Reskins Done RIGHT! (And Less Right) Ft. Gaudio, Azmac
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- Опубликовано: 8 сен 2024
- We look at how I think official reskins ought to be done, as well as what should be avoided.
Gaudio's Reddit Posts can be found Here:
/ middle_east_unit_skins...
/ american_units_skins_s...
I'm Gaudio. Thank you for reviewing my artwork. Glad you like it and thank you for giving it diffusion.
I've been working in a new set for quite a long time, but I took a new job and I'm not having too much spare time to getting it done.
As you pointed out, it's really difficult to concile historicity and fidelity to the original graphics, so there are a lot of design decisions I had to take even if, as a history enthusiast myself, it hurted. I'd like to know anyways your comments on the historical accuracy of the american set, as I already have a 2.0 version in mind for some time in the future.
P.D.: The straight sword for the middle eastern MAA and longswordman is intentional, as swords were shaped that way until the turkic style of warfare, including the curved sword, became the norm in the islamic word, which is represented with the imperial age units' design.
Greetings, and again, thank you.
These look sick! Amazing job on those - outta curiosity, do you have plans for the other seven (if counting either Central or Western Europe as the default style)/five (if all European factions are fine and do not require cultural unit skins) or nah?
@@DraculOkeanos Thank you! Glad you like it
I've working in a new set for months (These take a lot of time and I haven't been consistent, I'll admit it), and it's around 70% done. I'll upload it to reddit as soon as it's ready. Which region? Let's keep it as a mistery.
I might do a "black sea" set in the future for Byzantines, Bulgarians, Armenians and Georgians (And perhaps Slavs also, but they're kind of unique in military garments), but I don't think it would be my priority.
The other sets in my head would be Africa, India, Southeast Asia, East Asia and just maybe Steppe. But there's nothing written in stone. I may come up with anything as the work is done.
@@flaviogaleano6594 Makes sense! Africa, in particular, I'm kind of excited to see.
i really love how you keep the readability of the unit. its THE champion first and foremost, middle eastern or meso second.
Thanks for the reply, and your work. As for critiques of the American set: Aztecs and Mayas exclusively (AFAIK) used round shields, and Incas used round and rectangular, so I might try to mimic the shape of the Man-at-arms heater shield with tapered featherwork.
In general the headgear of the spear/swordsman line seems very Inca inspired and not particularly Mesoamerican. Quite understandable as a design compromise to represent parts of all 3 civs, but I'd personally lean towards weighing the set a bit more heavily towards the 2 Meso civs, perhaps with the swordsman-line more Meso and the spearline remaining Inca-inspired.
There's a decent video by Invicta on Aztec army ranks that might give you further ideas for the swordsman-line, with different hairstyles, uniforms, etc, as the ranks progressed. I'll also be doing videos on Aztec/Maya history featuring some of their warrior types.
But I understand any compromises that have to be made for inclusion of multiple cultural zones and readability, and am definitely looking forward to any future creations!
That Meso-American champion line and the whole Middle Eastern set is straight fire
Yeah but the champion's macahuitl is comically oversized
@@HowDoYouTurnThisOn_ Kinda, but so is the Obuch and Throwing Axemens weapon, respectively - to the point that I find those actually more bothersome...
@@LarthV I always thought the Throwing Axeman was a gigachad BECAUSE his axe is ridiculously oversized lol
The way the Aztec skins handled the Crossbowman and Arbalest, keeping the visual identity of the units while going back to more realistic bows was really cool.
Shape & dominant colours are what matter most for readability. A soldier mostly dressed in white carrying a big stick = pikeman, for example.
Omg I first saw the meso and middle eastern regional unit skins on the forums and couldn’t stop gushing over them. I’d love to see these added.
I think they work so well cause the stance, weapon shape, unit outline, color scheme, stays the same. It’s only subtle details that change. Readability is preserved but the units look much more representative of the region.
It actually occurs to me that something similar has already been done with ships. The ships themselves keep their shape, but the shape and insignia of the sails allows you to read what regional the unit comes from.
I’d love to see those regional monasteries as well.
Tangentially related, I think there’s some value for having civ architecture settings. So people can customize which civs get which architecture sets. I personally don’t agree with the group on the forums pleading for Persians to get Central Asian architecture, but with something like that, they could make that change themselves.
Tangentially related to the tangent, I think in game Persians are more representative of the sassanians, but the ismail campaign would probably be improved if it were to use central Asian.
Yep, they're very well done. There are some mild tweaks I'd make to the American set, but the fundamentals are there. I imagine that designing skins in this way would also make creating them easier, since it would be similar to accessorizing a single model with varied clothes, weapon designs, etc, although that's just a supposition.
Regional monasteries and unique castles I think are pretty low hanging fruit (apart from other low-hanging fruit like farm and other resource reskins). If I were on the dev team, that's where I'd want to start, building up to regional military units as the magnum opus.
WRT Persian architecture I lean towards the CA set, but there are definitely Persian and especially Sassanid elements of the existing ME set and non-Persian elements of the CA set, so it's mostly not something I've been outspoken in advocating for, although that was a sort of easter egg in the Saffron video. But yeah, definitely not a completely cut-and-dry topic.
I don't think it would require a high cost to replace the real skins of units from all the civilizations in the game, it would just be necessary to adjust the appropriate clothes/armor for each region, for example Western Europe would be a certain outfit, Eastern Europe would be an outfit with influence Byzantine/Slavic and Middle Eastern and Far Eastern clothing is historically appropriate.
Yep, that's the idea. I'm no artist, but it doesn't exactly seem like a pie-in-the-sky proposal given how many new graphics have been added to AoE3 for example.
The trouble is legibility. I need knights to all look the same on order to assess enemy army size and strength at a glance. It would also make the game harder for new players cus they would have to learn he looks of a dozen different unit types
@@nicholaswoollhead6830 That's why the mod MUST BE client side only.
@@nicholaswoollhead6830 I don't think so, the name would be the same for everyone regardless of the clothing used by the civilization in its infantry, archery, cavalry barracks and that's right!
@@nicholaswoollhead6830They could simply add a toggle in settings to turn off the other player’s skins.
One the best things Age 4 brought to Age 2, regional units.
If there was one unit to get a "regional" skin across the board like architectural styles, it should be villagers. They make up a huge chunk of the population, you spend a lot of time looking at them and there's a wealth of references for gorgeous, distinctive and historical civilian clothing for each cultural group and could even depict diversity in skin and hair color.
As much as I would like to have more region specific units and buildings my biggest gripe is the readability. I remember back in 2017 when I installed a reskin, played an extremely long 3v5 game with 500 pop cap and couldn't tell what units I was going up against.
But man, those middle eastern and american units are so well done they feel like the developers made them.
Yeah, I agree. Readability is king, but these are the best examples I've found that maintain that as much as possible while still providing unique flavor.
Those examples are really good. I'm suprised how much they resamble the original while still being distinct.
I always liked the Idea of only making a Unit "regional" when the civ itself changes the unit statswise, like giving Teuton Knights a different helmet or giving the celts infantry less armor pieces.
Having a visual aid for gameplay effects is always cool imo
I really do hope they add regional skins for each architectural set as a setting that can be enabled/disabled. I'm doubtful that they will, Definitive Edition was the best opportunity to do it and you've touched on lackluster skins from the Victors and Vanquished & Return of Rome DLCs before, but one can still hope.
Yeah, it's weird how lax they've been with new assets, but the optimist in me is hoping that this is because they've been working on a skins DLC. Obviously just speculation though. On the plus side, we've at least had trade cart reskins in DE, which was very welcome.
@@AdmiralWololo True, the trade carts change is a very welcome one and one we take for granted!
Always big fans of regional unit skin
Personal take but having Teuton paladins replaced with effectively Ulrich von Jungingen's model would be quite fitting.
I definitely love that model, as you can see, although I wouldn't want to overuse it, since he's the Grandmaster of the Teutonic Knights. IIRC there was an event mod that replaced Paladins with Crusader Knights, which goes in a similar direction
I absolutely agree with the take that the skins should look similar to the original, even if it's a bit ahistorical. We already have tons of poetic license in the game, like fireships, and the existing units are too well established to be changed too much.
However I think it should be region based instead of architecture set based, like trade carts are.
Yeah, that makes sense. Gives further room to distinguish Incas from the Mesoamerican civs for example, despite them sharing an architecture set.
Excellent! Someone get the Devs to see this Video asap!
aoe 2 just need this as official mod to be perfect... not more dlcs, no more civs, just more quality of life.
tbf the readability is often locked in the unit animation and equipment, a man holding a pointy stick or a bladed polearm can be seen as Spearman and Pikeman while the third man holding a Heavy Polearm with both hands is a Halberdier.
Or how Scout Cavalry don't have Shields, while Light Cavalry have Shields and Hussars have both Shield and Wings and a small chest plate for their horses.
Or how Knights wore mostly Chainmail, Cavaliers have Plate Armor with Cloth Bardings for their mounts and Paladins being more ornamental and menacing
Thanks man ive been watching all the regional skins videos all the time and im 100% your opinion on this one.
Thanks! New graphics are sorely needed
Pronouncing the TL correctly on Macuahuitl makes me so happy.
Same for Atlatl etc. The moment I heard him pronounce a "tl" I was so happy :) And he does it consistently.
that middle eastern Champion skin is crazy good looking, i'd be playing Saracens even more than i already do with that
Now THIS is a reskin!
God I wish they did this through all their AoE games (minus 4 who already does a good job at that).
Would be awesome!
Absolutely agree and I would for sure pay for such a DLC
First, very good work and channel, dear Admiral! I love the love for the game, taking advantage of the big and positive community wave.
Second, StarCraft 2 is doing exactly this reskin idea, allowing players to enjoy their graphic style gusto.
In general, I think it would be very favorable for the future growing and healthy lifespan of our beloved Age of Empires 2, if we could have a Vanilla version, as default and for the competitive scene, but also some modded projects and alternative SW builds, where e.g. all your ideas (roads, healing, alternate farms, berries etc) could come to life.
Thank you! I definitely think the future in the game is new additions, but also very high player choice, so that people can engage with whatever features they like, and avoid whichever ones they don't like. A vanilla version, as you say, but perhaps with new game modes or toggle options for extended features like roads and such (just as there are different game modes like Regicide and Battle Royale and toggle options like Full Tech Tree and Turbo mode).
If there is a DLC every 2 months costing 5 euros adding each one the skins of one region, I will buy all of them
Sounds good to me
Basically what Galactic Battlegrounds (Star Wars Age 2) did in 2001, where each faction has its own unique appearance for each unit, but aside from a few exceptions (Gungans) almost all units maintain visual uniformity to know what each thing is, they share elements of the type of unit they are, and in cases where they are very different, like heavy mechs, they are so big that it is difficult not to identify them.
Of course, it's not the same since we're talking about a Star Wars spin-off that officially only had 8 factions (16 with the Expanding Fronts mod), against the 45 and counting of Age 2, real civilizations, and therefore all human, they are not droids or wookies to easily distinguish them, although you could see low-definition models of a storm trooper and a clone trooper and distinguish them, either it's not that difficult or they did a great job (it's not that difficult, there's an expansion mod (Expanding Fronts) that adds the first order and the 3 types of "white soldiers" are recognizable from each other.
On the other hand, and this is something that the mods should always keep in mind (and the developers if you ever make official regional skins) and that said game did, is that it effectively kept in each unit some sufficiently noticeable part that is colored the color of the player.
Something that the mods should also learn from this game, is to make versions of each unit for each faction, even if it doesn't have one, just like Age 2, Galactic has a system of units and locked research, after all it was made with the same engine, but for the same reason it has the option of using the complete technological tree, so versions of units that normally wouldn't be used were made.
Even mechanically the units were different, the federation and the confederation use mechanical soldiers, these can't be healed but repaired with workers, the federation only uses mechanical units, so it doesn't have doctors because they are useless, the soldiers have to be repaired.
Also, I'm not saying that's why you should make a Japanese camel or an Aztec elephant (although it would be cool to see camel and elephant riders with katanas and macuahuitls), but after all the Galactic Battlegrounds that I use as an example, did keep some units with the same name, with apprentices, knights and masters being the same on their side of the force, they only change if you use a good or evil faction (good factions use jedis, bad ones use sith, apprentices, knights and masters don't change if you use gungans, wookies or the republic, they all use human jedis, the same with the empire, the federation or the confederation), only here the units with shared skins between factions were the exception instead of the rule.
Finally, good pronunciation of the tl, although it fails a bit at the end (well, not so much, new discoveries about Nauhuatl indicate that the L of TL was not pronounced, but if you are, let's go to how it is pronounced in Mexican Spanish, it is almost like you pronounce it, tla, tle, tli, tlo, tlu, just don't say the vowel and that's it, but apart from that you pronounce it very well.
In any case, it is nice to hear it like that, not like when the Spanish say it, they pronounce the tl like "tel", wait, that's in Spanish, the Spanish pronounce it like "tal".
Thanks for your comment, very well thought out. SWGB was definitely ahead of its time in a lot of ways - not referring to the obvious sci-fi aspect of course, but just to game mechanics that are suitable for AoE2. It had tech stacking enabled in the Editor decades before AoE2 and stuff like garrisoning herdables that was added as the Gurjara mill bonus, as well as the "skins," as you note. Expanding Fronts was a great mod as well.
As far as pronunciation, thank you - I've studied the language on and off (as an amateur, of course), and have heard mixed messages about how it was pronounced in Classical Nahuatl, but of course I'm open to any further information that may be definitive. ATM the creators I (try to) keep up with about that are NativeLang, Yan Garcia, and sometimes CanalNahuatl. In terms of modern Nahuatl it can be tricky since I've met native speakers that pronounce things differently based on where they're from - the name Xochitl, for example, I've heard pronounced with the mostly silent, T, L, or Both, so I'm not sure which is considered more common or definitive today.
@@AdmiralWololo It's like the time when AoE's Facebook asked what solution we would put to the problem of building logging camps every time we cut down a good part of the forest, many of us answered with the AoM nodic ox cart.
It's weird because they ask for answers that they themselves answered long ago (ok, they're not the same people, but AoM and SWGB are more than 20 years old and are owned by Microsoft, they literally have the games to say "hey, we can apply this here").
Of course the answer from the developers of "it's so people know what they're watching" to not make regional skins for units is quite unsatisfactory and questionable for the reasons already stated. People are not stupid and learn, and you can make different appearances of the same unit, which in turn, either keep the general image/essence of the same to recognize it in any form (example, brown horse, juntet with shield on the back, light cavalry, white horse, rider with shield in hand, heavy cavalry), I repeat, if SWGB made 8 factions so different to have their own identity, but at the same time so appreciated in the skeleton to be able to recognize the type of each unit, Forgotem Empire can do it.
I don't want to fall into the fallacy of "moders do a better job than developers", but Expanding Fronts has done it, based on the excellent work of those who worked on SWGB; and yes, moders do not have a fixed budget, deadlines or Microsoft on their shoulder asking for results, but they also do not have their infinite money and the AoE fandom, they can afford four skins and have an audience/clients who ask for it.
What I can understand is that maybe they don't want to do it because of the weight of the game, Ao2 is already too heavy as it is to make it look like a real game, but again, if it's something optional, ergo installable, the problem is solved by itself, if the client doesn't have enough gigabytes, well, no way, the person will have to put up with it or buy a bigger disk, but those who can have it, that would be ideal.
And honestly, I can't believe that today, putting cattle in breeding farms is not a general mechanic in Ao2.
By the way, the new Expanding Fronts update came out last month.
It's a shame that we'll never have a definitive edition of SWGB (the titles of the saga that I spent the most time editing were this one and AoM), of course, unless Microsoft buys Star Wars or Disney, although at the same time, we're talking about Microsoft, if someone has money to pay a license to do a project like this (or buy SW) it's them; What I doubt is that they want to get into the legal and bureaucratic hell that doing such a deal with Disney would entail. They did it once at one point, but now SW is not run by Lucas, and it could very well end up in a problem like the one Blizz and GW had with Warcraft, although well, if Retold turns out well, maybe they'll get into it. I mean, we're talking about the company that revived a saga that they themselves killed because they saw that people wouldn't stop playing it, buying it, and making mods for it.
Nahuatl is complicated because, although it is not a dead language, there are very few people who speak it in relation to the general population, and apart from the fact that everyone speaks it in different ways, there is also the fact that in Mexico Nahuatl words have been assimilated as part of Spanish, where the pronunciation is incorrect but official, for example, I live in the municipality of Tlaltepantla, put it in the translator, play it in Spanish and it will say the name as we use it, it is incorrect, but currently it is called that way, because it is basically a nahuatl name said in spanish.
But seriously, like I said, aside from a few details (which are understandable because they are words from a language you don't use daily, nor do you have someone who speaks it all the time to smooth things over), your pronunciation is very good, you should be proud of yourself, that's one of the biggest problems when it comes to speaking another language, more so because it's noticeable that english speakers have a hard time assimilating that a letter only has one sound (don't be offended), like a friend of my family, she spent more than half of her life in México (around 80 years old), her friends, family, her husband, her environment was mexican, and she could never get rid of that "american speaking" when speaking spanish, although well, nobody was bothered, the pronunciation was clear and perfect, so she never tried and nobody pressured her to stop speaking like that, on the contrary, that way we could boast that we had "una amiga gringa" XD.
Woah, love the idea and your examples are pretty decent, some tweaking wouldn't hurt though. But overall I'd really like to see it in-game. Let's hope.
Thanks, I agree they need some polish and probably more distinction, but the presentation is still the best I've seen.
Great job bringing up how these mods and a potential DLC would be clientside. People have this weird notion that just because YOU'RE running a modification it makes it confusing for everyone like that's some sort of valid argument against the idea of reskins.
They should make reskins with every bit of they’re spare time. The reason being
1. Back in the 2D graphics AOE2, the focus went into gameplay and fun experience. Since the DE version, it shifted to graphics experience.
2. The majority of unnecessary blunders can be attributed to business men making decisions out of the surreal promise of incremental profit increase.
3. We want gamers/game designers who have love and passion for these games to make our games, not the merchants who makes them out of corporate greed.
4. Philly’s single scenario style should’ve never made it into the original game. It works as a new experience. But I can attest that many players are drawn to multi-chapter missions campaign. People like stories. I’m just surprised how many people can’t foresee this.
5. I used to enable AOE1 reskin mod. Back in AOE1, the majority of the world was set in the Greco-Roman era. It makes sense why the units are largely similar as they adopt similar fighting styles. And while there wasn’t a full fledged counter systems, there were unit variety.
6. The 2 handed swordsmen and knights didn’t work for me. The sword and shield model of infantry is good enough. The only reason to have 2 handed swordsman is either a hero in campaigns or a new unit to work as hard counters to cavalry named horse cutters. The Eastern units getting knights is non-sensical, with the exception of ransomed captive knights historically. They could implement the trade post and mercenary system from AOE3 to do so. I’ve reached a boiling point where Chinese getting knights and Byzantines getting cataphracts. Ironic as all the Eastern civs from Byzantines to Asia use cataphracts as heavy cavalry. They could just rename the 2 cavalry roles as light cavalry and heavy cavalry to simplify the problem.
7. The Indians have civ splits, why not for many other civs ?
8. A great reskin would also lead to a great demand for unit overhaul. Why not since the Meso-American civs and the Indians don’t have knights. No one’s complaining about that.
9. Axing the skirmishers for the majority of civs sounds good. AOE1 is the perfect setting as every nation at least have a version of those skirmishers, be it javelinmen or peltasts or velites.
Thank you for mentioning my ''non-artist'' artwort haha :D
Very good video. Regional unit skins, more architecture sets, unique castles for ALL civs... all this things would be game changers for immersive/casual player like me. In a perfect world every civ would have unique unit skins and architecture sets. But that's a little bit unrealistic, i know. It doesn't hurt to dream :D
I am fine with us gamers, paying periodically for optional content to keep the game fresh so icon pack DLC is great thing in my books. However, I would hate to have some of the more prominent cool features barred behind the DLC because that makes it much more difficult for new players to engage and enjoy, and would in the long term only hurt the game.
Somebody send this to the devs now!
Love that idea! That actually would be great to see in game and the last DLC would be a great way to do it!!
YES! I would love for this to be added to the game. I always thought that meso american civs bringing out full blown european arbalests and halberdiers looked strange. These examples look great, they are more civ accurate and at the same time easily recognizable
Yeah I'm a big fan of this design style and the regional skins concept generally
How no one at Forgotten Empires has thought of this in the last 10 years is baffling
I'm sure it's crossed their minds (as with the monastery rework concept), but it's a shame that it never really went anywhere past regional trade carts.
@@AdmiralWololo I mean, we’ve done plenty of reskins through event mods. Capybara cannonballs, sound effects from AOE1, reskin handcannons to be AOE3 Musketeers..
This has always been extremely possible. They just… didn’t do it…
I agree, if we get regional units, they need to be professionally done.
But I'd only buy the dlc if it came with regional architecture as well.
For example, the Georgians and Armenians use the Mediterranean set and that's just inaccurate
I agree they should have their own set. I imagine new architecture would be more time-intensive since they need destruction animations and all, but there's certainly enough demand to justify it.
Chinese crossbows need a complete rework including the crossbow design
I can't wait for these to be added into mod workshop. I already saw similar concept in Rise of Nations where units like "Arquebusiers", despite of the unit name is very western, has distinctive look for each civilization set.. for example Middle Eastern Arqubusiers would look different than its European, African, or East Asian counterpart. It makes the game more immersive to play.
Having the option too see them or not also is important. Well to be said it.
Clear, synthetic and well spoken argument. Yep, you speak for many of us indeed
I love the idea of regional skins, it would add an insane visual variety and combos for matchups I really dig it, I would also love it for vills.
We need that! I would pay for it no doubt :)
Devs: „Sorry, they don’t pay us enough to bring this piece of art into this game. But we will sell you 15$ DLC with popular scenarios available for free in the steam workshop. Trust us, these money is well spent. „
I’m shocked how good these reskins are done. Wish devs actually released dlc with skins instead of this last crap-DLC thing.
Yeah, really hoping for higher-effort DLCs in the future with more value added
This is awesome idea and strongly supported from me, a game scenario designer for AOE2DE.
I have yet to find naked even if HD version. It would be so silly with bunch of naked men raiding to battle. 🤣
Joke aside, I really hope there full reskin of Japanese, like their knight line and archer fully skin into medieval Japanese style. Can you do it?
Gauls moment
This is all long overdue
I think reskins of villagers to have appropriate racial colours is overdue.
People complained last time I mentioned it citing it ‘too much work.’ But really it’s just a lower priority, it was a higher priority to give them boxing gloves.
Ps those are samples you shared of appropriate clothes villagers was fab. All I was asking for was literal colour change, but now I want those you showed.
Yeah, I'm not a professional graphics guy, but it seems like it could be done simply enough.
In general I agree that many potential improvements that have been benched are priority issues far more than they are technical/time/expense issues.
There have been various event mods which added ew graphics. Unfortunately, very few of them are actually relevant to serious regional skins, but I like the Man-at-arms skin with feathers and a Macuahuitl and the Dark Knight skins, they can be handy to put in mods.
Yeah, I still think those graphics should be added as new units so people can use them without mods. Would love to see earnest reskins or new additions instead of all the silly event stuff
Middle eastern units did not have as many curved swords as thought. For example during the crusades, they had straigth swords like Europeans.
The rest looks so great.
True, I'll admit I leaned into the popular view because I think curved swords look very cool, but of course you're right
Another tangentially related thing. It might be nice to have regional names for units. I personally wouldn’t care for that. However I’ve seen people on the forums say meso civs shouldn’t get the dromon cause it’s a roman or Byzantine, somehow ignoring that arbalesters and halberdiers are French, Or that mongols have hussar.
That being said I think it’d be fine to have the option.
It might make it easier for certain people to stomach certain additions to certain tech trees if the unit had a more regionally appropriate name.
A solid idea. I even think this could apply to techs for people who take them very literally, e.g. "Horse Collar" replaced with functional equivalents for American and some new African civs that used other methods (slash & burn, terraced farming, chinampas, etc). In one Maya scenario I have the forging-line techs renamed to refer to local materials and processes (flint, jade, obsidian).
IDK what the demand for that would be like, but the effort required for simple renames is incredibly low.
@@AdmiralWololo yeah, fundamentally I don't see why it couldn't work for techs as well. Sounds like a good idea to me.
im glad that mesoo american and incan is seperated
I always had the desire to change the details of units. For example:
Why does every paladin fly the French lilly? The don't the British have a lion and the Teutons a "iron cross" or something like that? Why does every pikeman have a lion on his crest?
For the same reason the camel line has the crossed scimitars on its shield, the same that are resent on the sails of the middle-eastern ships. Presumably because the devs back in the Age of Kings days imagined to make some sort of regional variants for the generic units, that never made into reality. I can imagine the preservation of disc sèacce being a priority back then.
I'd like the old graphics and skeletons to be an option as well as an option to take away the glow from heroes
Some people just should not have access to... well life. I mean does it make sense that Aztecs can have crossbows? No. It is a game design that relies on you being able to recognize certain unit types and react accordingly. That's it.
Congratulations on 1k subs!
Thank you! Very grateful for the viewership, support, and positivity!
Seriously. This game needs a massive amount of reskins.
Why on Earth does EVERY civ have the SAME villagers??
Yeah I think reskinned villagers would be very doable. Basically just accessorizing the same model with different regional clothing, skin tones, etc.
@@AdmiralWololo Precisely, it's so easy, zero changes to their skeleton and poses, just dress them up.
Loving the uploads
Thank you!
Really nice pronunciation of the "tl" consonant of Nahuatl 👍👍
Personally, I think that any regional units should be a toggleable option. This to keep readability. I would likely go with the fancy option. But I can see how it could create issues if people saw a lot of variations of knights or champions and so on.
I wish it was possible to do reskin mods in AOE4 so I can have arquebusiers instead of handcannons
It was always silly that meso-american units used swords. I'm all for them being replaced with reskins.
Personally I would like regional looks for the civs very much. When I get the hots for AoE2:DE and put on a game to play as, say, someone from the Indian subcontinent only for the majority of the units to look like they where loaned out from a European ruler colleague kinda hurts the illusion the game is trying to make. This has been my biggest gripe with this game for ages. Also make oar ships' oars animated! I'd prefer new skin packs to buy rather than developer reusing previously made assets.
Absolutely agree. I'm glad AoE2 is still going and getting support, but the lack of visual variation for units is definitely immersion-breaking and makes the game feel more dated than it needs to.
A bit off note, but it would be funny and cool to have joke reskins with special sound effects to boot. Maybe a meme reskin with goofy sound effects or an anime reskin with cringe inducing voices.
Funny for sure, OTOH I'd much prefer the devs put their effort into more useful reskins
Actually i talked with demon on His video and i mention that miss point for irouquis Warriors, the main problem Is only 1 civ on mesoamerica usted axes (copper axes), the tarascans. Incas used too but are not consider mesoamerica, this Is a mistake all games fail. But well i think demon suggested use the units of the game and not modding like the others of this video. So i can understand him.
Now i dont understand why devs put that excuse of reskin Will confuse gamers... Just look what does empire earth 2 and rise of nations, they have their regional skins and do not confuse the gamers.
Yeah, it could definitely work without being confusing. If people still can't tell what units are, they can simply turn it off like a mod and see the original European-looking unit skins.
@@AdmiralWololo exactly.
I hope with the Time the devs change of mind and give us the regional units historically accurate, because since conquerors we are requesting It.
Yeah it’s about time we got some new graphics
Just a nitpick, but meso civs did have gambesons and shirts for battle. I feel like the shirtless militia looks a lot like an AoE1 unit. No need for a pantsless villager either but I get it.
I'm aware. I would have loved to used the cotton armor more, but it often was not compatible with the original unit contrast and color schemes. In the current version of the set, Two-Handed Swordsmen, Halberdiers and Arbalesters wear cotton armor. They're just colored gray to keep the unit recognizable.
One big thing players get wrong is asking for it to be a DLC. We already have free architecture sets and free boat sails, making the skins locked behind a paywall would be unbelievably annoying.
We've been waiting for years for something like it and we're being told we have to buy it?
This is difficult. On one hand you have reskins that are very distinct but are not suitable for historical reasons, like those presented by demon. Then you have ones that are more accurate historically, but differ so little that I wonder why even do it. Then you could have reskins that look disctinct enough, are historically accurate, but make the units and their roles unrecognizable. I don't see any way around it.
When Age of Mythology was released with 3 completely unique civs it was prefect, you can never confuse a units roles and they're all very distinct. But it was only 3 civs which quickly makes you tired of them.
Then later I used to play AOE3 whan it was released and it only had the OG civs. They were all mostly distinct with a handful of generic units, a kind of a good balance. But if you go play now with all those new civs, plus native units you can train at trading posts, plus mercenaries, plus units you train at saloons (the saloon itself is very inaccurate for most civs), you get a plethora of units whose roles are VERY confusing, specially considering the amount of stats and multipliers each one have.
It's just hard to get a good balance between variety, accuracy, readability and game balance.
Yeah, as I've said these could be made even more distinct, but it's definitely not an easy balance to strike. I do think a somewhat more intense and varied version of this is the best possible compromise though, and there's still the toggle-off option for people who don't like it or just want max readability.
Of course, then we'll also want the fantasy reskins for the user made factions like elves and so on.
A most painful topic indeed. I honestly cant understand why the devs wont just add more diversity, especially in areas where it doesnt even require much work, e.g. regional monks. Adding the Savar was a great idea, instant boost of variety. Also, are Gaudio's reskins a mod? They are wonderful btw, for all the reasons you've mentioned.
PS is there a regional monks mod out there? I cant seem to find one
His reskins aren't a mod, unfortunately, at the moment it's concept art and not full animations. I also couldn't find any monk reskin mods, but this may because the "with relic" graphic doesn't seem to exist for most of them yet.
we need unit skins so badly!
they could even sell it for 5€ or something i would by.
BUT DO IT MICROSOFT
love this ❤
AoE2 content creators, listen closely to the Admiral, for he actually can do the "tl" sound!
For Skin-Dlc ( till 5 dollars ) - why not or setting like a option in the Game - this ideas not new - but i hope they do it in the next time :)
Also, and perhaps it’s just me, but is the dark age building set underwhelming?
It doesn’t feel like 500ad but 5000bc to me. Dark age Folwark is pretty good tho.
My guess is the only way they could figure to make it universal-looking was to make it hopelessly bland, but yeah, very insipid. If I was very bullish about the likelihood of high investment in graphics I might suggest regional dark age buildings, but there far higher priorities.
Dark age represents the “we just moved here, let’s settle down” age, so most buildings look temporary and nomadic.
The ages in Age of Empires 2 don't portray historical time periods but rather the level of wealth and development of your faction.
Dark Age - Poverty, struggling to grow and survive, common bandits
Feudal Age - Still impoverished but starting to have social cohesion with dedicated soldiers, rural lordship over farmers
Castle Age - A prospering Kingdom with their own unique culture and permanent fortifications
Imperial Age - An Empire spanning many conquered lands being able to field elite troops and the newest advances of siege-craft
This is great
Let's go nearly 1k subs baby
Let's gooooo!
Are these actual mods? Or just concept art.
Because someone should definitely make it a mod, the units are so high quality that they'd fit in perfectly
This is concept art, unfortunately. Rendering them in every position to animate would take a lot more work, but IMO that's the kind of thing the devs should be doing anyway
YES YES YES YES YES
YES!
They look great!!
Pitch, Each region has unique houses, slightly different housing space, different health, different shapes, different costs, different build times.
Mongol/Cumin have yurts as houses, very quick to build, very weak, low cost, have -1 housing space. Refund their cost when deleted.
Western Europe have houses with 3*2 tiles, cost more, slower to build, +2 housing space
Viking have longhouses, 4*2 tiles, cost twice as much, three times the health, 50% longer to build, double housing space
and so on
I do not play AOE2 but I was confused a tomahawk warrior fills the role of a spear man when a native american spear man would work better and a tomahawk warrior as your standard hand infantry.
Plus I think it can still have some sort of symmetry all teh while still being unique in some way, such as, you can still have your spear, hand weapon, archer, and basic horse back rider, maybe extra if you feel obsessive, then you can add something unique.
Like for Americas, fast moving, lightly armored spear throwers, european crossbows, and great swords.
In the example you're referring to, I was presenting someone else's proposal and why I did not think it was a good fit.
As i play mainly european factions, for me in particular, seeing the same cavalier or paladin isn't an issue. I've been trying to mod the units though with the objective to better represent the time period.
I did a Paladin Reskin where i use Vytautas the Great skin to represent a late 14th and early 15th century knight, i've been trying mod others, but the animations files tend to not work well together in certain cases, like i tried once to give the Cavalier the skin of Gilbert the Claire so it could represent a 13th century knight, but the animations didn't work out together.
It could be usefull if you could do an updated tutorial about modding, the only one i know and worked for me is from 2021 and maybe something changed that i haven't seen yet. Like i said, some attempts at making some reskins resulted in failure, the cavalier is one, but another was switching the champion and the condottieri around, it also failed.
I just want more campaigns i apologize if that sounds boring to all of you but i am a singleplayer enjoyer and i just want more campaign to dig into
Specially a chinese or japanese campaign would be very welcome
I don't really care about graphics, I care about gameplay more.
Fair enough, good to get a variety of opinions. There are definitely gameplay improvements and fixes to be desired as well
I want fully graphics update
well most of the reskins are still not historically accurat, also i would wish and pay for - historically accurate as possible (!, intuitive gameplay is still more important) - reskins.
Hey, do you have any new Ship skins? I would need Reskinned ships for my mod. Ideally a few with progression (like galley, war galley, galleon)
I don't, unfortunately. Making new graphics is pretty resource intensive, but it would be cool to have.
Those gaudio ones should be integrated in the actual game.
Yeah they should honestly hire him to make official versions
@@AdmiralWololo Someone with a large following should tell the legendary Sandy about this!
Can you put bombard cannon pushers onto mango and scorps?
That would be a cool reskin idea. I'm not the creator of this art though, but maybe he'd consider it
Forgotten mod has uniqe monks and architecture for almost every civ... Dont undersrand why is not imported in HD edition...
What do you think on persian reskin of the paladin (savar). Do you think its a good reskin or not?
Overall, yes. It's good in the sense that it adds a new graphic that's very distinctly Persian. It would be even cooler if the knight/cavalier had regional skins as well, but the Savar was a good start.
New skins are nice but I don't really care about them. I want a new lobby browser and decent unit patching to come back
I'm not spending anything on this. If anything it should probably have been implemented in aoe2 definitive's first release provided that they already made an entire graphic overhaul in the first place and that it's been a popular idea since the age of kings.
I definitely wouldn't mind if it was free, or as an extra on more standard DLCs,
I will say this is something AoE4 did well, but everyone hates that game despite the fixes that they’ve done post launch.
Personally, I don't think you need that much realism or immersion - all these civilizations need is for the units to be noticeably tuned towards the civilization's culture, not necessarily a copy.
Also I think this lack of proper units-per-civilization distinction is one of the traits that make AoE 2 DE look dated. All these years and they can't afford to make units look regional aside from some unique unit?
No, I don't want Age of Empires 2 to be like Age of Empires 3, where the graphics of various units are so complicated that they can't be distinguished during the game. Adding so many complex graphic elements will destroy the unique flavor of this game and its professionalism as a competitive game.
I just wish they had gotten rid of the silly scale problems. In AOE I the cavalrymen are almost as big as houses.
I also hate the weird mobile game art style. I can't believe people bought this trash.
Yeah, AoE1/RoR scale is very wonky. I haven't tried the mobile version but it looked pretty bad indeed.
1:00 what do you mean they arent from the same continent? Those three countries are American
The Amazon Warrior is from South America, Aztecs and Mayas were Mesoamerica, which is part of the continent of North America. Obviously Incas are in South America, but they didn't have any warriors that would look like the Amazon warrior.
I have two concerns with this idea.
First is the disc space and ram/vram requirements.
Granted - I don't know the cost and budget of the generic units' portion of game assets, but I assume it's not insignificant.
And we'll have to multiply it by each architecture set, if we want to cover all game
And since units' graphics update the most often, with all the movement and lengthy animations it could very easily add up during 4v4 or custom games
But the main concern is on the business side - the monetary cost, but not in a direct way:
The unit skins by themselves may not be that expensive to make, however the question is - how Microsoft would monetize them?
One "Reskin" DLC for every culture? What about new cultures they'll add next? If you include new skins in the "Reskin" DLC - you add value to a product that portion of your base already bought (no revenue) or will not buy anyway (still no revenue).
Do you sell it as part of a new DLC? That would increase the cost of making the new DLC. Do you up the prices? Do you make less content to balance the workload?
One DLC for every culture?
Fair, but gamers could see that as a milking strategy. Do you take the PR risk? Do you sell enough reskins to make it worth it?
Free update for the game? Why? How it'll make Microsoft more money?
Those are questions for suits who call the shots. And while it probably possible to resolve this, it would be hard, risky and absolutely not worth it when the current model works.
Especially when the reward is a better game, not a bigger profit.
I bet if it were for devs to decide - the only concern would be the performance. Current team seems really passionate about the game after all.
But that's capitalism for you. Personally I'm glad the game could be this good as it is while generating profits. Hope it will last for a while.
Well thought out post. I don't have easy answers for how it best should be implemented, and there are pitfalls as you note. I definitely think that a reskin DLC for every region or architecture set (not every civ) is a workable plan - they could probably be made relatively cheap, and players could pick and choose the ones they wanted.
I've seen a few polls on the Forums/Reddit where a majority of respondents said it's something they want and would pay for, but of course we have to be careful in extrapolating that to the general playerbase. At least just doing one of them to test the waters would be worth a shot. After all, people bought the Icon DLCs despite those offering nothing once you actually get into a game, so I tend to think that a higher-effort, more impactful visual DLC would do well. But questions for the suits indeed.