Every New Castle & Unique Unit Design!! | AoE2: DE

Just gonna say, I really appreciate the extra effort of making a tiny village for each civ in their own biome to show off their theme rather than what most youtubers would do with a big lineup of units on flat green empty background.

The little village vignettes you made to showcase the visual changes were just _chef's kiss_ man! Seaside for water civs, scenario editor mountains for the Georgians, piles of loot for the Cumans, smoking ruins for the Huns. All the little civ-specific aesthetic details just feel so _right_ for a video that's about... well, civ-specific aesthetics, haha. You really went the extra mile with this one, and I'm here for it.

I really have to applaud Ornlu for going the extra mile and creating neat little scenarios for each civ, and giving them their "official" color, for what amounts to maybe like 20-30 seconds worth of film in the end. Probably not worth the effort, but it's little things like these that put you up there with spirit of the law as the best AoE2 content creator.
Overall, I really like all the new castle designs, and the developers really pulled all the stops to give each civ a very detailed and mostly accurate castle. My favs so far are Byzantines, Franks, Celts, Vietnamese, Persians, Turks, Mongols, Huns and Vikings. The elite UU skins probably could have used a bit less bling, but hey, it's definitely easily recognizable in most cases and this is something many people, myself included, have wished for for ages, and they definitely delivered overall, so I don't want to complain.

36:10 - Shield on the old Leitis design is coat of arms of Grand Duke Gediminas (Jogaila's and Vytautas' grandfather), used by his subsequent rulers. The new shield design is a cross themed coat of arms, which was adapted after Jogaila's dynasty came to power. Its origin is associated with the baptism of Jogaila.

The eyes on the elite turtle ship. They will hunt me.

As soon as this DLC comes out, I'm gonna start a new playthrough of all the campaigns and historical battles in the game (including Return of Rome and Chonicles content) in chronological order.
It's going to be a fun ride to go all the way from Stone Age Egypt to Admiral Yi's triumph at the Battle of Noryang Point, and an excellent way to appreciate all the new civ changes.

"And they will be pyjamaing their way to victory" xDDD
Yes it's brass helmet, and brass arm-rings too ! Unaccurate unit, but very accurate details, even the circles on the shield are pretty accurate for the unit itself. Celtic warrior style totally confirmed.

Just to get it out there for people who want to blame the Chinese for demanding the choice of 3 Kingdoms, the Chinese community are basically either disappointed or utterly confused by the DLC. Instead of showing probably one of the most interesting period in medieval East Asia with a Song campaign, a period where not a lot of game touches upon, they went with the lazy, stereotypical, and done til death choice of 3 Kingdoms, and just as if they were trolling us, added Jurchen, which were historically a hunter/farmer civilization rather than a nomadic cavalry civ, and Khitans, which were related to the Mongols, but not the same, but none the less nomadic, not infantry heavy at all, and somehow gave the historically Tangut castle and Tangut elite siege camel to the Khitan.
To quote one of the most upvoted comments in the Chinese community, in classic Chinese sarcasm fashion: Nice work, don't ever do that again.

fun fact for telling the difference between Aztec and Mayan Pyramids: Mayan Pyramids usually have nine steps, Aztec pyramids have a less standard number of steps. Aztec Pyramids often have two temples on top instead of one temple, I don't think any Mayan pyramids have two temples.

43:20 Is not an eagle, I think is the fravashi, an ancient Zoroastrian simbol, typical of the sassanid empire

I dont even play this game anymore, but man do I love when game devs go back and give love to existing things and upgrade them. So cool to see the many new designs

RIP the civs that only got castle age UUs with less drip lol. But man, the new models look amazing. I do think it's funny that China has been around for thousands of years, yet the only part that ever gets featured in games is like a 50 year period of the 3 kingdoms era.

The Franks Castle is based off the Château de Chambord which features in The Saboteur a game set in Nazi-Occupied Paris & its outskirts during WWII.

I love how the devs gave every unique unit much more drip, and the castles look cool too!

Love it love it love it. Each castle represents so well the identities of the civs they belong to - even the civs that are a mashup of various groups. Really well done by the devs and ofc very well presented in the video!

49:42 "Again, who doesn't love capes?"
Edna Mode.

TIMECODES
Notes: C = castle, M = monastery, m = monks, r = regional units
All of them has new UU so I won’t mark it.
1:15 Arminians / m
2:16 Aztecs / (uu only)
3:10 Bengalis / m
4:16 Berbers / Cm
6:05 Bohemians / (uu only)
6:51 Britons / (uu only)
7:44 Bulgarians / Cm
9:12 Burgundians / (uu only)
9:46 Burmese / Cm
10:54 Byzantine / CMm
12:26 Celts / C
13:29 Chinese / Cmr
14:48 Cumans / CMm
16:07 Dravidians / m
17:48 Ethiopians / CMm
19:25 Franks / C
20:46 Goths / C
22:08 Georgians / m
22:49 Gujaras / m
23:56 Hindustanis / m
25:34 Huns / CMm
26:52 Incas / C
28:33 Italians / m
29:33 Japanese / m
30:18 *JURCHENS* / CMmr
31:30 *KHITANS* / CMmr and pasture (they _are_ without honour)
32:58 Khmer / m
34:10 Koreans / Cmr
35:34 Lithuanian / C
36:48 Magyars / C
47:41 Malays / Cm
39:01 Malians / m
40:14 Mayans / C
41:16 Mongols / CMm
42:16 Persians / Cm
43:34 Polish / (uu only)
44:19 Portuguese / Cm
45:38 Romans / M
46:13 Saracens / m
46:55 *SHU* / Cmr
48:05 Sicilians / M
49:01 Slavs / m
50:01 Spanish / Cm
51:04 Tartars / m
52:27 Teutons / (uu only)
53:13 Turks / Cm
54:15 Vietnamese / Cm
55:14 Vikings / C
56:27 *WEI* / Cmr
57:22 *WU* / Cmr

21:09 The Goth castle seems inspired on various Visigothic _churches_ in Spain and Portugal, mixed with castle-like features like crenellations, tall walls and narrow windows. The round, domed tower seems reminiscent of the Gothic wonder (the Mausoleum of Theodoric).
The shape of the main entrance, the horseshoe arches on the bottom-left corner of the building and the shape of the rooftops give it away:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visigothic_art_and_architecture

Don't think for a second that the effort you put into crafting all the different mini-towns showing off the aesthetic of each of the civs went unappreciated and unnoticed. Also, wow this game always has such beautiful architectural design

The double barred cross on the Elite Leitis is the Jagiellonian Cross. The trident/crown design of the Lithuanian civ icon is the Shield of Gediminas.

The architecture in this game is always so beautiful

The Celtic stepped roofs are a reference to Scottish "croft" houses which were very simple dwellings prevalent in remote parts of Scotland and the isles, and also it was common for general thatched roofs

I love how they go for "Rumah Gadang" for the Malay's castle, it's a home built in Western Sumatra. Plus the Malays have a Buddhist monks is fine, since Srivijaya was a Buddhist kingdom. Majapahit also had Buddhist followers (Borobudur being a Buddhist Temple), and their Wonder (Candi Kalasan) is also a Buddhist Temple. Although Candi Prambanan is the largest temple, and it's Hindu's during the Old Mataram Kingdom.
The Vietnamese Castle closely resembles the Hue Citadel.
The Korean Castle is based on Hwaseong Castle.
The Jurchen, I think has some Great Wall elements in the Castle's design.
My gripe was that the East Asian Temples all resemble Shinto Shrine with the Torii and Dotaku Bells. I just hope the Chinese will have the octagon pagodas, the Koreans have the stone pagoda, and the Viet have their own distinct temple's architecture. And also an Eastern Catholic Church will be a great addition for the Poles and Magyars.

43:20 That symbol is of Ahura Mazda. The deity of the Zoroastrian religion, which the Sassanids primarily were worshippers of, prior to the Islamic conquests.

I still think the throwing axemen having giant double headed axes is ridiculous. And Incas should probably get their own complete architecture set. Apart from that this is all very pretty and i appreciate the work they put into making the fancy new models.

I thought you were going to use the same set of buildings in the editor and just change the civ, but the fact that you went all out with 50(!) little towns is amazing. This video is great!

7:35 "I think that's a shield." Technically - looks to me like a buckler, which a small shield / punching weapon.

The Japanese style architecture for every East Asian civ still throws me off so much, especially the Torii gate in the monestary 😭😭...

This delivers so much of what I always wished AoE II to be.

41:18 I find Ornlu the wolf, in the right.
Nice 😊🐺
Lovely video from start to finish!

At least this doesn't disappoint! All of them are super cool

Top 3 definitely (in no particular order): Teutonic Knight oozing drip, Samurai banner is just *chef's kiss* and they finally gave my boy Janissary his hat :D

Thank you Ornlu for the extremely high effort content - great video, exactly what I wanted to see

This is clearly where most of the work went into. DLC was an afterthought. And I was seriously thinking your Three Kingdoms vid was an April Fools...

37:48 it's mixed architecture from west sumatran style (the horned roof on the sides) and North sumatran (the front roof). This can be seen in last Rajendra scenario outro

O M G Ornlu! you again proved why you are the best AoE II content creator

Love the showcase and all the new designs.
Also love that you build a place for every civ, to show how it fits together. Lots of work, but really nice to see so compiled into a video

thanks for putting in the effort to produce a video that shows exactly what I wanted to know in a "compact" form

It looks like going the extra mile paid off. Most comments praises the little villages. And I am 100% on board! Fully worth my hour.

This is awesome. I don’t play anymore but this game was a big part of my childhood. Thanks for showing how the game has evolved

The Armenian monk won't be using the Cyrillic script because Armenians use their own script

As a Byzantine main, I am satisfied.
The architecture and artstyle is coherent, and it looks appropriate. I certainly like the new castle design more than the Italian one.

2 bridges on the Wei castle is a reference to the Bronze Bird Terrace, which was built in Wei and contained two bridges, and the Shu castile looks like a combination of Zhuge Liang's shrine and Baidi Castile, where Liu Bei died.
Jurchen castle, I have no idea where they got their design from, doesn't look like anything from northeastern China.
Khitan "castle" is straight up based on a Tangut castle though, kind of lazy. Actual Khitan castles and settlements are quite interesting. Khitan basically practiced racial segregation at early part of their empire, where although the Han populace and ethnic Khitan lived in the same city, the city was usually divided in half, with most Han Chinese populating on one side, and Khitan on the other. It is actually quite easy for archaeologists to tell if a city ruin is Liao era, because Khitans insisted on living in tents, even within walled cities, you have this distinct city ruin where there's only building foundation on one side of the city. Too bad they did not go with a design that reflects that, instead we get this merger, which does suggest to me at one point they did plan on releasing the Khitan and Tangut as separate civs, and go for the Song era campaign, and half way through designing, someone pulled the plug on that and decided to go for the more stereotypical 3 Kingdoms. At the time they already have some of the Khitan units and mechanics designed, and Tangut architecture as well as camel catapult designed, so they kind of decided not to "waste" anything and just stitched the two together.
Which is pretty ridiculous considering Khitans were related to Mongols, as one of the steppe tribes, and Tanguts mostly lived around modern day Gansu and Qinghai, were closely related to the Qiang people, and by extent, Tibetans. If anything the Tanguts would've been closer related to the Han Chinese than to Khitans. At least from a linguistic perspective, Tibetan, Qiang, and Chinese all belong to the Sino-Tibetan language group, and the Khitan language might be dead, but it was determined to be related to the Mongolian language group. One theory is that the modern day Sherpa is the descendants of the Tanguts, who migrated west after Western Xia was destroyed by Genghis Khan.

Beautifully made video! I really appreciate your attention to details in putting the civs in their “natural habitat”, and in giving them the “civ colors”. One minor suggestion - as a descendant of the Jurchens myself 😊 - the natural habitat of the Jurchens 30:20 is not prairie, but forest and snow
Also, we missed the grenadiers ❤

I think the Khitans are more of a Buddhist civ than the og Chinese so it is a weird choice to give them Shamans.

I really appreciated the different ambience for all of the various civs... really nice touch

28:33 - nobody expects the spanish inquisition

Cool vid. Just an FYI, the thing on the Persian War Elephant isn't a "Sassanid emblem" like you mentioned, its the Farvahar, which is basically a religious icon of Zoroastrianism and goes back to at least the Achameneids. The elblem on the side of the castle is the Sassanid emblem. So its interesting that this civ has zoroastrian, sassanid and Islamic things all mashed up together which in real life would have been very antagonistic to one another.

Super appreciate the vignettes as well. Thank you for the effort

I LOVE the genoese Xbow's elite upgrade. It really suits their role as the true heavy archer of the game, definitely my favorite elite reskin, especially because it shows growth without gold.

Wow the effort you put into this video is amazing!
Reflecting each nation with its own atmosphere and creating an environment is truly impressive. Well done it's an excellent video !

Thanks for showcasing these! The elite units are so sharp looking especially the infantry ones and war elephants!
And for years I’ve wanted unique castles but damn they went hard!!

Such amazing detail. Definitely helps each civ stand out

i just hope this game stays my whole life i love it so much

7:34 Yes it’s a shield. At the time period, archers would sometimes carry these small round shield and a sword in case they need to get into close combat.

25 years to get monk appearance upgrades is so absolutely incredible 🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳 this is a work of love and now we truly can say that we have the greatest RTS of all time.

Good gods, the French castle is a lot!
Reminiscent of the Burgundian one in shape as well, nice, nice.

This is exactly the kind of video I was hoping to see about it! : D

Probably the best looking Civ overview video. Love it.

you got it Ornlu.. Three Kingdoms... spot on... I know that stretches the timeframe abit hard, but we cannot complain about all this new content... thank you

I love how you made a small base with accurate surroundings and buildings (Gaia ones too!) for each civ!

Love the way you put the environment and more castles next to every castle to give then a unic context 😍
By the way, my favorites are Berber's and mayan 😍

Thanks for the awesome overview. This and stuff like attack animation syncing feels already so natural, I couldn't even remember how it's been without it :D

hey, another banger of a video! although you missed that the turtle ship's eyes are now the player color (with red looking much more menacing), and the ship now has teeth! as a big fan of the Koreans I love their new designs for both the ship and the wagon.
edit: also the neck of the turtle ship is armored in the elite version for some reason

The Jurchens' castles were actually designed based on China's Ming Dynasty Great Wall and beacon towers. The Jurchen icon originated from the Marshal's Flag of the Jin Dynasty - the [Five-Direction Eight-Trigram Flag]. In fact, this was originally one of the traditional imperial flags of the Chinese emperor. When the Jurchens saw the Khitan army using this flag in the war with Khitan, they took it and it later became the Jurchen's Marshal's Flag.
The Khitans' camel catapults and castles actually belonged to the Poxi Army and Black Water City of the Tanguts of Western Xia, not the Khitans'. The production team got them mixed up. The Khitan's unique unit, the Liao Dao, is based on a Liao Dynasty two-handed sword unearthed in China. It is obviously used to break armor. In fact, the weapons of various Chinese forces at that time were very heavy. That was because the war between Liao, Jin and Song was the peak of armored warfare in the ancient world.And the Khitan icon is actually a bronze mirror from the late Tang Dynasty.....

That Kamayuk cape is competing with teutonic knights for best drip

Amazing video, so much time and effort. Can’t believe you missed the red eye on the Turtle Ship and the striped lance of the Magyar Hussar. Requires a full re-do 😂

I liked your showcase more than spirit of the law’s. To really show off the new models you need the ultra hd graphics. I didn’t have access to the game until recently when I bought my new pc so videos like this really help show people what’s new.

This reminds me of the story of when CS devs made the sound bit for a gun in the game heftier and more boomy and the general impression changed among the players to the gun actually became more powerful. I bet elite unique units will be more respected from a game play perspective with all this bling - at least for a while.

Thank you for all the hard work on this video; you certainly looked at a lot of gold trimming!

Great video! I also like the low key coldness with the three kingdoms civs. I support that!

35:30 you forgot the RED EYE on the elite turtle ship that's frickin' coolman

36:15 the basic unit has columns of Gediminids, the first great dynasty of Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The main heroes of Lithuanian campaign, Algirdas and Kestutis, are Gediminids.
Upgraded unit has the cross of Jagiellons. Algirdas' son was Jogaila, who after convestion to catholicism and marriage with queen Jadwiga, became king of Poland and initiate Jagiellon dynasty, cadet branch of Gediminids (who ruled in Poland-Lithuania until 16th century).

There must be a lot of work behind this video. Good work, Ornlu!

Very cool video, I like the "dioramas" you did to present. Ultimately, I hope I'll have fun with this one, once the shock has passed.

A net positive to historical accuracy, I'd say. Appreciate your effort presenting it fully!

41:56 gosh that silk pattern on the cape

Man that new Jaguar Warrior looks AMAZING!!!!!! This coming from someone in Mexico that enjoys Mesoamerican history it's great that it definitely looks more like they would've look in real life, although I'm gonna miss a bit the aggressive idle pose of the original one lol

You really feel Ornlu's excitement with the patch when you hear him say "awesome" 28 times.

It was very nice of you to make these villages and small towns for better presentation of these new civ fashions and styles.
Monasteries as I have noticed are mostly renamed or rescaled existing in-game assets. Bohemians, Magyars, Poles and Lithuanians could use more catholic looking monastery indeed. Onion style roofs, reministing of russian Orthodox churches, weren't used in those lands until Baroque style came to fashion. Even then they look different

36:10 Lithuanians did have the religious transition You are talking about, but majority of their territory was inhabited by the Rus, who were Orthodox since the time of the Kievan Rus. A.k.a. Lithuanians were a minority in their own country.
Edit: 43:20 It's The Farāvahār, one of the main Zoroastrian symbols
Edit 2: 48:40 It looks more like a Scale Armour.

The pandas in the Chinese village was where I paused the video to hit the Like button! ❤ well done

Good job, that was a lot of work!
...also lot of work for the devs, super impressed by the effort, really love the upgrades and how they still managed to keep and capture the essence of each unit!

Awesome video that clearly had a lot of thought and effort put into it. My favorite castles were Huns, Chinese, and mongols. So glad all the East Asian cubs have unique designs instead of a Japanese castle

Ooh, the eastern orthodox monk looks great.

The glorious elite teutonic knight helmet though.

Gread job bro, new skins are freaking awessome!

I love the new teuton knight look, it's abosolute badass and no longer unsheat and sheat his sword when attacking, keeps his sword out untill change target or has to move, since they are my favourite unit I loved both features, the new skin and animations (and ofc the +10hp buff)

Amazing Effort to show all those civilizations!

This video was amazing! Thanks for all the effort you put into this. I enjoyed this very much.

I think Elite Cannon Galleons have an updated skin (bit of an emblem on the backside), not too sure about this since they already had a different cannon from their non elite version, so would love to be corrected about that. Also, really nice video! Love the work that went to make this.

All of the changes are fabulous and logical. Nice details..! Loved it ❤️
But, the britons' castle (7:02) should have been modified as it looks ordinary and smaller than most other castles.
Again, that banner on the Samurai unit (29:56) feels a bit odd to me.
Anyway, it's a huge update, can't wait for it. And a great video, always a big fan of you..!

i dont like the overuse of gold to look "elite" but its not as overused as i expected it to be, the only thing that looks bad is the elite tarkan torch but everything else is great, really appreciate that they do these kinds of updates. hopefully one day we'll get regional skins for regular units like spearmen, archers, men at arms etc too, but this was already more than i had ever expected.

Technically the armenians aren't orthodox, in fact they have their own armenian church.

Excellent display, love the attention to detail!

5:40 the AoE2 timeline now goes back to 200ad and is older than Islam itself

About Lithuanians - the symbol changes from Columns of Gediminas to Jagiellon cross.

Those red eyes on the elite turtle ship is actually pretty sick. And agreed on the war wagon

the backgrounds where realy unic for all the civs, great work. i just want for aoe2 what aoe4 has all a regional unit skins for all units

AoE II DE my all time fav game❤💪😍