Ethnically Diverse Units (4/16/06)

[onedreamer]

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.

Sorry but none of the many archeological discoveries in Egypt can support your theory. Egyptians have never been black skinned, nor did they present african traits in the body. Of course in the south of the Empire and at the borders with Nubia there could be higher percentages of african people.

 

[Mayan Raptor]

Sorry but none of the many archeological discoveries in Egypt can support your theory. Egyptians have never been black skinned, nor did they present african traits in the body. Of course in the south of the Empire and at the borders with Nubia there could be higher percentages of african people.

No one, not even in Africa, has literally black skin; most people commonly called "black African" by many have varying shades of brown skin. As to "African traits in the body", what do you mean by those? Africans vary in statures, hair textures, and cranial morphologies (not all have full lips or broad noses as commonly stereotyped). They do tend to have brown (as opposed to pale), black hair, dark eyes, and elongated limb ratios (elongated limb ratios help to dissipate heat IIRC). Most ancient Egyptians have these features.

BTW, there never existed a region known as "Nubia", at least not in pharaonic times. The so-called "Nubians" belonged to different tribes, such as the Kushites, the people of Meroe, and the Medjay to name a few.

Moving back to topic, Rabbit, what are you currently working on?

 

[Rabbit, White]

Well, if the Incans will look like the Sioux, the Sioux could use a -- llama! Just looked it up on Wikipedia: the animals domesticated in the Americas are llama, alpaca, guinea pig and turkey.

I vote llama or turkey

All these involve making them from scratch, so if I'm ever going to do this it's not going to be anytime soon. So for now, the horse stays.

Now, for the third time, please, stop with the discussion about Egyptians. I pretty much got both sides of the coin after the first few posts, anything beyond that should be confined to PMs.

Moving back to topic, Rabbit, what are you currently working on?

Right now, not on EDU, I'm taking a break while I work on other stuff. However, I'm doing some research and keeping my eyes open for ideas on how to continue with this.
I'm also probably going to slightly redo some of the existing units in light of a new gained technique.

In any case, it'll probably be another week or two before I get back to this in earnest.

 

[ZombiVoziKombi]

All these involve making them from scratch, so if I'm ever going to do this it's not going to be anytime soon. So for now, the horse stays.

Thanx for the reply, figured as much. If you get around to it at all, a llama can probably be based on the camel. Not that I'd know, being a total llama at civ4 graphics modification...

Keep up the good work!

PS Sorry if I offended anyone up there...

 

[tlucky4life]

I accept your apology. I wasnt trying to be confrontational. The way that word is used has been used in a dirogitory manner befor. I know if your not exposed to it used in a dirogitory manner you may not know.

 

[Sevo]

Well, this is what I'm saying -- there were no horses in the Americas *at all* for tens of thousands of years prior to the arrival of the Europeans... So portraying prehistoric Native Americans (settlers and scouts) with horses is, well, Eurocentric.

If it makes you feel better, I made the same comment to Rabbit a while back! But everyone pretty much associates the image of Native Americans with horses, so whaddyagonnado?

@Rabbit, White: Random question, perhaps better answered elsewhere, but have you managed to attach animations to a mesh? More accurately, is it possible to take a new soldier and replace the old one altogether using the old one's anims? Just curious.

 

[Rabbit, White]

Update to version 1.25 - New look for Arabian Warrior and fixed Scout formations.

 

[Tyranausaurus]

Amazing work! keep it up!

 

[Amra]

Thanks for the update and all the other great units you've done!

 

[Rabbit, White]

I've got a question for ya'll, and it's a long one ...

There are some units that are inherently tilted strongly towards certain civilizations, for example the War Elephant - obviously many civilizations didn't have them at all since they didn't have access to elephants (in fact, would I be far from the truth to say that of all the civs in vanilla only the Indians and the Persians used them?). Another such unit is the Chariot, as far as I know these were limited to the various Roman, Greek and related civs and I don't think Saxons and the guys from that area of the world used them, did they?

So then the question how should they be handled?
There are three possibilities and I would like to hear your opinions on them.

One is to leave them be. Let's be realistic, at least as long as this is a one man project it's never going to get to the point where every unit has a unique looking version for each civilization. So, if among those units w/o unique looks, are the Chariot, or War Elephant, or both, the world isn't going to end.

Another option is to do some minor changes. For example, I could put someone like the axeman with a different head as the driver of the elephant, plus some changes to the textures, and you have a Caucasian-style unit. By the same token I can put an Asian looking driver and so on. Of course that still leaves the fact that Germans, for example, did not use elephants as war beasts.

Finally the third option is to change the units completely. This includes modeling something new (of course within the limitations of my skills ) but mostly I'm thinking here about just using something completely different. For example the War Elephant is suppose to be the anti-mount unit that's also effective against melee.
Well what if some civs had that role fulfilled by units completely different. Maybe the european civs had some sort of a heavy warrior for that, or maybe in china they used a special kinda of spearman.
Or in case of a Chariot, well I can certainly see african civs having units that are foot soldiers but specifically trained to be fast and so can be given a movement of two.
At this point these become really unique units, although even then they should not be better, just different.

Naturally, the third option is the most complicated, though not necessary the harderst, it all depends on what are the replacement units exactly.

Anyway, for now I'm going to stear away from such units and concentrate on the rest but I'd like to hear your thoughts on this whole issue.

 

[sepamu92]

I would think the second option is best, where we have unique flavor animations for all units, even if they did not exist in real life. After all, the point of Civilization is to re-create history. In any game, the Aztecs are just as likely to tame elephants as the Persians (provided you don't use an earth map) Of course, the units that actually did exist should have priority.

 

[Chalid]

Actually Version two seems the one that fits best into CIV4. It is a game that tells a story about could have been.

So if the Germans end up next to Elephants they would of course use them as Weapons of war. It would be strange if they could build some kind of Warrior with the Ivory.

For the Chariots is kind of the same thing. Why were they not used by the other races? The incas for example did not use the weel because it was not very practical in their terrain. The Woods Germany was covered for long times were a similar problem. The great plains which were a good terrain did not have them because the horses were extinct there at the time.

So the terrain decides which weapons of war (units) are available. Not the culture.

 

[Cannae]

Speaking of which, if anyone wants to model and texture the different architecture styles I can put them in game, I think I mostly figured out the files responsible for that. I'd do it myself but first the Earth will need to slow down its rotation because 24 hours just ain't enough.

I want to texture and model diffrent acitecual styles (this is for reskining bulidings right???) Oh yah I go with the third option.

 

[seZereth]

I think you should go for version 2, Chalid stated my opinion before i could.
I changed your really scarry war elephant slightly, and well you see it has a very very different aspect on atmosphere, now it looks like it was specially designed for the doviello, doesnt it ?!

 

[Rabbit, White]

True that. I saw that elephant btw, great job

Yeah, I guess replacing a driver for a mount is like replacing a head - seemingly only a small part of the whole but actually makes a big difference.

 

[sepamu92]

Rabbit, White, how did you dismount that camel archer? Every time I try to move an object attached to more that one NiNode, like a body or a bow, the NifViewer gets messed up, and when I try to save, it crashes! Is there some way to change which NiNodes the parts of a mesh are connected to? I feel like I'm missing something obvious.

 

[sepamu92]

I'm gonna bump my question, can anyone help me?

 

[Red Door]

You don't need to bump your question after 45 minutes.

 

[sepamu92]

Look at the date, I really bumped after 2 days and 45 minutes.

 

[Red Door]

My bad, I looked pretty quickly. Your bump is justified.