Colonist can't transform plains to grassland?

[Nethog]

I am playing my first game of TOT (the extended game) and have come across a problem. My Colonist's are unable to transform plains to grassland ! I still have some Engineers around which can still do the transformation, however, due to a recent annoying barrage of nukes from the Spanish most of them have been wiped out. Since the Colonist supercedes Engineers, I can't build Engineers .

Is this a bug or is there something I am missing? I have the 1.1 patch loaded.

[Mercator]

I guess that is a bit of a bug... It is possible to give any unit the Engineer capabilities, but the Colonist already has that. So I think that only has to do with their double speed.

Transforming is linked to the Explosives tech so I guess they forgot to add that as an engineer capability as well.

...

Wait a minute... Colonists CAN transform, but there is a bug of an entirely different kind. The transform menu option is disabled, but pressing "o" lets them transform anyway.

[Nethog]

Mercator wrote:

The transform menu option is disabled, but pressing "o" lets them transform anyway.

Thanks Mercator. This is obviously not obvious! You know, I sat there looking at the greyed-out "o" menu option thinking "should I just try the keyboard command even though it is greyed-out?", but I didn't

[MikeLynch]

aAAAAAaaaack!
How do I give "any unit" Engineer capabilities??

I read about it in the manual but couldn't find the code for it. Is it in the Advanced Unit Properties section?

[techumseh]

Interesting. This is missing from my Rules txt. from the Original game. I found it in the Fantasy and Sci-fi Rules however.

@UNITS_ADVANCED

G) General flags

00100000 - unit acquires engineering abilities

[MikeLynch]

Sweeeeeet! I should've thought to look there.

OK, so, follow-up question: what's the highest that a particular terrain type's transformation time can be set to? I have one at 25. Has anyone ever done higher?