Unit appearance

[Grrr]

I think that each race should have its own unit appearance. This should be the same unit, but with a different name and look. eg: Trireme (europe) Canoe (Polynesia, south america) Junk (Asia) etc.
In the modern ages these units could have the same apperance
This would make each civ look different, but not limit them against each other with different units.

[Diablo, Bro. of Mephisto]

THis is the exact Idea I had a while back. But dont change the 'different unit' appearance in the later part of the game. I mean, not every nation in the world has 'marines'.

[Deathwalker]

This would add way to many units to the game, if you don't want marines you don't build marines, But how about you can chnage some colors on the units, like to flags. Say musketeers come in blue, red and others?

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I have walked since the dawn of time and were ever I walk, death is sure to follow

[Grumbold]

If the game comes with standard units but the potential to use the unit editor to give each country their own look and feel you can bet someone will use it, even if it is just to add flags. The biggest disappointment will be if the game cannot support such differentiation at all, like the idea about differing looks and names for buildings we have been discussing. It is just too much to expect the box to come with 8+ different unit and building sets but expandability will open the door for some really terrific scenarios. The recent rollercoaster tycoon and simcity games have made a real success of allowing features to be pulled off the web and introduced into the game.

[Deity Dude]

I'm not sure if I would want every countries units looking different. Just imagine there are 15 civs out there - i'm not even sure how they will do that, won't we run out of colors eventually or will we need a pantone chart to play the game - all of a sudden an Ethopian ship comes in. Is it equivalent to a trirene or caravel or does it have some unique capabilities that I'm not even aware of? Someone will say click on it, findout what it is and look it up in the civlopedia. That's fine, I just don't want to have to do that hundreds of times in the game. That would take my usual 20 hour game to about to about 200 hours

[Diablo, Bro. of Mephisto]

deathwalker had a good idea, of the same units being used for all civs, just each civ having its own colored units. As for flags, there had better be more then just 7 different colors. they should be real flags.

[Biddles]

Deity Dude: But what about things like english musketeers having redcoats, american's blue, germans green etc.

Maybe they could include an option to dispaly unit names and the like so when that weird looking ship comes along you can instantly see that it is trireme equivalent.

[DarkCloud]

Perhaps each civ should have 'flag' colors for the units that correspond to their real life flags.

[QW1020]

I agree

[Sirotnikov]

I think that the idea of having different looks for different civs is good. But not for all civs. There should be 6 different styles of units and buildings that are the same but have different looks and names (still they must be recognizable).

It's like the 4 city types you have, only in units, and it should devide into phases and there should be 6 lanes:

1. Greek Roman --> Medeval Reniessance --> Industrial --> European --> Hightech
2. Native American --> Eauropean --> Banana Republic (semi-western) --> Hightech
3. East / Magestical (persia russia)--> Industrial --> Commie (simplistic) --> Hightech
4. Far East --> Industrial --> Hightech
5. Mediterainean Arab --> Medeval --> Banana Republic --> Hightech
6. African Aborigenal --> Banana Republic --> Hightech

[hHydro]

In another thread, I pointed out that if the graphics are done similar to SMAC (but higher quality of course..)where a 'chassis' graphic is then modified with 'addon' graphics, then it should be very easy to modify the base graphic depending on city choice. ie: a greek and an oriental infantry unit might both be holding a spear or sword or gun, but the two will be distinct because the two infantry 'chassis' will look different.

Even if 2-d graphics are used, the units could just use a 'paper-doll' system, where again, the base unit graphic is dependant on the culture/building type (ie: roman) and weapons/armour are overlayed onto the unit.