It Works !!!

[Willem]

I wanted to find a way to be able to build Armies right away, rather than have to wait for a Leader to maybe come along sometime down the road. So what I did was convert the Palace into a Small Wonder with the ability of building an Army without a leader, like the Military Academy, but with the "Needs a Victorious Army" flag unchecked.

After that, I went into the PediaIcons.txt and went waaay down to the bottom where the Wonder splash art references are. I copied the Forbidden Palace entry, went up to the very top of the list and pasted it in. I changed the number that's in the first line from 56 to 0, since the Palace is the very first improvement in the Bic file. And lo and behold, it works like a charm! So now you don't have to wait around on the slim chance of a Leader showing up in order to build an Army, you can do it right away.

I don't know what that's going to do to the game balance, however.

[MrWhereItsAt]

It must have been a good feeling, Willem...to get this bloody cumbersome .bic file to actually work with a "mod" of your very own!

But I have downloaded a file in the Files forum that does the same thing (of sorts). EVERY unit (except a puzzling few, like Transports) can form an army. I have since found these armies to be useless. My elephant and (later) cavalry armies have been much less successful than I thought, and I do see a trio of units succeeding far more than than this one entity.

BUT there is one bonus - armies can be made from things like swordsmen (1 built per turn for most of my Industrialized, factory-possessing cities), that when disbanded, yield something like 100 shields! Yes, a little unbalancing, and likely considered "cheating" , but I was so proud to find this out by myself that I am going to finish the game this way, before resorting to "fair" tactics on that loveable cooperative AI.

[Willem]

Originally posted by MrWhereItsAt
It must have been a good feeling, Willem...to get this bloody cumbersome .bic file to actually work with a "mod" of your very own!

But I have downloaded a file in the Files forum that does the same thing (of sorts). EVERY unit (except a puzzling few, like Transports) can form an army. I have since found these armies to be useless. My elephant and (later) cavalry armies have been much less successful than I thought, and I do see a trio of units succeeding far more than than this one entity.

BUT there is one bonus - armies can be made from things like swordsmen (1 built per turn for most of my Industrialized, factory-possessing cities), that when disbanded, yield something like 100 shields! Yes, a little unbalancing, and likely considered "cheating" , but I was so proud to find this out by myself that I am going to finish the game this way, before resorting to "fair" tactics on that loveable cooperative AI.

Well my next step will be to try and increase the size of the Armies over time. I'm guessing that if I check the Building Larger Armies on a number of Small Wonders, I can eventually end up with a stack of at least 13 units inside. I keep hearing people moan and groan about how there's no stack movement in this game, and I hope to prove them wrong.

BTW, you can allow the units to unload by checking the "Unload" flag in the Editor.

[MrWhereItsAt]

And that works for armies? I haven't seen that confirmed yet.

[Willem]

Originally posted by MrWhereItsAt
And that works for armies? I haven't seen that confirmed yet.

Well it hasn't been confirmed yet, at least by me, but it only stands to reason. An Army is just a glorified Transport, and if you look in the Editor you'll see that it is the only transport that doesn't have that flag checked.

[MrWhereItsAt]

Well please let us know when you find out for sure! This is something that would help me HUGELY. And yes I am lazy, but I can't do it myself anyway as I rarely have the time to play right now.

Damn particle accelerator summer work!

[Willem]

Originally posted by MrWhereItsAt
But I have downloaded a file in the Files forum that does the same thing (of sorts). EVERY unit (except a puzzling few, like Transports) can form an army. I have since found these armies to be useless. My elephant and (later) cavalry armies have been much less successful than I thought, and I do see a trio of units succeeding far more than than this one entity.

Of course you can't turn a Transport into an Army. Like I said, an Army is nothing but a glorified transport, so your hack can't change it into what it already is.

[Willem]

Originally posted by MrWhereItsAt


Damn particle accelerator summer work!

Living up here in snowy Canada, I found that an odd statement to make, until I saw where it was coming from.

[MrWhereItsAt]

Y'see, we don't often get the same confusion, as North Hemisphere media is so prevalent here, especially US TV. Our sports help remind us of summer tho'. Especially when we start beating world champs Australia in the cricket outta nowhere!

But I COULD turn caravels and galleons into armies, so what is it that makes transports special?

[Willem]

Originally posted by MrWhereItsAt
But I COULD turn caravels and galleons into armies, so what is it that makes transports special?

Good question, I wish I had an answer. So much for that theory!

[Willem]

Originally posted by MrWhereItsAt


But I COULD turn caravels and galleons into armies, so what is it that makes transports special?

So are you able to turn those into a Naval fleet?

[pwyll]

a few questions I checked the army unload flag and it doesn't work, seems that armies cannot unload why? Ok hope fireaxis will fix this problem with the next patch. Also I made some "Navies" but they didn't work. I cannot load any ship into. Hope fireaxis will fix this too And the next problem is - I have some units with blitz and bombard attributes and in an army the loose this attributes damn fireaxis please fix this too.

Oh yes my question. How did you made the unload function on armies working?

pwyll

[Willem]

Originally posted by pwyll
a few questions I checked the army unload flag and it doesn't work, seems that armies cannot unload why? Ok hope fireaxis will fix this problem with the next patch. Also I made some "Navies" but they didn't work. I cannot load any ship into. Hope fireaxis will fix this too And the next problem is - I have some units with blitz and bombard attributes and in an army the loose this attributes damn fireaxis please fix this too.

Oh yes my question. How did you made the unload function on armies working?

pwyll

Damn! And I was so hoping it was just a simple thing. Well I didn't get the unload to work, I was merely making a logical assumption. An incorrect one apparently, it seems that's been hard coded. Oh well, at least I'm able to build them right away. As for the ships, did you have their Load flag checked? That could have something to do with it. Let me know if it works, I'm very curious. I want to try using an Army for air units as well.

[pwyll]

yes set the load flag on an battleship and tried to group it in an navy - nothing. Sorry it didn't work - hope firaxis fix this.

pwyll

[MrWhereItsAt]

Yeah, gotta agree with this - naval "armies" just don't work.
But I DID read somewhere about someone who got John Paul Jones as a leader after a NAVAL victory. They never posted back to say if he could create a naval army though.

This probably doesn't count as a bug, seeing as Firaxis wasn't intending to have this type of army... but if there is expansion, this would be one of the many little things they should put in.