The Mamluks

The Turkish

The Persians

Bonus Pic!

Hello Again Everyone!A couple of weeks back, we posted THIS thread in the forums, where I wrote a bit about the 100 Year War Unit Pack and how we at Paradox South created that pack, gave some notes on the work process etc. We didn't really know how the community would react to this, so I kept it pretty short.We were humbled to see that the thread got a lot of positive attention, and many encouraging comments,and due to that we've decided to make this a "thing", something we'll do whenever we release a new pack, so we can discuss the units with you guys, both technical and historical and cultural aspects, etc. And of course, post renders of the units in question, so that you can get a better view of what the units in your game actually look like.Due to popular demand in the last thread, we've decided to post a thread about the Horsemen (And Camelmen!) of the Cresecent pack this time. This was a part of th pre-order campaing we had for EUIV:s s release, and is now available as a DLC. If you've yet to get it, you can find it here, in the Europa Universalis IV: Digital Extreme Edition Upgrade Pack Bear in mind that the units are supposed to be seen from pretty far away, from a top-down 45 degree angle, so they might look a little "off " here and there this close up, but since we know all of you appreciate historical details, we thought it could be cool to get a better look at them anyway!Also, for those interested, The 100 Year War Units were just a Tech Level 1 pack, but the Horsemen of the Crescent and Purple Phoenix is a bit more advanced, we had to model all 4 tech levels, which spans hundreds of years of time, tech and culture. It's always quite a challenge to find good info on that, to respect how nations change, how culture change, and (since the game let's you do more or less whatever you want with history,) how it COULD change. In these pictures, except for the first one, Left-to-right represents techlevel 1-4, which is "roughly" the Years 1450~1850-ish. : )Also please not that while I post these threads, I didn't do these myself, it's always a team effort by PD South : )edit: in game units use camelsThis is the picture of the Mamluks from the pack. Note how the Unit's gear and attire moves from medieval-ish heavy armor to more uniform-ish over the years. This is a common trend we always see when studying the history of the unit packs, and we always try to make this change interesting and cool, so that you players can go "Wow, my unit looks so much more cool/techy/militarised" now, when you see them evolve. We always try to keep a bit of the base design/culture while still making them cooler, and evolving in an interesting and exciting fashion. Think of it as pokémon, kinda : PDetails worth nothing here is the presence of flintlock handguns in the higher techlevels, where you can clearly see that the culture is evolving, from spears and swords to.. well spears and handguns xD The units in game are colored using code, and a colored specular bitmap that marks out the areas that will get colored by the code, depending on the culture. Because of how this works, the colors tend to become somewhat "dull" or desaturated, thus we focused a lot on getting cultural patterns and stuff like that in there to blend it all out smoothly.These guys are the Turkish Cavalry. With these, we also focused a lot on the patterns and heraldry from the region, so flower-patterns, circles and swirls on the clothes is common. These guys also evolve pretty clearly from medieval armor to modern-looking uniforms, the first guy sports a face mask pretty common in the region at the time, this was a detail we talked a lot about, but decided to go with since it would make him stand out in a good way. The crooked sword is also important for the right feel, culture-wise, but this also changes with the times.edit: in game units use horses, not camelsThis bunch is the Persians, and as you can see, the horses looks somewhat different in persia. Kinda like camels...? o_ÔJoke aside, we wanted at least on of the cavalry cultures to use camels, seeing as camel cavalry was quite a success when we did them for CKII last year. We felt that, out of the three, most research pointed toward the persians being the group best suited for camel cavalry, although sources, as always, varied. As you can see, we went with a lighter, more beduin-look with these units. Level 4 is using a horse though, times change, y'know? For those of you who might wonder why the chainmail rings are so big on all ours units, it's because the game view is zoomed out and, unless you compensate for that a chainmail armor will just end up looking like a grey jersey in game : )As a bonus, I'm adding pictures of the Purple Phoenix Unit Pack , they're situated geographically and culturally close, and since they're just one set of units, I'm not really gonna create a separate thread for them.Sometimes when we design units for games like CKII and EUIV, imagination is as important as historically accurate, the byzantine empire fell like most empires do, but in EUIV, you can kinda change that depending on what happens when you play. Thus, with these we had to think ”What if the byzantine empire did'nt fall, what would their troops look like, how would they evolve” etc. We often combine references from similiar cultures and from the culture in question (and ask ourselvs like, ”how might this cloth pattern or uniform or sword look in 100 years”) when we come up with ”fantasy” cultures like late 18th century byzantines. If you notice the many small half-moon-shaped belt that the first unit has, you can see the same belt-style on level 2, and the same style on level threes shoulders, and on level fours leggings, so we always try to keep some thing consistent through the years. I really like these units, it's always a challenge to create something that didn't exist but still maintaining thethat it did. I really think we nailed that one with these byzantine units : )That's that for this round! If you have any questions about how we research stuff, how we model stuff, how we texture stuff, or just, you know, about whatever, then feel free to ask that and I'll try to answer : )Next time, it'll probably be the Hussars!