Welcome to the behind-the-scenes look at how we created the units featured in Rise of Nations. Over 500 units were created for the game, ranging from footmen to knights to modern attack helicopters and aircraft carriers. Most of these are firmly rooted in history, for example, there are pikemen, crossbowmen and knights. But as a game that lets players start with just about any ancient civilization, including the Aztecs and the Bantu, and play into the nuclear age, there were times when we had to imagine and guess at what would be appropriate. And on of top this, we had the challenge of making it all look coherent and easy to understand.
 So exactly how many different units are there? Well, there are over a dozen different types of unit lines--heavy infantry, heavy horsemen, bombers, light ships, and so on, and 4 different nationalities: European, Asian, African, and Meso-American. And let's not forget the 8 different Ages in the game, or that some units, like the citizens and militia, can be both male and female! So we had quite a bit of work to do.
We would start our design for each unit with extensive research on the unit's culture and time period, and would then make either a simple sketch or a collage of reference pictures pulled from books and off the web. At this point we would be looking to make sure the unit fit in with other units from the same culture, and also that its role was recognizable--for example, a knight should look much heavier and powerful than a horse archer. For most units this was very straightforward since many of them are historically based.
 But what about... Aztec Knights? Ok, so we had to fudge history a bit with some of the nationalities and speculate what they would have created if they had evolved the proper technology or had access to the necessary resources. So when designing cavalry for the Meso-Americans, who were not known for their horsemanship, we had some fun and tried to come up with something that looked appropriate. Another example is the Chinese Firelance. We know that the Chinese used primitive rockets but there is very little evidence showing what the "rocketeer" looked like, so we just tried to come up with something that looked cool and fit in with the rest of the world.
We also wanted to be sure that the different nationalities had their own flavor. For example, we could have made just one type of musketeer and varied the skin tone, but that would have been boring. So for some units we would tweak the design a bit. A good example of this is the African Musketeer. We tried to make him look like an 18th century musketeer that fought full time in the North African deserts, so we've given him a pith helmet and other gear appropriate for fighting in that climate. Perhaps not strictly historically accurate, but a believable interpretation of what could have been.
 Because each unit is quite small in-game, and since we wanted to be able to show many at a time, they were very simplified. Each foot unit is about 200 polygons or less, each mounted unit 350 or less, and the mechanized units could vary from 150 to 450. Textures were also very small: foot units are 64 by 64 pixels, mounted are 128 by 128, and mechanized are 128 by 128 or sometimes 256 by 256. Generally the modeling and texturing process would take between 2 and 4 days depending on the complexity.
After the unit was modeled and textured it was animated. Each one would have several attack, death, move, and idle animations. The "idle" animations play when the unit is sitting around doing nothing, and were usually the most fun since this is where we could add some character to the units. For example, a modern infantryman might start smoking, or a merchant might have a tussle with his mule, or you might even find an out-of-work peasant lying down on the grass, laying down on the job! Try looking for some more--my favorite is the salute that the Mamelukes, an Egyptian mounted gun unit, performs.
To make the animations as lifelike as possible, we would try to find references for the motions. Sometimes this would be in movies--for example, the movie Braveheart (and this may sound a bit morbid) is an excellent source for horses dying. And of course the reference books by the famous photographer Muybridge are also indispensable.
 At other times however, we took a slightly more creative approach. Need to make an animation of a peasant chopping wood? Well, how about we film the art director whacking a sofa with a putter? It may not be as accurate as motion-capture, but it's far cheaper--we referred to it as "poorman's mo-cap", and found it extremely useful. (Click on thumb to download mpeg, 830kb)
We had a lot of fun making them, and hopefully you will enjoy playing with them. I like to think of them as being little toy soldiers, and the game as a big sandbox. Think of it as army men or action figures for grownups--blow 'em up and have some fun!
Bill Podurgiel
Unit Art Lead
Big Huge Games
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