Monolith Upgrades for Ships & Isles of the Deep

[YNCS(SS)]

If there is a monolith on a tile next to the ocean, you can send a seaformer to an ocean square next to the monolith to lower the elevation. This will turn the monolith square into an ocean square but the monolith will not go away. You can then run ships and Isles of the Deep onto the monolith and get an upgrade and/or repair damage. As with land units, you only get one upgrade per unit and transports don't upgrade. If you have units on the ship/Isle, when they're in the monolith square you can select each unit and it will be upgraded/repaired as well.

The cost for lowering the elevation can be as much as 288 EU, but I think it's money well spent.

I haven't found any way to upgrade air units, however.

[Qualicide]

You can also just planet bust the land around the monolith.

[Adalbertus]

The "cheapest" way to drown a monolith is through ecodamage . You'll get even many minerals by doing so.

I've heard of this trick before, but never used it. The only advance I really want to have is command->elite. And usually I've 0 Morale or -2 Morale. In the first case, I get elite by use of shells (build a cheap trained unit and upgrade to what you really want to have). With -2 Morale, I end somewhere near veteran, and I've got to fight battles anyway. So I never bother to sink a monolith.

By the way, to me it seems to be impossible to advance a unit to elite if you have sufficiently negative (-2) morale, if the unit belongs to a base without Childrens Creche. I moved a "commando" unit to a monolith and it said something like "has been advanced to commando status".

I haven't found any way to upgrade air units, however.

Monolith floating in the air. Boiiing!

[Static Universe]

Ocean monoliths are fun, but I don't think an air monolith is possible, as it cannot be placed by the map editor like an ocean monolith can.

For those interested, NetworkNode has a good ocean map for its 7 aquatic custom faction set. It contains several sea monoliths.