unit position in army stack

[FrenzyHuman]

Does any know how CTPII control individual unit postions in an army stack?

For example, I have an united fleet which consists Battleships, PT Boat, Destroyer and AirCraft Carrier. The idea is to protect AirCraft Carriers. While if enemy attacks my fleet, CTPII always put my AirCraft Carriers in the front line! Then obviously I lost my ships and all bombers on them!

Same story with Mobile SAM, CTPII always put them on the front line, while leaves Tanks on second line!

I tried to disband the army and add units one by one into a new army, this will change the position of some units, but somehow my problem still exits.

I tried to modify unit.txt, but don't know exactly what to do.

Pls help here.

[hexagonian]

Since the main purpose of the carrier is to carry your air force, try dropping the attack and defend numbers of the carrier.

I believe CTP2 places units, based on attack strength (if attacking) and defend strength (if defending), starting with the center where the strongest unit will be placed.

And if your most powerful attack/defend units also have range, then I think they will default to the front line rather than using their ranged ability.

[FrenzyHuman]

Thanks, I will try and see what I can find out.

[Pedrunn]

The biggest problem i saw about this was concerned to aircrafts.
For some reasons i had bombers type (with big ranged attack) being in the front line while fighter types(attacks) were at the back.

Did this happen to someone else?

[FrenzyHuman]

Pedrunn, I think I had similar problem too. The attack range doesn't quite work on this issue, for example, I changed Mobile SAM's attack range much larger than Artillery, but the game still put Mobile SAM before Artillery, even before Tanks!

Sometimes the game does know how to arrange the position, for example if there is a settler in the stack, it will definitely be put at the far back. So the nature of unit maybe the key point, but can we change the nature of AirCraft Carrier like a Troop Ship (as a matter of fact, it is)? Will there be any side effect after that?

Anyway, let's talk after trying.

[Pedrunn]

Originally posted by FrenzyHuman
So the nature of unit maybe the key point, but can we change the nature of AirCraft Carrier like a Troop Ship (as a matter of fact, it is)? .

What you mean by nature of the unit?

I am far from my PC. So i cant test it now.
But have you tried giving more attack/defense for the settler(higher than the others units in its army) to see how he is going to behave!

[Locutus]

The reason why the settler is always put in the rear is because it is a 'civilian' unit. The problem with randomly making units civilians is that it has all sorts of diplomatic side-effects. Killing them when they're not part of a stack will count as an attrocity and hurt you diplomatically. Also, they're not supposed to be a threat so they don't count in terms of tresspassing treaties and such and they can without penalty enter other civ's territory (which, in case of an aircraft carrier, is not good).

I think Wes set up the MedMod unit stats in such a fashion that this kind of oddities are minimized or even eliminated altogether, you may want to study that to get an idea of how the stats should be changed to prevent this.