Vokarya's Workshop: Units

[Vokarya]

I still keep looking at units and wondering how many of them we really need. Right now, I see the Early Carrier unit as a candidate for deletion.

Here is the current line of carrier units.

• Early Carrier: Late Industrial Era carrier. Requires Naval Aviation. Requires Steel + Oil Products.
• Carrier: Early Modern Era carrier. Requires Naval Aviation + Jet Propulsion. Requires Steel + Oil Products/Uranium.
• Supercarrier: Middle Modern Era carrier. Requires Nuclear Power + Modern Warfare. Requires Steel/Aluminum/(Durasteel) + Uranium.
• Fusion Carrier: Transhuman Era carrier. Requires Fusion + Megatructure Engineering. (Will require Durasteel resource.)

The first two are really close together. While they are in different eras, Naval Aviation is one of the very last techs in the Industrial Era, and Jet Propulsion is in the first third of the Modern. Naval Aviation is also not a very high-priority tech and is easy to skip.

This is what I think we should do:

• Delete the Early Carrier.
• Move the Carrier to Naval Aviation. I do not think it needs a strength lowering. Carrier is Strength 40; Cruiser is Strength 55 and available slightly before. Heavy Cruiser and Battleship are even stronger in ship-to-ship combat.
• Move the Supercarrier from Modern Warfare to Supersonic Flight. Keep the Nuclear Power requirement. I'm fine with the Supercarrier being nuclear-only, even though USS Forrestal was called a supercarrier and it was conventionally powered. You can still fall back on regular Carriers if you don't have Uranium.

 

[nionios]

I still keep looking at units and wondering how many of them we really need. Right now, I see the Early Carrier unit as a candidate for deletion.

I agree that there're units that need to be deleted.IMO the main problem is their lifespan at normal or faster game speeds.I think there're many types of tracked units(tanks) and something should be done with air fighters.Especially, I can't accept the stealth fighter which has the icon of F-117(stealth bomber) and is capable of interceptions.
Anyway I believe that unit section is a big room for discussion.

 

[Vokarya]

I finished an analysis of the unit art definitions and civilization art styles. I think there is room for some cutting.

First of all, I would like to get a little more use out of some of the Viking units. Viking gets its own unit style, and I think that it would be a good thing if we let the English style use some of these units rather than the generic European units. Warrior, Slinger, and Archer are the three that I am looking to replace. I don't think any of the others are as appropriate.

For comparison, here is a European Warrior vs. a Viking Warrior.


Here is a generic Slinger vs. a Viking Slinger. English Slinger currently has its own artwork. I am perfectly willing to cut that art definition out.


Here is a European Archer vs. a Viking Archer.


So in all three cases, the English player would get the second art type. I think this will get enough usage out of the art definitions to make these special definitions worthwhile.

Furthermore, there is a separate Celtic art style. The only thing that distinguishes it from the generic European art style (which is currently used only for Portugal) is that it uses a Viking Fighter instead of the basic Fighter. (The only other nations with separate Fighters are England, Russia, and Japan.) I think we can cut the Celtic style completely and let the Celts use the English art style instead. There is no problem with two civilizations using the same art style; Mali and Zulu use the African art style, and both the Iroquois and the Native Americans use the Native American style.

 

[Arakhor]

That slinger all in darks and black looks rather odd.

 

[Noyyau]

Yeah, looks more medieval-era than ancient-era...

 

[<Nexus>]

Yeah, looks more medieval-era than ancient-era...

+1
Looks a bit grotesque to me.

 

[Vokarya]

I'm working with the unit models I have. I don't really have the skill to create any new models. I can fiddle a little with existing ones. I'm also looking to strike a balance between every unit being identical and every unit for every civ being distinct. We can handle some distinct models, but there is a limit. I want to trim things down so we have a more solid base for modmods. I have some things that I want to do, but I don't think they are necessary to build into the base mod, so I plan on doing them separately.

 

[<Nexus>]

I'm working with the unit models I have. I don't really have the skill to create any new models. I can fiddle a little with existing ones. I'm also looking to strike a balance between every unit being identical and every unit for every civ being distinct. We can handle some distinct models, but there is a limit. I want to trim things down so we have a more solid base for modmods. I have some things that I want to do, but I don't think they are necessary to build into the base mod, so I plan on doing them separately.

Oh, don't get me wrong. Didn't mean to complain just expressed my taste (or distaste) about it.
You'r doing an awesome job caring for all those tiny things. You're a very patient person

 

[Vokarya]

How many distinctive units do you think it takes to justify an entire art style? If the answer is more than 3, then several styles are in deep water right now, and a couple others are treading. We have 31 art styles, not counting the Hittites and the Celts that I've already discussed cutting. I've got some plans to cut a few more.

Please keep in mind that Unique Units are completely exempt from this discussion. UU's get their own unit definition in CIV4UnitInfos.xml. The unit definition (not unitclass, which is what most other parts of the code use) is what gets cross-referenced to CIV4UnitArtStyleTypeInfos.xml to determine if a different unit model should be substituted.

Holy Roman Empire
The Holy Roman Empire has only two units that don't use the standard European art models. One is the Light Tank, which uses an L640 model that is shared with the Roman style.


The other is the Caproni, which is unique to the HRE and is a replacement for the standard Early Jet. I don't think we need this at all, and I'm not so certain we need the Early Jet to begin with. I'd like to cut a few techs out of the Modern Era and I suspect that there might not be room for both the Early Jet and the Jet Fighter.

I would like to cut the Caproni and merge the HRE with the German art style. Germany has multiple special models and I think since the two cover similar geographic areas, it would be appropriate to use the same style.

Spain
One would think that Spain would have more unique models. This is not true. Like the HRE, Spain has only two special models.

The first is the Light Tank. This is a semi-unique FT17 model that has three different paint jobs; one French, one Spanish, and a third for America. I like the Spanish style (right) over the French style (left).


The second is the Spanish Galleon. Comparing it to other Galleons makes it actually look lackluster. Other Galleons get team-color sails and I think Spain should too.


So what I would do here is use the Spanish FT17 for France, cut both the French FT17 and the Spanish Galleon, and switch Spain over to the European art style.

I think this covers Europe pretty well. The remaining styles are European (covers Spain and Portugal), Dutch (not sure if we really need this one, but it does have 8 unique models), English (also covers Celts), France, Germany (also covers HRE), Greco-Roman (actually Greece), Roman, Russian, and Viking.

 

[Arakhor]

Those attachments aren't working.

 

[Vokarya]

Those attachments aren't working.

I noticed. I just edited to fix it.

 

[Vokarya]

A couple other styles that I think are adding more workload than they contribute.

Persia/Assyria
The Assyrian art style is actually completely indistinguishable from the Middle Eastern style. I think, though, that it would be more interesting to let Assyria use the Babylonian style and get a little more mileage out of the Babylonian-specific units. There are some Babylonian Medieval Era units that I think look distinctive and would be nice to see more of.

Crossbowman


Pikeman and Heavy Pikeman
View attachment 406907

Javelineer


Knight


Like Assyria, Persia has only a couple differences between it and the Middle Eastern style. One is the Mounted Infantry; the Middle East style is missing a definition to change it over to the Arabian Mounted Infantry that Persia, Arabia, and Byzantium all use. The other is the Knight. Persia has a special Knight model called the Sipahi.

This is the Sipahi in the center, compared to a Middle Eastern Knight (on the left), a Byzantine Knight (on the right), and a Barbarian Knight (below). I don't think it looks that much different.


What I would like to do here is to delete the Sipahi and merge Persia with the Middle Eastern style. This gives us four styles for the Middle East: the generic Middle Eastern (used for Egypt, Hittites, Persia, Ottomans, Sumer), Babylon (also used for Assyria) -- could this be used for Sumer as well? --, Arabia, and Byzantium.

Abyssinia
There is a separate Abyssinian art style that is used for Ethiopia. It only has two differences from the generic African style (used for Mali and Zulu). One is the Archer. Ethiopia has a separate Abyssinian Archer. The other is a Horseman that was double-assigned in the UnitArtStyleTypeInfos file. I used to think that this would cause issues (and was the root of the Japanese Longbowman bug) but it apparently does not. All that happens if a unit is given a definition twice, the second takes precedence.

This second Horseman is named MALI_CAVALRY. I think it would actually be appropriate to use it as a Rider replacement instead of a Horseman.

For comparison, here we have the African Horseman, the Mali Cavalry, and the current Rider.


And here we have the African Knight and African Lancer.


Other than that, there are no differences between the two styles. I think the Abyssinian Archer might be a leftover from a very old version of RoM that had a separate Abyssinian civilization.

As it is, the African style is a very complex style. For example, it is the only style to have its own Missionaries and Executives. I think this is appropriate, but I would like to have it bear a workload appropriate to the effort in it. If we merge the Abyssinian and African styles, then the African style will support three civs: Ethiopia, Mali, Zulu. I think that is sufficient.

 

[Arakhor]

Assyrian/Babylonian, Persian/Middle Eastern and Ethiopian/African all sound very sensible to me.

 

[Vokarya]

I found close to 30 unused art definitions (not called by any unit in-game) when I went through the art definitions. I'm checking them to see if we actually would be able to use them, and delete them if they aren't really usable. Some of them are not really usable. For example, there is a definition for UNIT_AFRICAN_INFANTRY that uses the same model as UNIT_INFANTRY_AFRICAN. We don't need two separate definitions for the same unit.

This is a definition that is usable. It's a German Grenadier. All we have to do is add a style definition and it's ready to go.

 

[Vokarya]

Another lost unit is the ARCHER_EURASIAN. It looks like a Mongolian Archer.

On the left, we have what is currently the Mongolian Archer. They use a javelin-throwing model. In the center is the model currently used for Mongolian Javelineers. It is actually a Phoenician Javelineer. On the right is the Eurasian Archer model.


For more comparison, here are the Asian and Chinese Archers.


I think we should use the Mongolian Javelin Thrower as an actual Javelineer, and use the Eurasian Archer for Mongolian Archers. I don't think the Javelin Thrower makes sense alongside Javelineers. Without Javelineers, Javelin Throwers can be a flavor unit. With Javelineers, I don't think it's a good idea.

 

[IPEX-731BA5DD06]

@ Vokarya you have the pictures reversed in order.

On archers and javelins, isn't the unit for Mali, archery, also a javelin throwing unit.

To be honest, I'm not that fussed about it. But if you feel that the mod needs consistency, through out, to make it more intuitive, I'm for it.

 

[Vokarya]

@ Vokarya you have the pictures reversed in order.

On archers and javelins, isn't the unit for Mali, archery, also a javelin throwing unit.

To be honest, I'm not that fussed about it. But if you feel that the mod needs consistency, through out, to make it more intuitive, I'm for it.

I do have the pictures reversed. Mali, though, is a Unique Unit and can be a little different. You are supposed to recognize this as not a typical unit and can be dangerous. The Mongol Javelin Thrower doesn't have any statistical difference.

 

[Vokarya]

Here's another one I dug up. This one is labeled HEAVY_CAVALRY_ARABIA.

The Arabian art style had no style defined for the Rider (previously known as the Heavy Cavalry). It also had no style defined for the Knight. Normally, you wouldn't see an Arabian Knight because the Camel Archer replaces it. However, with Assimilation on, captured cities provide their founder's UU instead of their controller's. On the other hand, fresh units still use their controller's art style.

So here we have the previous Rider and Knight definitions (on the left) and the new unit (on the right, with the Barbarian flag).


With the Rider and Knight definitions updated, it will look more like this. The Rider is in the center, the Knight on the right, and the Lancer on the left.

 

[Vokarya]

There is one more unit that I want to propose eliminating. That is the Pack of Lions. It is a separate unit from the regular Lion. It is slightly stronger and has a higher chance of being captured but otherwise has no difference from the regular Lion. I think that with the number of prey animals that I have added, there is enough animal diversity and we no longer need the Pack. Also, it would let us cut the LIONESS art definition and I would also like to cut the CAVE_LIONESS art definition. While the diversity is nice, I think it would be better to cut them out.

 

[Vokarya]

I keep finding fun units that I feel we should use because they are already defined and working, but weren't activated in the mod. There is a unit art definitino named GRENADIER_EGYPTIAN. I am going to use it for the Babylonian Grenadier. Babylon is still a separate art style and doesn't have a Grenadier defined, so it falls back on the standard European Grenadier.

Here we have the new Babylonian Grenadier, the Arabian Grenadier, and the standard Grenadier together. I don't like the Arabian Grenadier for Babylon, so I'm using the new option. I also found that the Middle East style didn't have a Grenadier defined. I'm going to use the Arabian style for the Middle East.


I also found a Russian Grenadier that looks nicely distinct. I'm noticing units fall into one of three groups art-wise: the units that have many different variations, the units that get one or two variants if there is a distinct historical unit to model a variant off of (such as the Jet Fighter getting variants for the Russian MIG-21 and the Viking JA37), and the units that don't get any variants at all (Animals, Unique Units, many mechanical units). If there are holes in the assignments for the first group, I'm going to fill them. For example, Arquebusier had a Mesoamerican (Maya) assigned, but not a South American (Inca) or Aztec assigned, so I'm filling that in. It looks more fitting for them than the default European look.