Culture-Specfic Units

[G-Force Junkie]

It would be good for diversity's sake that there be more diversity in non-UUs. Its perplexing why ME, Asian, and American civs build knights and other Euro units instead of units that would fit in that culture group. I know that the PTW Japanese units could be used for general Asian units, but it would be nice if the same were done for the ME and American civs. Unit names should also differ between culture groups as well. But this brings back the issue that Asian and ME civs should have another name for cathedrals and such buildings.

 

[nalves]

Yes, but it would be harder to play diferent civs ... When you want to build a knight , you would be thinking ok with this cultural group, the name of knights are ???? ... Not pratical

If diferent units it would be a bunch of UU

 

[TerraHero]

no, not gone work man.

besides, u still got it that these cultures get spread out over the world and randomly next too eachother

 

[Falcon02]

If I'm not mistaken the DYP mod does this to an extent. ie. Asian Civs are able to build the Bushi, while I think other's aren't.

 

[TheNiceOne]

Personally, I don't want this. I always play with "culturally linked start-locations" off, and an Japan is just as likely to start close to Germany as China, and the develpment of the civs bear no resemblance to the real worlds.

So why should Germany then be able to build knights, but not its close neighbour Japan, while France on another continent may? I could understand this wish in a medieval age scenario, but not in the general game where history is totally rewritten.

 

[Shabbaman]

As a matter of fact, Japan can't build knights
The idea is nice, but as stated there's not much connection between the real and civ-recreated history. I'd expect something like this on a world map.

 

[Furius]

Why not just have different images for units from Asian, American, ME, etc civs.
For example a middle Eastern knight might ride a camel (Or something like that).

 

[Lynx]

He probably means different images for units form the cultures.

 

[squeaky]

I don't think it would be that hard. Look at this screenshot from Rise of Nations.



Those are the Meso-American, African, Asian and European knights and heavy knights. The different artsets really added to that game. True RoN is a real time game, but it shouldn't be too hard to implement that in Civ.

EDIT: I think that's what you're talking about. Sorry if I misunderstood.

 

[cgannon64]

I like the idea of different cultures having specific unit names and graphics, or even just graphics, but the same stats. For example, European Civs have Knights, while Asian Civs have a Knight-equivalent that looks different but has the same stats.

Could add some flavor to the game without changing the balance.

 

[The Last Conformist]

Flavour units are good. It would be even better if they could have the same name. Different names makes it hard to remember what corresponds to what. And anyway, CivIII has gone a long way to remove the culture-specific names of (non-UU) units. It's pretty much only the Knight that's questionable on that count. Medieval Cavalry or Armored Horsemen sound terribly bland, so I don't have any good suggestion for replacing it either.

Something that always strikes me as odd is that the workers (and other units with plenty of exposed skin) have the same skin color for all civs. Is Shaka the only black person in Zululand? (If this sounds racist to you, think of it as celebrating mankind's diversity!)

 

[superisis]

yes, different unit images depending on culture would be great!!! Or even (gasp) cip specific unit images... Imagine roman cavalry attacking frankish knights, hehe. The same with later units such as tanks, infantry and musket men!!!

Yes, a (maybe impossible) dream for the future!

Jonte

 

[Evie]

I think different graphics could be good. I just don't see asian ships with beautiful european cross-marked sails makes much sense. Junks, arabian vessels and so on for the caravel et all design would be nice.

 

[brianshapiro]

dont any of you think this would make the game appear too confusing? not only for beginners who might actually be confused, but it takes away from the aesthetic of simplicity which in my opinion is good for the game

 

[Furius]

I don't think it would be confusing, I think it would be really cool. Culture group specific graphics=cool.
I imagine that mos of them already exist in various sites throughout the net and might only require tweaking to be included in the game.

 

[TheNiceOne]

Originally posted by Shabbaman
As a matter of fact, Japan can't build knights
The idea is nice, but as stated there's not much connection between the real and civ-recreated history. I'd expect something like this on a world map.

Oops, I didn't exactly choose a smart example. But I guess you understood my point. Europeans had knights not because they were Europeans, but because they were neighbours and shared their development and ideas. In my games they don't have this common, so there's no reason for common unit types either.

Now, this argument is just as true for UUs, but I still play with them and appreciate them. I guess its a line somewhere between interesting flavour, and forcing the game to follow a historic patteren, while CIV3 is really about creating a totally different world (IMHO), where UU's fall on the right side.

I'm unsure about different graphics though. They don't change how the game works, but it means that it will be harder to just glance at a unit and see what type it is. We already have lots of different knight and cavalry UU's, and its easy to get confused if the normal knights shall have four different looks as well.

 

[Shabbaman]

Different images for different cultures, I don't think it'd make such a huge visual difference. You're right that a player needs to pay more attention to what unit is crossing his border, but the differences could be really small. The colors between the different players are different, maybe things like hats, shields and swords could have different shapes. You could even add the option to 'turn it off'... Cities have different looks for different cultures as well, and you still recognize them as a city

You could do this yourself as well of course, through a mod. Make UU's like 'European knight' and so on.

 

[The Last Conformist]

On further contemplation, the reason it's hard to think of a not specifically European word to replace "knight" is that very few peoples outside Europe have thought it a sensible idea to cover cavalrymen in 20+ kilogrammes of steel and have them charge straight into enemy formations. This, no doubt, has some interesting cultural explanation.

In most of the Old World, the dominant type of cavalry in the later middle ages was mounted archers, à la the Mongols' Keshik. If one was to make a non-westernocentric version of Civ, one perhaps ought to make the Knight a flavour unit for the European civs, and have the rest use a Mounted Archer.

Of course, both the Knight and the Mounted Archer would still be entirely contrafactual for the large number of civs that weren't around in medieval times, as well as those not from the Old World.

 

[slothman]

I personally don't like flavor units. It's annoying having 16,for vanilla, different spearmen. Yes I would get used to it as I did the UU's but still. I don't even like too much graphics as I turn leaderhead off. Imagine of forests were differern depending on what latitude, y-coord, they were at? Dozens of different kinds of picts. It's the same for units to me. Of course if Firaxis, do they even do anything or does Atari do everything like people here imply, makes it an option and allows the easy deletion of all those "useless" graphics then it would be good.
Of course if you mean global-culture, i.e. American, Europian, Asian, Middle-eastern, then maybe. I turn off culture specific starts anyway.

 

[Furius]

Of course if you mean global-culture, i.e. American, Europian, Asian, Middle-eastern, then maybe.

That is what I want, there are 32 (?) civs now (well soon) it would be stupid to expect any amount of artists to create a different image for each one, that would number into thousands of images, I'd think.
The one thing I think our suggestions HAVE to stop doing is saying "That you could turn it off if you didn't want to," you can't toggle every feature.