Can we please change the Han flags back?

Sky_sweeper · September 2020

I thought the flags seemed a bit boring before, but the new ones just look... Bad. There's no variation between Major and Minor factions now, and the flags seem a lot flatter, and have really ugly color variations (main example would be Liu Bei's faction banner). Can we please get the option to use the old faction flags for the Han/Yellow Turban factions?

It's also broken all of the flag variation mods and it's making me a bit crazy because it looked a lot better with the mod, ngl.

34EasyCo · September 2020

i agree.. Ill have to wait for the Mods

united84 · September 2020

I dont know but I like the new flags more.
It seems it got more definition, perhaps they increase the resolution for the flags just like what they did with the unit cards.

But I agree with the need to differentiate between the minor and major factions.
Perhaps the flags should change based on faction ranks.

Like a King or Emperor ranked faction should have yellow borders on their flags (courtesy of the manchu banner system).
A duke could have silver borders and some decors on the outer borders.
Marquis would have some decors on their flags.

Low rank factions would just have plain flags.

LESAMA · September 2020

Agreed and give the bandits a more distinct one. Looks a little bit silly that they have a perfect clean banner

Misaka_Complex · September 2020

The new flags look terrible in my opinion, we should have the option to change them back.

Rasmus242 · September 2020

I think the new flags look way better. But hey, def a taste thing and I can see how someone might want the old subdued earth tones back and the minor flag did look pretty cool but also felt weird when they were special cased.

Sky_sweeper · September 2020

Rasmus242 said:
I think the new flags look way better. But hey, def a taste thing and I can see how someone might want the old subdued earth tones back and the minor flag did look pretty cool but also felt weird when they were special cased.

I get that some people like the new look too, but to me it just looks really basic and the chosen colors for a lot of the factions look really ugly now, like liu bei. I loved the vibrant gold of liu bei and the disntict blue of kong rong. Now they all look very matte and just... unappealing.

And i understand the criticism of the triangle minor flags, but I used a mod that caused units to use mixed flags, and it made them look SO much better. Now none of those mods work and i think we've lost the triangle flags all together. They were also useful for distinguishing between playable and non-playable factions.

Maxim1lian · September 2020

Why did they change them at all? I myself have been looking for a mod since yesterday that would return the old colors of flags and factions. I know there is a mod that returns Lü Bu to white, I wrote to the author of the mod, but he will see what can be done, but does not promise anything

Ares101 · September 2020

They obiously aimed at the traditional colours etablished bei Koeis Romance of the Three Kingdom series which has Cao Cao blue, Sun Quan red and Liu Bei green.

I can live with the new colours although i also don't like the Liu Bei colour. The Sun faction colour is definitly an improvement because i mostly didn't play that faction because the yellow/grey was just plain ugly. Also a bit of a disappointment is the lame colour for Ma Teng. Otherwise i am okey.

What would have been a problem is Liu Bei's old flag next to the flag of the main Nanman Warlord since they had the same colour pattern.

Sky_sweeper · September 2020

Ares101 said:
They obiously aimed at the traditional colours etablished bei Koeis Romance of the Three Kingdom series which has Cao Cao blue, Sun Quan red and Liu Bei green.

I can live with the new colours although i also don't like the Liu Bei colour. The Sun faction colour is definitly an improvement because i mostly didn't play that faction because the yellow/grey was just plain ugly. Also a bit of a disappointment is the lame colour for Ma Teng. Otherwise i am okey.

What would have been a problem is Liu Bei's old flag next to the flag of the main Nanman Warlord since they had the same colour pattern.

Yeah, not all of the changes are bad, but a lot of them are. Liu Bei shouldn't be white... and Ma Teng is really boring now. And the yellow turban and minor faction flags just look flat and ugly now. The triangles weren't great, but they were at least distinctive enough to tell who was a major faction and who's a minor one. now they're all squares and I can't tell who's who.

like you said the colors would clash with the nan-man with their old colors, but that just means Liu Bei should have been made green to begin with.

sEcOnDbOuToFiNsAnItY · September 2020

These changes have a lot of good and bad to my nitpicky attention to detail eye.

On the one hand, the old banners had actually ended up being two slightly different types of square (basically one with more or less exact squares and one with wider rectangles). So this new refresh makes all the Han banners much, much more cohesive. Many of the colours and shapes are also crisper now, and there's some really nice detailing in place.

On the other, as people above have noted, the loss of the non-playable signifier triangle banners is quite a pity since it was a really lovely bit of visual design - though form a modding standpoint there's now oodles and oodles more assets of banners to chop and swap parts with the playable faction banners.

I do also lament the loss of the extra long tassels above and below the main banner proper.

So far as colours go, it's very much a mixed bunch. There are some definite winners, like Cao Cao and Liu Biao, who both have really nice colour schemes in the new and old versions, and I'm genuinely torn which one I'd rather they have. Especially Liu Biao, the old orange and the new yellow/cyan are both sublime and pop so nicely. Several of the Yellow Turbans in Mandate of Heaven could be a bit drab and they now have a lot more vibrance to them as well, and the Eight Princes playables are really gorgeous renditions too.

But equally, there are some losers too - Sun Jian/Ce is now way too similar to Lü Bu's colours and just isn't as nice as the old scheme (though I do still feel Lü Bu would be better off inverted like in the World Betrayed Trailer that ended up being given to his civil war mirror faction, more in line with his old triangle banner), there sadly hasn't been an effort to differentiate Jian and Ce into different banners/colours, the Jin empire loses its identity to become yet another generic red, and Yuan Shu's loss of his utterly villainous colour scheme is very unfortunate with his much duller new look.

There are also some factions that are a bit naff on both new and old - Yuan Shao is fairly drab brown instead of a more majestic gold or yellow (not that brown is a bad colour for a faction banner, just I feel it's ill-fitting to Yuan Shao specifically), and the Han (NPC and MoH Emperor PC) banners very sadly lack any Han blue or purple both before and after.

What I do think would be productive in a future update, is if CA approaches this like the unit cards and implements an option to have old or new style banners. Colours is probably a step too far given how the db works for that, but as a second best ideal, old or new schemes could be repurposed as successor banners for unique characters - Sun Ce getting the new Sun banner while Sun Jian has the old one, Liu Biao and Huang Zhong get the old and new Liu Biao colour schemes respectively (or the other way around), stuff like that - and more generally I'd greatly welcome all or at least most of the unique characters getting the Lü Bu treatment of having their own banner/colours if they take over a faction.

This isn't the first time CA has revised colour schmes across a game - they did it before with Rome 2's Emperor Edition revamp and there were winners and losers there too. I do welcome the fact that CA is willing to make these sorts of creative changes, and hope they take this sort of feedback on board.

For those wanting a return to the old banners, I am looking at making a mod to that effect, but due to how the banners work it might be a bit of a heffalump in terms of file size. No promises, we'll see how it goes when I revert to the pre-DLC build and poke around in the files. I don't know if I'll actually use the mod myself, but I'm happy to make it if it doesn't trouble me too much since some people definitely do want it.

AdmiralJello · September 2020

sEcOnDbOuToFiNsAnItY said:

For those wanting a return to the old banners, I am looking at making a mod to that effect, but due to how the banners work it might be a bit of a heffalump in terms of file size. No promises, we'll see how it goes when I revert to the pre-DLC build and poke around in the files. I don't know if I'll actually use the mod myself, but I'm happy to make it if it doesn't trouble me too much since some people definitely do want it.

Yeah, it depends on how you do the mod.

The lowest impact way -- but greatest file size -- is physically replacing the new flags with the old flags.

The highest impact -- but lowest file size -- is just editing factions_tables and pointing back to the old flags. But that's awful for compatibility purposes.

sEcOnDbOuToFiNsAnItY · September 2020

AdmiralJello said:

The highest impact -- but lowest file size -- is just editing factions_tables and pointing back to the old flags. But that's awful for compatibility purposes.

Since I can't find much of any hints of the old files, I seriously doubt this is even possible on the modding end - the update straight up replaced the texture and model files for the most part.

Sky_sweeper · September 2020

sEcOnDbOuToFiNsAnItY said:

For those wanting a return to the old banners, I am looking at making a mod to that effect, but due to how the banners work it might be a bit of a heffalump in terms of file size. No promises, we'll see how it goes when I revert to the pre-DLC build and poke around in the files. I don't know if I'll actually use the mod myself, but I'm happy to make it if it doesn't trouble me too much since some people definitely do want it.

If you do make it into a mod, I will definitely endorse it. And not to add on to the challenge of it, but if you find a way to make it work with multiple types of banners (I.E. the hooveric Reskin mod on steam) You will be my new favorite modder. Nothing made the battles feel legitimate like having multiple types of banners visible, both Triangles and squares.

Sky_sweeper · September 2020

sEcOnDbOuToFiNsAnItY said:

AdmiralJello said:

The highest impact -- but lowest file size -- is just editing factions_tables and pointing back to the old flags. But that's awful for compatibility purposes.

Since I can't find much of any hints of the old files, I seriously doubt this is even possible on the modding end - the update straight up replaced the texture and model files for the most part.

that hurts me to read... why on earth would they do that.

sEcOnDbOuToFiNsAnItY · September 2020

Sky_sweeper said:

that hurts me to read... why on earth would they do that.

File space, at a guess. 3K is a bit of a chonker as it is, so removing unused assets is a great way to cut down on that. Since the previous patch version is still available, I've reverted for the purposes of poking around and retrieving the old assets, so there's plenty to work with.

I have found some leftover bits and bobs in the current game build, mostly in the battle banner assets, so I might be able to strip out some of the assets from my mod, but for now I wanna make sure it can stand in the first place before I start slicing legs off - and it might be worth futureproofing the mod anyway in case they remove the remaining assets.

I've currently got a roughly working version of the mod, just ironing out some kinks and making some very quick checks before I unleash it on the world.

totalwarfanatik · September 2020

I like the new flags. Take time getting used to, but the previous ones didn't have much variety. I do think it's less realistic since what really existed was everyone having the same kind of fabric with just a different name on it. So neither are real, but this is easier to distinguish them, unless its the nanman

LESAMA · September 2020

Must say that after a couple of days it is actually quite acceptable. Minor factions and bandits could do with a different banner though.

sEcOnDbOuToFiNsAnItY · September 2020

Done, there's probably some kinks to work out, and it's a pretty big mod thanks to the assets, but for now it works:

Old Banners and Colours

Sky_sweeper · September 2020

sEcOnDbOuToFiNsAnItY said:
Done, there's probably some kinks to work out, and it's a pretty big mod thanks to the assets, but for now it works:

Old Banners and Colours

Thank you so much for your hard work my man, much appreciated.

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Can we please change the Han flags back?

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