Minoans (2800 BC until 1400 BC), Babylonians and Assyrians (2000 BC), Hittites (1800 BC until 1200 BC) and Myceneans (1600 BC). Look at this CIVILIZATION CHART for more detailed infos.
I chose a different design for Bronze Age units based on their geographical provenience: leather, grey metal and rough textiles for northern and western european civs, golden bronze and fine textiles for middle-east civs, leather and heavy bronze for hellenic civs. I considered Lydians and Thracians as hellenic civs because of the Trojan War (1250 BC) fighted in the Lydian future region by Thracian armies, and Nubians as a twin of Egyptians civ.
As usual for my production style, I've spent lots of time to make my units 100% playable with nifscope, because I like to download civ4 stuff and run it immediately. In the modder infos below, I'll explain the personal guidelines and choices about each type of unit released. Furthermore each unit comes with both shader and no-shader nif and the lesser number as possible of art files, in order to reduce memory usage. I hope you might enjoy these features.
I've made, collected and assembled these units using nifscope and blender tools, with models and textures released by firaxis and other forum modders. Thus credits go to EVERYONE who made ancient units before me.
Check this THREAD to visit my previous STONE AGE units collection
--> DOWNLOAD LINK <--
28 SPEARMEN
24 COMPOSITE ARCHERS + 2 SLINGERS
4 ANCIENT SPIES
GENERIC CHARIOT ARCHER - a archer on a chariot throwing arrows during ranged and close combat (using customized animations)
24 CHARIOT ARCHERS
25 CHARIOTS
24 AXEMEN
EXTRA UNIT
I've produced these units on request
FEMALE ANCIENT SPY
BABYLONIAN early SWORDSMAN
BUG REPORT
While I was testing my units in game, I spotted a weird graphic issue. It's a flashing dark strip while scrolling the map to look at units. It happens at certain angle, while zooming in or out, but not always.
Because it happens on shader units only, I worked on nif skinpartition, and all my packages above have passed a final test successfully.
However if someone has got the same fault (with these or other units) please report it below. I need to know:
1) if someone gets the same issue on his PC
2) if someone knows why this happens
Thanks
MODDER INFOS
SPEARMEN
From a historical point of view, you should consider these unit as early spearmen, equipped with light spear and rounded shield. I gave to hellenic units the real feel of "bronze spearmen" as described into homeric poems. Also middle-eastern region got historical spearmen, because of the early Egyptian, Assyrian, Babylonian and Hittite civs, and I made evoluted units for them. The still uncivilized northern and western europe got barbarian-style spearmen. The true "heavy" spearmen will come several centuries later, in the "Classical Age" (i.e in a set I'll do next year).
Using blender I built 6 different meshes, and using nifscope I put them into firaxis vanilla spearman nif. Looking at picture below, unit #1 is a european spearman, #2 a pre-roman one, #3 hellenic, #4 middle-eastern, #5 assyrian and #6 babylonian. Furthermore mesh #3 has a sub-model with a lower crest, while mesh #1 has a second nif type to enhance eastern bronze gloss instead of western grey one.
Spoiler :
In addition to the 24 units representing the TAM civs, the set contains 4 more "hero" units with a laurel wreath on head, that you may easily remove with nifscope if you dislike it, reducing nif size by 30-40Kb (the wreath is a scaled version from Alexander LH).
A last minute modification (i.e. not showed in the picture above) involves the spear tip (a bit smaller) and the shield animation. The shield required a fix because the animations of firaxis spearman are slightly bugged (you may notice it when the firaxis spearman adjusts his shield during the fidget sequence). Notice that I fixed the NIF, not the KF files.
These units are fully playable with nifscope, have both shader and no-shader nif and all strictly needed art files. Use vanilla spearman artdefine for xml purpose. The package contains 1 animation folder for convenience, but you may use vanilla spearman animation for all models.
COMPOSITE ARCHERS
I called these units as composite archers because they are archers carrying a modeled bow. Technically a composite bow is a bow made from disparate materials laminated together. Composite bows may have been invented first by the nomads of the Asiatic steppe, and they were soon adopted and adapted by early Mediterranean civilizations, such as the Assyrian, Babylonian and Egyptian, who came into contact with nomads. Several composite bows were found in the tomb of Tutankhamun, who died in 1324 BC.
Using blender I worked on 6 different mesh types, and using nifscope I put them into firaxis chinese archer nif. Also I added a firaxis peltast as Iberian Slinger, following the unit breakdown of TAM mod. Looking at picture below, unit #1 comes from my previous stone age archers set, #2 is a firaxis peltast reskin, #3 is a new hellenic model, #4 is a firaxis egyptian archer, #5 is a assyrian and #6 a babylonian. Furthermore mesh #1 has 2 sub-models with short and veiled hair, #3 has a sub-model with lower crest and #4 has a nubian sub-model.
Spoiler :
In addition to the 24 units representing the TAM civs, the set contains 2 more "hero" units (1 archer and 1 slinger) with a laurel wreath on head, that you may easily remove with nifscope if you dislike it, reducing nif size by 30-40Kb (the wreath is a scaled version from Alexander LH).
Use chinese archer and peltast artdefine for xml purpose. The package contains 2 animation folders for convenience ("anim_comp" for archers and "anim_slinger" for slingers - but you may refer to firaxis chinese archer and peltast respectively), and 1 "anim_effects" folder to manage the different kind of arrows when they reach the opposite field, otherwise a "custom" arrow starting from a archer turns into a "standard" arrow during its way (read HERE for more details). Also I included into "anim_effects" folder a detailed aco_arrows_readme.txt file to explain how to manage arrow effects.
ANCIENT SPIES
Because spies are hidden units in Civ4, I made very few ethnic models giving them teamcolored textures. Using blender I worked on 4 different mesh types, and using nifscope I put them into firaxis ancient spy nif. I took the spy head from this Chuggi mesh.
Looking at picture below:
unit #1 is a triple mix of Chuggi worker (body), Chuggi head and swordman legs,
unit #2 is a triple mix of hindu body, Chuggi head, engineer arms and legs,
unit #3 is a double mix of Chuggi head and treasure man body,
unit #4 is a double mix of Chuggi head and Bakuel archer-engineer.
I massively reshuffled each texture in order to fit all parts into a single dds.
Spoiler :
Use ancient spy artdefine for xml purpose. The package above contains 1 animation folders for convenience, but you may refer to firaxis ancient spy anims.
CHARIOT ARCHERS
I introduced these new Civ4 units because chariot archers were really important units in the ancient times. Historically the chariots of the Egyptians and Assyrians, with whom the bow was the principal arm of attack, were richly mounted with quivers full of arrows.
These units consist of a single archer on a open chariot, with customized animations to manage bow and arrows. Using my previous released chariot archer unit, I replaced the generic archer with the ethnic composite ones that I made. Although there aren't new meshes inside, the package contains a valuable feature: I've painted horses with real colours based on the following charts:
Spoiler :
My original plan was to produce 24 different horse coats (one for each civ), but I ended with 12 (one every 2 civs): bay, black, blu roan, buckskin, chestnut, grullo, liver chestnut, palomino, perlino, red dun, taffy and white. I'll finish the remaining 12 coats in a second time. There are all the "appaloosa" and "paint" coats still to do. How to assign coats to civs was a tricky issue because I searched everywhere on the web useful links about it, but nowhere I've found a significative help. If someone has a deep knowledge on horses and their historical appearence, plese give me some tips about my final choices.
In order to run these units into Civ4 correctly, you MUST use the custom anims included in the package.
I also provided xml code to insert it into your customized artdefine.
The package contains 1 "anim_effects" folder to manage the different kind of arrows when they reach the opposite field, otherwise a "custom" arrow starting from a archer turns into a "standard" arrow during its way (read HERE for more details). Also I included into "anim_effects" folder a detailed ach_arrows_readme.txt file to explain how to manage arrow effects.
Although anims aren't 100% polished, these units work fine during each anim sequence and they are fun to see when in action.
Special thanks to AchillesZero who helped me to solve a glitch on the bow anim.
Unfortunately a unresolved glitch is still present on these units. During the StrikeA anim, while the unit stops itself after attacking, sometimes the left arm disappears (it happens in a ranged attack situation mostly). I suspect the issue stays in the NiTransformInterpolator (index 15) which links the BIP L Clavicle node, but I wasn't able to fix it. If someone could get rid of it is really welcome.
CHARIOTS
After reserving the celtic "open" chariot to my previous chariot archers, I used ALL the remaining chariot models for these units, assigning each chariot type to a group of civs, as detailed below (following the picture order):
Spoiler :
Chariot model : ewc-like (every 2 horses chariot type) - use "anim_ewc" folder anims
Civs using it : hittite, assyrian, babylonian, kolchis, nubian, egyptian and egyptian hero.
Chariot model : Civ4 chinese (reskinned with wood texture, charioteer equipped with spear) - use "anim_china" folder anims
Civs using it : persian and phoenician
Chariot model : Civ4 greek-roman (charioteer equipped with sword) - use "anim_gr" folder anims
Civs using it : greek, minoan, lydian, thracian, roman, carthago, gaul and iberian
Chariot model : Civ4 south-america (reskinned with "closed" wood texture, charioteer equipped with spear) - use "anim_celtic" folder anims
Civs using it : briton, german, goth, dacian, illyrian, scythian, tartessian and medes
If you wish to use these units into your own mod, you must follow the above instructions (or the animation guideline included in the package) in order to assign the right animation to each unit. Also you must refer to the corresponding Civ4 chariot type artdefines for XML purpose.
I reused my previous spearmen and/or comp archers as charioteer in the single-man chariot, while in the ewc-like models I had to work with blender to set spearmen and drivers with hands turned of 90 degree. I've also continuing to assign to each civ the same painted horses I did in my previous CAs set.
Special credit to Bakuel because I've reworked two ethnic ewc chariot models he made.
