Dev Diary: North Sea Germanic Unit Overhaul feature - Insularis Draco mod for Medieval II: Total War: Kingdoms

Hey everyone. Last time we showed you the results of our ambitious Brittonic unit model overhaul. In this Dev Diary I'm going to update you guys on how PythagoreanBeans and me redid the Anglo-Saxon, Frisian and Danish unit models. Their rosters are brand new and we're very happy with how they look.

PythagoreanBeans based his work on assets from Absinthia's excellent models from Wrath of the Norsemen, among other mods. From there he adjusted their outfits and equipment to better fit our much earlier setting (400-500 years! People often lump us together with the rest of the Early Medieval period, lol). We decided we wanted to give the North Sea Germanic peoples a distinct look from the more Southernly Continental Germanic factions, so we gave them a mix of simple Roman-inspired and Vendel-type crested helmets like the Benty Grange ones, lots of facial hair variation, plain and striped cloth, limited fur, most body armour is leather but the elites enjoy chain mail. Nothing lamellar or Steppe-inspired.

I decided to recolour PythagoreanBeans's shield designs because I enjoy giving factions an organic looking colour theme with enough differentiation to make them look varied and not in uniform :) I am of course aware that Dark Age armies did not in fact dress in similar colours but this is a Medieval 2: Total War mod after all and realism is something to work towards while still safeguarding gameplay and a sense of readability throughout every aspect of the game...

Let's just have a look, shall we?