Modding an unit upgrade

[Elowan]

Being new at this - naturally I screwed it up.

I made a new unit for the Americans called the 'Rough Rider' which was supposed to take the place of the Knight.

However - when I tried to do that - it didn't work.

I noted - using the editor - that Horseman upgrades to Mounted Warrior (Iroquois) which upgrades to Knight which upgrades to Rider (China?).

What I did was have Knight upgrade to Rough Rider but then took America off the Knight unit list.

Of course - that didn't work. How should I have done it? Or can I do it?

Thanks.

[Gramphos]

Rough Rider needs to upgrade to Rider to make the chain work then. If a unit upgrades to a unit a civ can't have it just goes to the next level of upgrade.

(This was found by people of Apolyton. In the first version of Civ3 (1.07f) and maybe one more there were no way to upgrade units to the civ specific ones (Firaxiis said it was the designers choise), but then a mod which used this system came out, and Firaxis implemented it into a patch)

[Elowan]

Originally posted by Gramphos
Rough Rider needs to upgrade to Rider to make the chain work then. If a unit upgrades to a unit a civ can't have it just goes to the next level of upgrade.

OK - but then how does the chain go? Is it:

Horseman -> Mounted Warrior -> Knight -> Rough Rider -> Rider?

And then designate the specific civs under the respective unit descriptions/abilities?

Then since America doesn't use Mounted Warrior the next would be Knight but since that was removed as an available unit for America the next up is Rough Rider?

Am I understanding this correctly?

Thanks for the input, BTW.

[sabrewolf]

elowan: looks correct to me.

btw: there's a "upgrade unit" flag in the editor, but i havn't managed to see if it's really needed or not. sometimes it's set, sometimes not... is it just a relic for earlier patches?

[Elowan]

Originally posted by sabrewolf
elowan: looks correct to me.

btw: there's a "upgrade unit" flag in the editor, but i havn't managed to see if it's really needed or not. sometimes it's set, sometimes not... is it just a relic for earlier patches?

I - of course - have no clue except that I checked it.

If I wanted the Rough Rider to be able to upgrade to Mechanized Infantry - would that affect the queue?

Right now Rider is at the end and upgrades to Samurai. I don't want Samurai to upgrade to MI - so is there a solution to this dilemma? Put a dummy upgrade between Rider and Samurai perhaps and have the dummy upgrade to MI? Or put Rider between Knight and Rough Rider or ...?

[Gramphos]

Originally posted by sabrewolf
elowan: looks correct to me.

btw: there's a "upgrade unit" flag in the editor, but i havn't managed to see if it's really needed or not. sometimes it's set, sometimes not... is it just a relic for earlier patches?

I think it is needed for the flash button to show, but you can still use the keyboard shortcut to upgrade if you disable it doh' (I think it should be menat to work as just making a unit obstless, but not allowing upgrade, but I'm not 100% sure)

[Elowan]

Originally posted by Elowan
If I wanted the Rough Rider to be able to upgrade to Mechanized Infantry - would that affect the queue?

Right now Rider is at the end and upgrades to Samurai. I don't want Samurai to upgrade to MI - so is there a solution to this dilemma? Put a dummy upgrade between Rider and Samurai perhaps and have the dummy upgrade to MI? Or put Rider between Knight and Rough Rider or ...?

I appreciate the input but I still have no answer to the above. Will Knight still upgrade to Cavalry with the ilIustrated queue?

What about upgrading Cav to MI?

[Clay]

Gramphos is correct about the 'upgrade' option. If you want the upgrade button to appear then you need to check this. If you don't the keyboard command will still work provided you've set the unit 'upgrade to' to something other than None.

If you place the Rough Riders in the queue as illustrated you shouldn't have any problem upgrading to Cavalry but I don't think you can have them upgrade to MI without allowing all the other units in the queue to upgrade to MIs as well. The upgrade chain works by looking for the next thing that a unit can upgrade to until it reaches a unit that cannot be upgraded at all.

Lets say you make a dummy unit and put it at the end of the chain. You set it up so that your dummy unit upgrades to MI and can only be buit by the Americans.
When someone else (say the Japanese) upgrade their units the chain will come to your dummy unit, decide the Japanese can't build it and look for the next unit they can build (i.e. the MIs). So by doing that you'll allow everyone to upgrade their Cavs to MI.

About the only way you can do what you want is to leave the Rough Riders out of the upgrade chain and make a new chain for them as far as I can see.

Good luck.

[Elowan]

Originally posted by Clay
About the only way you can do what you want is to leave the Rough Riders out of the upgrade chain and make a new chain for them as far as I can see.

I appreciate your answer - quite clear. I had originally considered having a separate chain for Rough Riders but wasn't quite sure how to do that unless I made an alternate Horseman that only Americans could build instead of 'Horseman'.

[sabrewolf]

Originally posted by Elowan
I appreciate your answer - quite clear. I had originally considered having a separate chain for Rough Riders but wasn't quite sure how to do that unless I made an alternate Horseman that only Americans could build instead of 'Horseman'.

uhm... "americans" as such didn't exist at the time of horsemen (ancient ages)! you probably mean the cavalry

[Willem]

Originally posted by Gramphos

I think it is needed for the flash button to show, but you can still use the keyboard shortcut to upgrade if you disable it doh' (I think it should be menat to work as just making a unit obstless, but not allowing upgrade, but I'm not 100% sure)

If you mean that you can still upgrade by hitting "Shift-U", yes you're right. You just can't use the "U" command if this flag is not checked.

[sabrewolf]

yeah, that shift-U thingy is something firaxis overlooked. i you move a unit in a city and it doesn't have any movement points any more, you can't upgrade it.

however, if there is another unit somewhere (not neccecarily in a city with barracks) you can use shift-U and the game will upgrade all units in barracked cities, even if they have no movement left

[Backpack]

Here's an easy solution. Add MI to the Horseman / Cav Chain, but use a cloned copy of MI. Call the American unit 'Armored Cav' and set it as American only. This way, Everyone else stops at Cav, but America gets Armored Cav. It's unbalancing in that now America has 3 UU's.

Please post your Modded Civ so I can borrow from it. I could rename America to US, Add in the Eisenhower Leaderhead, and go to town

Thanks and I hope this helps

Kevin

[Elowan]

Originally posted by kwpulliam1973
Please post your Modded Civ so I can borrow from it. I could rename America to US, Add in the Eisenhower Leaderhead, and go to town

Thanks and I hope this helps

Kevin

It does help and I will post it asap.

[statusperfect]

Originally posted by Gramphos
(This was found by people of Apolyton. In the first version of Civ3 (1.07f) and maybe one more there were no way to upgrade units to the civ specific ones (Firaxiis said it was the designers choise), but then a mod which used this system came out, and Firaxis implemented it into a patch)

The irony of it