unit upgrades

[linkhan]

I noticed last night that as I chose my chariot, there was an icon for "upgrade to horse archer".

Note that I'm talking about totally upgrading a unit to a more modern one, as opposed to "promotions". If you played Civ 2, that's like building Leonardo's Workshop to upgrade your phalanx all the way to riflemen.

The peculiar thing, is that I had to wait an unknown number of turns before I saw that upgrade available again for other units (say a warrior). The icons for upgrading were there but greyed out. I tried looking at the civilopedia and manual for the conditions on unit upgrades. Anyone know?

[Aro]

Upgrades are quite expensive in Civ IV. Take a look at your finances...


You know you have to pay for upgrades, like in Civ III, right?...

[marcuspeddle]

I've just started playing but even if you have the necessary techs for an upgrade you might be missing a resource such as iron. Check the unit you want to upgrade to in the Civilopedia. It should be written there.
Also, you might have been short on money.

[linkhan]

Er, wasn't checking the finances.
I was too tired to care.

Maybe that's the "condition" we need, and why
my icons are greyed out most of the time. I'm using
civics that generate a good amount of gold, so it wasn't a big deal.

You know, I was hoping that the icon would tell us by hovering the cursor on it. I don't recall seeing "cost" or "requirements" for the upgrade. Or did you see it there? Maybe this is another thing to submit for the patch wishlist.

[Minute Mirage]

You can see the cost for the upgrade there by hovering the mouse over the button.

[mykyl]

Is there any way to upgrade all units of the same type in all cities at once like you could in Civ III?

[Cambo67]

mykyl - hold down the ALT key, and then click the upgrade button ;-)



Cambo

[Arrian]

If you hold down ALT and hit that upgrade button, it'll upgrade all units of that type (or try to). This is typically VERY expensive, unless you only have a couple such units.

-Arrian

[Strudo]

And if you hold ALT before you mouse over the button, it will show you the total cost of the upgrade for all units.

[Lucilla]

Originally posted by Strudo
And if you hold ALT before you mouse over the button, it will show you the total cost of the upgrade for all units.

Useful - I was looking for this, thanks!
I noticed, that if I have more units to upgrade than money available, it will upgrade all units until no more upgrades are possible and the rest of the units stay un-upgraded. Unfortunately, when selecting "upgrade all", you cannot choose which units to upgrade even if you are not able to upgrade them all.