BullGod Unit Icons Project v.0.48 (updated 6/Apr/2014)

[Destraex]

Please no, that's stupid. Roman's aren't what you think they are, nor are "barbarians".

"Barbarians"... what the hell is defined as barbarians?

Buddy. Honestly. Barbarians are what the romans called pretty much anybody although they had some respect for the greeks. But you know what I mean now don't you?
The Romans considered barbarian most typically the Celts\Gauls\Germans\Dacians etc.
Of course you do. Or are you being facetious, pretending you don't know which unit cards I refer to or what I meant. I meant no disrespect to your
Celts\Gauls\Germans\Dacians etc cultures. But their armies fit more a personal individual stance than a unit like attention stance.

Romans drilled and marched. They did not stand around slouching or with style. They acted like a unit. All standing together.
It may be stereotypical but it's the best we have from the historical perspective.

That was my suggestion. Currently the Romans look a little pansy like the way they slouch with their hips swaying. Just my opinion.

Just my opinion. No need to get upset about it or to consider me ignorant. I have 50 or more books here on the shelf just about the ancient period.
I probably have read somewhere about the bias Roman consideration of the word barbarian. BUT from the Roman perspective is where I was coming from with the unit cards!!!!!
Do you think centurions would let their men slouch around with some sort of gang land cool face on?

Apart from that different poses for the romans would give them a differentiating factor that would go well depicted on the cards.

Now tell me what you mean by the Romans are not what I think?

Bullgod the romans pretty much were toy soldiers. If you look at things like trajans column you get more of a battle pose. We know a lot about discipline and drill in the roman army. I seriously doubt artists that made statues for gardens did.

[Biggus Splenus]

Buddy. Honestly. Barbarians are what the romans called pretty much anybody although they had some respect for the greeks. But you know what I mean now don't you?
The Romans considered barbarian most typically the Celts\Gauls\Germans\Dacians etc.
Of course you do. Or are you being facetious, pretending you don't know which unit cards I refer to or what I meant. I meant no disrespect to your
Celts\Gauls\Germans\Dacians etc cultures. But their armies fit more a personal individual stance than a unit like attention stance.

Romans drilled and marched. They did not stand around slouching or with style. They acted like a unit. All standing together.
It may be stereotypical but it's the best we have from the historical perspective.

That was my suggestion. Currently the Romans look a little pansy like the way they slouch with their hips swaying. Just my opinion.

Just my opinion. No need to get upset about it or to consider me ignorant. I have 50 or more books here on the shelf just about the ancient period.
I probably have read somewhere about the bias Roman consideration of the word barbarian. BUT from the Roman perspective is where I was coming from with the unit cards!!!!!
Do you think centurions would let their men slouch around with some sort of gang land cool face on?

Apart from that different poses for the romans would give them a differentiating factor that would go well depicted on the cards.

Now tell me what you mean by the Romans are not what I think?

Bullgod the romans pretty much were toy soldiers. If you look at things like trajans column you get more of a battle pose. We know a lot about discipline and drill in the roman army. I seriously doubt artists that made statues for gardens did.

I don't even know what to think of this entire post... and the fact that your using re-enactment photographs to prove a point about ancient Roman discipline is.... mute.

Bottom line; barbarian doesn't mean anything, you can't catagorise the entire European people (excluding Romans and Hellenes) into a single group.

And depicting the Romans in their unit cards as straight standing toy soldiers will look stupid (and I'm sure their centurions won't complain about their unit cards...). I like what BullGod has done, and I'm sure others do too. Why should he spend his time redoing them if they're already great, and just you don't like them?

[Destraex]

Mate honestly your amazing. Get off your high horse.
It was just a suggestion and an opinion. Not a criticism.

The romans catagorised barbarians not me. I have already said that is where I was coming from.
MOST people get that.

The re-enactors were to demonstrate what I was talking about not some sort of proof of how soldiers stand in formation.
Nobody really knows that. We do know they were well drilled. This makes me doubt they slouched around. Again just my opinion.

It is a valid way of depicting them and is shown on the likes of trajan's column. Just would have been nice to see them depicted as the machine they were as a differentiator to
most other in game factions less disciplined individualistic combat style as (I am not going to list them all and so will simply refer to them as barbarians) most barbarian factions had according to what we know.

You don't have to think anything of my post. It was not aimed at you.
Bullgod responded to it in a reasonable manner without the pure arrogance and pomp you are displaying.

This is more what I had in mind. These guys have a classical pose but less individual and more military organisational.
Just with the leg less exaggerated so that the soldier is standing a little straighter. I just cannot imagine a roman soldier standing in the slouch position while the enemy approached.

Guy on the right and guy in the middle


Again it was just my opinion and intended as constructive feedback to the author. Not as criticism.
I like the icon set a lot and understand that it is historical according to a lot of ART of the time. Just some personal preference and opinion.

[Biggus Splenus]

Mate honestly your amazing. Get off your high horse.
It was just a suggestion and an opinion. Not a criticism.

The romans catagorised barbarians not me. I have already said that is where I was coming from.
MOST people get that.

The re-enactors were to demonstrate what I was talking about not some sort of proof of how soldiers stand in formation.
Nobody really knows that. We do know they were well drilled. This makes me doubt they slouched around. Again just my opinion.

It is a valid way of depicting them and is shown on the likes of trajan's column. Just would have been nice to see them depicted as the machine they were as a differentiator to
most other in game factions less disciplined individualistic combat style as (I am not going to list them all and so will simply refer to them as barbarians) most barbarian factions had according to what we know.

You don't have to think anything of my post. It was not aimed at you.
Bullgod responded to it in a reasonable manner without the pure arrogance and pomp you are displaying.

ok it was a misunderstanding because you weren't specific and posted pointless pictures, no need to get worked up.

[BullGod]

There was a post somewhere, where I described what was the design plan at the beginning and it was based on Roman murals and mosaics.
That's the picture that inspired me (and first version of "plebs" next to it).

The idea was to take one pose as a template and simply paste uniforms, weapons over it. This would have been quick and should work (Drawing was supposed to be in this little "naive" style too).
But this idea evolved a little, I've changed the pose slightly for spear armed units at some point and even more for javelinmen (Also I've stared to put more work and details into them, so this whole "quick way" of doing it has gone down... somewhere)
And that's the main reason why Barbarians and Romans have the same pose, actually.

The idea to portray Romans in more "disciplined" manner is interesting and worth thinking about. I have doubts if this would work, and not look unnatural (my first though was of army of lead toy soldiers), but It's worth checking out. Not now though. I'm pleased with Romans at this moment and don't want to change them again as this would only prolong the whole process, that is slow enough. At some point I'll be looking at everything again and deciding if I want to change anything. Be sure I'll remember that suggestion then (like all others).

And even if they don't look super disciplined, I think we can all agree that no soldier stood at attention 24/7

[Biggus Splenus]

I like the way your Romans look at the moment, and I don't think you need to do them a 3rd time :O

[ToonTotalWar]

I like the way your Romans look at the moment, and I don't think you need to do them a 3rd time :O

I totally agree...now lets move onto the other factions that need to be completed. Great job as always Bulldog +reps

[Tenerife_Boy]

Agree with Splenyi and Toon

[smoesville]

I like the way your Romans look at the moment, and I don't think you need to do them a 3rd time :O

I'd agree with this, though mostly because i want the greeks to be finished soon but also because they look really good and how one person views them isn't as important as how the mods creator wants to portray them (regardless of historical sources or otherwise).

@Splenyi
The word is actually "moot", not mute, moot means having little or no practical relevance, mute means to silence (usually in reference to tvs and such).

[BullGod]

Nobody is able to convince me to do anything I don't like, or don't want to, with those icons, guys.
But criticism is good and I very much appreciate it.
One person's view on things can be sometimes very limited. There are things you didn't considered and you might not even realize that there is another point of view on the subject, until someone pushes you towards it.
Let's take this pose for example. I've explained how I've chosen it. Now, after all this time, I just don't think about it anymore. I just make another unit using the same pose - I follow the pattern selected before (well, sometimes I get bored and try to change things then). It might be that without anyone pointing that out I might have a look at those icons a year from now, with fresh perspective (maybe with more experience) and think: "damn, I should've used another pose for Romans". When someone is suggesting something now (whatever that suggestion might be), it forces me to take a step back, take a good look at what I've done with that new perspective in mind and evaluate it again. I don't have to agree, it might be that in the end all will remain the same, but I'll have broader perspective and my decision will be even more conscious.

Sometimes, when someone is making a suggestion that involves changing a lot of things, my first instinctive reaction is rejection. I'm instinctively angry, because I've put a lot of work in something, and this criticism means I would need to do it again. And I saw people who get discouraged completely after one critical reaction. But the truth is, that very rarely something really good is created from scratch and first version is so brilliant that it doesn't need corrections. Many famous paintings have been worked on for years and repainted many times, before it was considered finished. Sometimes it was never considered that.

That is why I consider this project WIP and welcome all thoughts on the subject.

No update today, because I spend too much time posting instead of making icons
Tomorrow though.

[General Grievous]

Dude,

Thank you for your work.
it's increadible how your icons change campaign map ambiance. I like them and can not wait until all units are done!!!

[fenrir]

Hi Bullgod, I've been editing and tweaking some of your Icons to temporarily fill the few gaps in the Greek roster since I play Macedon and it annoys me to hell to see the vanilla unit cards mixed in with your beautiful ones. Would it be okay for me to share them here just as a temporary fix for other Hellenophiles here?
Sample


As you can see they were rather poorly done (amature photoshop artist that I am) but I think it would serve as a temporary fix until you can give us better ones

[Pachinko]

Its pretty damn good!

[Sir_Pee_Alot]

Thx,s guys now i miss my daily update,s .

[Solar]

Whoah! This is beautiful! A Huge undertaking (what with there being 700+ units in the game), but the results are amazing. Great art.

[Destraex]

There was a post somewhere, where I described what was the design plan at the beginning and it was based on Roman murals and mosaics.
That's the picture that inspired me (and first version of "plebs" next to it).

The idea was to take one pose as a template and simply paste uniforms, weapons over it. This would have been quick and should work (Drawing was supposed to be in this little "naive" style too).
But this idea evolved a little, I've changed the pose slightly for spear armed units at some point and even more for javelinmen (Also I've stared to put more work and details into them, so this whole "quick way" of doing it has gone down... somewhere)
And that's the main reason why Barbarians and Romans have the same pose, actually.

The idea to portray Romans in more "disciplined" manner is interesting and worth thinking about. I have doubts if this would work, and not look unnatural (my first though was of army of lead toy soldiers), but It's worth checking out. Not now though. I'm pleased with Romans at this moment and don't want to change them again as this would only prolong the whole process, that is slow enough. At some point I'll be looking at everything again and deciding if I want to change anything. Be sure I'll remember that suggestion then (like all others).

And even if they don't look super disciplined, I think we can all agree that no soldier stood at attention 24/7

Thanks for the response Bullgod. I am using your icons and they look great in game.
Don't change them just for me. Feedback was really just for the sake of feedback. Although I did bookmark a whole bunch of primary evidence last night in some of my texts.
I suspect (and so do a lot of historians) that roman soldiers depicted especially for trajans column were "posing" for artists, thus the classical "poses". Trajans column especially iirc is suspected to
have been praetorians posing.

Splenyi. Good response. I have now sent you a defensive alliance request

[ToonTotalWar]

Whoah! This is beautiful! A Huge undertaking (what with there being 700+ units in the game), but the results are amazing. Great art.

Nowhere near 700 units! most units are replicated and most UI cards use replicated throughout

[Barkhorn1x]

Nowhere near 700 units! most units are replicated and most UI cards use replicated throughout

Indeed but a large undertaking none the less.

[VINC.XXIII]

oh very nice! (particulary enjoyed the part on Camillean romans and the samnite-aka Socii I guess)

[Sarissofoi]

BTW. If anyone can use current BullDog unit icons to make temporally replacement(even with no modification just basic sword/spear/missile icon) for vanillia icons it will be great.
Just can't stand basic icons. Just can't.