Will Civ V have diverse units?

[frekk]

One of the things that bothered me about Civ IV was how every worker appeared the same, every musketman appeared the same, every archer appeared the same, etc. It was really annoying how there was no diversity among the units. It's also very Eurocentric since every single unit is white unless it's a UU. Civ Revolution, if I remember correctly, corrected this and Zulu workers appeared different than American workers, etc. So has Firaxis announced if they're planning on making diverse units, or are we going to have to wait for mods to fix this again?

Also, while I love the diverse units to add some flavor to the game, I have to point out it's also problematic. Civ basically assumes the United States (and every other civilization) is homogenous, while the United States has a large black and hispanic population, along with other races as well. It wouldn't hurt for the American civilization to have units of different skin colors. Why can't they have white and black workers?

Thoughts? Please keep it civil so we can have one thread to remain open on the front page.

Well, BTS has ethnic flavoured units (adopted from a mod into the core game, iirc).

It's not something they really need to do right off the bat, imo. It's a nice feature for an expansion pack. I want them to get the game itself right, the underlying skeleton, because it's difficult to make major changes later on. It's easy to add things like flavour graphics. All I hope is that they release the game with the ability to add flavour artstyles - modders will take care of the rest.

 

[frekk]

Over the grand scheme of the full 6000 years of history and the 18 civilizations, real unit diversity is something that will really only apply to a single civ and the last 2-300 years or so. America is the only civilization that really has any true mix of ethnicities over the entire course of its history (I suppose arguments may be able to be made for Rome)

There's no supposition about it, Rome was highly multi-ethnic. Elites, soldiers, and even emperors came from all races in the empire, including Gauls, Africans, Semites, etc.

And it's hardly just Rome and the US!!! What about Carthage, for instance? They were always very mixed - much more so than Rome, probably more so than the present-day US. Even Egypt was a mixed bag, after a certain point. Multi-ethnic empires are fairly common. In fact, "multi-ethnic" is more or less the requirement for the dictionary definition of an empire as opposed to a nation or kingdom.

 

[Eru Ilúvatar]

In BTS they solved that problem. Units had different skins depending on their predominant ethnics.

 

[Shiggs713]

^ no kidding I'm sitting here reading this thread thinking, has not a single person posting here played BTS? there are ethnically diverse units... what game are you people playing?

Anyways, creating a unit with multiple ethnicity's is childs play. Its called mesh groups. Look at the way a settler is modeled in civ4. Its actually 3 different models, any of which could easily be changed to a black person or an asian. As has already been stated, the detail level of the units is negligible, a simple "color change" in photoshop would do the trick for the most part.

If you have that big of a problem with it learn to mod, and change the mesh groups yourself. Its pretty easy.

 

[Lone Wolf]

^ no kidding I'm sitting here reading this thread thinking, has not a single person posting here played BTS? there are ethnically diverse units

In BTS, it was done halfway, which is in a way worse then not doing it at all. Even through there are graphics for diverse Longbows and Maces in the original game package, for some reason they aren't used. But diverse Crossbows and Knigts are used. Can anyone explain the logic to me?

 

[-Perceval-]

Firaxis and ethnically diverse.. A very strange story.
Some modders created rapidly fantastic mods like ethnic citystyle varietas delectat or cultural diversity and firaxis with their enourmous team didn't?

I don't see why some people said that BTs solved the problem! africans looks mesopotamian and after the midle age there is no more diversity at all!

 

[bonafide11]

Firaxis and ethnically diverse.. A very strange story.
Some modders created rapidly fantastic mods like ethnic citystyle varietas delectat or cultural diversity and firaxis with their enourmous team didn't?

I don't see why some people said that BTs solved the problem! africans looks mesopotamian and after the midle age there is no more diversity at all!

I don't understand it either. BTS was a half-assed attempt at best to implement diverse units. I'd hope for something much better than that in Civ V.

 

[Asylumer]

I'd much rather have better diversified unit graphics than the fancy leader screen and voice acting Firaxis are so proud of in Civ5. I don't mean to trash their work, but it's just not as important to me as visually distinct units and cities. I tend to spend more time on the world map than I do engaged in diplomacy and seeing how my empire looks throughout the ages is more exciting to me than seeing a recreated historic figurehead.

 

[eleazzaar]

It bugs me a little to see units with the wrong skin color, though i think Firaxis was right not to put that on the top of their priority list.

I don't think they way they did mulit-ethnic in BtS was ideal however. It's one thing to change skin color, but it's another to totally change the costume and equipment of a unit-- which is what you use to identify a unit. I've had BtS for 4 months, and i'm still uncertain from time to time weather a new-looking unit i see is a UU or an ethnic skin i haven't encountered before.

IMHO all axemen should be easily identifiable as axemen, not simply learned by rote.

 

[ShaqFu]

Firaxis is going to have regional tilesets (Europe, Africa, Asia, etc.) to break up the monotony ("oh, another pine tree"), so it's not out of the question they'll have regional units.

 

[plasmacannon]

"It's a shame", Please.
That sounds like a minor complexity that adds little to the game.
And I do remember in Civ4 they did have at least 4 ethnicities.
White, Black, Asian, and Red (Aztecs, Incas, Native Americans etc.).
India's Fast worker was different, but, I don't remember what their regular units were.
To get all PC about it, is lame. Someone would complain that their worker was black, how ethnically backwards!
Should an empire that adopts the slavery civic have slaves of a certain ethnicity, because, based on the history of Earth so far, many came from a certain place?
That's overly complex for little gain.
We are already losing Espionge, which was an added complexity that added something to the game.
Considering Back in the Civ2-3 days, this was not even a though to be added, at least they have 4 in Civ4.

 

[kurtkage]

This thread got me curious about the topic and I decided to go through screenshots and see if anything can be learned. Since in most of the units screenshots we can't really tell what civ they are we can't say whether they are just both euro-civs. The game could have changed or added things in since the shots were taken too.

So far as I can find in the shots, all troops look white. Cities do not seem very diverse between diff civs (based on color culture borders) but again maybe these were taken before that was added. Could green, blue, purplish, yellow, red possibly all be one type like all euro? heh

One more thing is there are some shots with units with headdresses on that I think are maybe barbarians and not a diverse warrior for a civ?

The archer firing over the lake all troops look the same to me
http://www.civfanatics.com/gallery/showimage.php?i=2773&c=36
catapults
http://www.civfanatics.com/gallery/showimage.php?i=2766&c=36

civ with purplelish borders French? and green seem to have the same buildings
http://www.civfanatics.com/gallery/showimage.php?i=2821&c=36

green border, wonder who that is.
http://www.civfanatics.com/gallery/showimage.php?i=2824&c=36
this green border has a similar brown city color as the blueborder below
http://www.civfanatics.com/gallery/showimage.php?i=2813&c=36

blue city is a different color, not sure if it's the angle or diff era or terrain?
http://www.civfanatics.com/gallery/showimage.php?i=2825&c=36

Yellow looks like a bigger city but if that is Egypt then hmm
http://www.civfanatics.com/gallery/showimage.php?i=2823&original=1&c=36

red, Russia or Rome? Even the jaguars skin color doesn't look that much different than diff angles cause hehe.
http://www.civfanatics.com/gallery/showimage.php?i=2820&original=1&c=36
http://www.civfanatics.com/gallery/showimage.php?i=2765&original=1&c=36

I'm thinking it's not going to be in. But wow I can't imagine that they wouldn't at least diversify the city looks beyond a brown or bluechromeish look, am I missing it somewhere?

 

[Osama Bin Davis]

Why could I see some sort of lawsuit if the american workers were black?

 

[The_J]

This thread got me curious about the topic and I decided to go through screenshots and see if anything can be learned.

4-5 months left, "work in progress".

 

[MrHan]

mm.. I think the OP asks for a bit too much (intra-civ diversity), but I could definitely use some more unit diversity in the game. Yes, Civ IV diversity did feel a bit half-done; it made me die a little inside every time I saw a Mongolian Worker wearing a non la, samurais on horseback posing as Korean/Chinese knights or white archers posing to be zulu. Modern units across all factions looked exactly the same, and that scarred my heart as well.

Looks like there's already going to be diversity among the general, big-picture culture groups (eg Asian, European, Middle Eastern, etc), and I'd be pretty happy with that as long as the developers avoided at least the obvious messes (like the ones mentioned above). But if the developers could a bit more attention to detail and create diversity between all the factions, even if it was just in the city buildings (cuz the typical house in China does look different from that of Japan)... man, that would be some eye-candy.

Sure, it would require a tremendous amount of work on the developers' part, but it's the attention to minute details that makes a game beautiful.