Tercios, evolving UUs, and anachronism

[moysturfurmer]

Based on the Exploration stream, we see that Spain has the Tercio unlocked at turn 1 in 400 AD. One potential issue of this for me is that the unit thumbnail is clearly depicted holding an arquebus. Do we have confirmation of whether or not the unit starts off with the pikes and only introduces gunpowder weapons to some of the figures after the third upgrade at metal casting (or, the tech before Gunpowder)? Given that the units are designed to me modular, with random weapons, one can assume the attack animations on the individual figures are dependent on the weapon they are holding. A halberd swings should look different than a sword swing after all. But was this confirmed on the stream? It would be a hard pill to swallow for me if Spain is firing off muskets by default in the medieval era.

 

[Uberfrog]

I can understand wanting unique units to be relevant throughout the age for balance reasons, but I agree it is going to lead to some weird tech progressions as far as the unit graphics are concerned.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

As far as I know, your observation is correct. The Tercio will have a gunpowder weapon before such weapons become widely available.

What's worse, in the Modern Age one of the civs has an elephant with a gun on its saddle. Presumably, this will be an early-unlocking unique cavalry. That will be given stat boosts through the Age. While other civs are given tanks instead.

 

[Josephias]

This anachronism was one of important highlight in the Spain thread and yes, I think most agree that either art department has worked its magic to make different tier tercios use only appropriate weapons, or it would be a blatant anachronism. (both out-game and in-game).

 

[moysturfurmer]

Here's the only shot of the Tercio unit I could find, cropped and scaled. Cant really tell anything from this, but for reference.

 

[AriochIV]

Although we don't get a very good look at the Tercio unit graphics in the livestream, it's just good enough to tell that they are indeed carrying gunpowder weapons right at the start of the Age.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

This is the shot that @Arioch's Well-of-Souls website shows as the 'Tercio', and it shows pikes and arquebus/muskets in the same unit. Since they also have pictures of separate musket and pikemen in Exploration Age that require certain Techs, the Spanish manage the neat trick of combining two weapons they haven't developed yet.

This is a particularly egregious mistake given that the original tercios in 1530 were preceded by separate Colunelas of 1000 men that were mixes of pikemen, arquebussiers, halberds and swordsmen, so that having the tercio 'upgrade' from a purely spear/pike and crossbow unit to a pike and halberd and crossbow to a pike and arquebus/musket unit would be perfectly realistic and cover the entire Exploration Age. 'Backdating' pikes and muskets both by 1000 years is both silly and badly warps Spain's abilities in the middle age of the game.

 

[moysturfurmer]

View attachment 710795

thank you and damn you

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

So of course, as soon as I posted above, it occurs to me that the 'cheap' way of doing Tercio Upgrades from tier 1 through tier 3 in Exploration would be to give the unit a slightly-enhanced set of factors for a tier 1 spear/pike unit, upgrade the factors for a 2nd tier, and finally give them 'full' factors for a pike and shot unit in tier 3 - all without changing the graphics.

This would be a real downgrade from the graphics we've seen for other units with regional and even individual differences shown, but at least would be better than giving Spain 1530 CE units in 530 CE.

 

[Uberfrog]

I suppose this equally applies to the Antiquity Era though… ironclad legions in 4000 BCE etc

 

[moysturfurmer]

So of course, as soon as I posted above, it occurs to me that the 'cheap' way of doing Tercio Upgrades from tier 1 through tier 3 in Exploration would be to give the unit a slightly-enhanced set of factors for a tier 1 spear/pike unit, upgrade the factors for a 2nd tier, and finally give them 'full' factors for a pike and shot unit in tier 3 - all without changing the graphics.

This would be a real downgrade from the graphics we've seen for other units with regional and even individual differences shown, but at least would be better than giving Spain 1530 CE units in 530 CE.

Yeah, the PAX Aus panel highlighted that Units are pretty modular, and I'm hoping the presence of halberds and swords in this screenshot implies they have some level of control as to what weapons appear in a single unit. Gameplay-wise, it makes the most sense for upgraded units to look visually distinct from a base unit, and keeping the arquebuses locked until tier 3 could be the cleanest way of visually expressing that upgrade. But mostly it's an immersion consideration for me, I admit.

I suppose this equally applies to the Antiquity Era though… ironclad legions in 4000 BCE etc

This is less of a deal breaker for me, as I can just pretend the armor is a painted bronze. Much harder to pretend the sounds of gunfire are arrows being loosed

 

[AriochIV]

I suppose this equally applies to the Antiquity Era though… ironclad legions in 4000 BCE etc

In this case no, because Rome doesn't start with Legions. They start with Warriors and it doesn't appear that they get Legions until Bronze Working.

 

[Bonyduck Campersang]

I am mystified as to how they're going to do it. Buganda would probably have a spearman or war canoe UU, while Meiji Japan would probably have a fighter jet or a battleship

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Yeah, the PAX Aus panel highlighted that Units are pretty modular, and I'm hoping the presence of halberds and swords in this screenshot implies they have some level of control as to what weapons appear in a single unit. Gameplay-wise, it makes the most sense for upgraded units to look visually distinct from a base unit, and keeping the arquebuses locked until tier 3 could be the cleanest way of visually expressing that upgrade. But mostly it's an immersion consideration for me, I admit.

The screenshot appears to show the 'Men-at-Arms' unit, where the halberds and (great)swords are appropriate - they were the first infantry to use the hellembart, or halberd in the 13th century, and that weapon was developed from the long-handled axes that had been used by elite Scandinavian warriors since well before 1000 CE so you can squint as say that the armor is a bit 'modern' but the weapons could date back to the beginning of the Exploration Age.

Gunpowder weapons, not so much . . .

 

[B0RDERL1NE]

The majority of Unique Units span across all tiers of that unit class, even if that is anachronistic. We put gameplay over historical accuracy in that regard, feeling it was important to keep Unique Units viable for the player throughout the already-shorter span of an Age.

There are some exceptions to this. For example, the Legion and Immortal are only Tier 2 and 3 for balance reasons.

 

[moysturfurmer]

The majority of Unique Units span across all tiers of that unit class, even if that is anachronistic. We put gameplay over historical accuracy in that regard, feeling it was important to keep Unique Units viable for the player throughout the already-shorter span of an Age.

There are some exceptions to this. For example, the Legion and Immortal are only Tier 2 and 3 for balance reasons.

Thanks for your reply. Yeah I’m on board with UUs being available at any age, I was just trying to suss out of whether or not the unit upgrade system implied that the graphics for the units would change over the age. In this case Tercio’s starting with Pikes and only getting their arquebuses later. Appreciate the clarity.

Now go enjoy your Thanksgiving, we’re begging you!

 

[Olleus]

The majority of Unique Units span across all tiers of that unit class, even if that is anachronistic. We put gameplay over historical accuracy in that regard, feeling it was important to keep Unique Units viable for the player throughout the already-shorter span of an Age.

There are some exceptions to this. For example, the Legion and Immortal are only Tier 2 and 3 for balance reasons.

That's fine, but it doesn't mean that the *art* has to be anachronistic. You can keep a unit with the name Tercio even if only Tier 3 Tercios have guns. There would be no loss to gameplay by doing things this way at all and it looks like units have different art for different tiers anyway? So it's not like this suddenly triples the workload or anything. Having an anachronistic name is a lot less of a bother than anachronistic unit art and name IMO, especially when many of the UU names seem to be proper nouns rather descriptive common nouns.

 

[gdr_willter]

Well, we have all of modelings, unit animations and sound effects to fix it in the base game. I can say, it will be one of the first mods for Spain.

 

[Takfloyd]

Stuff like this is part of why I have soured on Civ over the years and still prefer Civ IV over the more recent games. Too much disregard for immersion and historicity for the sake of streamlining gameplay.

 

[Zaarin]

Stuff like this is part of why I have soured on Civ over the years and still prefer Civ IV over the more recent games. Too much disregard for immersion and historicity for the sake of streamlining gameplay.

I mean, I'd say Civ5 was the first Civ game to take history seriously in the first place, and they've only gotten better since. I might point out that Civ4 was the version of Civ that thought "Native Americans" with Northwest totem poles and Cheyenne Dog Soldiers, led by Lakota Sitting Bull was defensible as a civ choice...