Originally posted by BeBro
papajohns, yep, SpincruS is right -- that was the main reason to make civ colors only those blue parts. They work quite good in game IMO. Since Hospitalers used either red clothes with white crosses, or black clothes with red crosses using civ colors for their clothes or the horse´s cover would not look correct when one civ uses anything else than red or black then.
Black and white..you are referring to the Knights of St.John right? The knights themselves were a monastic order and thus wore Black with white swallow-tail crosses (i.e. the kind of cross you find on the crown of the Queen of England or on the trucks of St.John's ambulance). Red and White were the colurs of the patron saint and were used in the flags of the order as well as the uniforms of its soldiers (who were not all knights as you can imagine). As to the matter of nationality: the Order was formed with 8 "Langues" - France, England, Italy, Germany, Castille, Provence, Auvergne and Aragon. Then English Langue was abolished in the times of Henry the 8th of England as the Knights were Catholics. It was restored towards the end of the 17 century as the Anglo-Bavarian langue and included English, German and Polish nobility. Portuguese knights formed part of the two Spanish langues. So basically, most europeans should be able to build these guys.
More than the horse-riding knight you have here the Hospitaliers were famous for fort-building, medicine and Navy (their two most abiding strongholds were in Rhodes and Malta, hardly the arena for horse-riding knights). I'd love to see a unit called Order Galley or say, a Wonder called the Lazaretto of St.John in Malta (replacing longevity perhaps?)