I have found it annoying to trace the upgrage path of some units so I put it all down on a chart. Some of the upgrade paths are no brainers such as tank to modern armor and some are long such as warrior to mechanized infantry.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=102162&stc=1&d=1130710998

That's awesome, thanks!

Missing Marines (after Infantry)

I believe caravels also upgrade to frigates

this is a great start!

Yet another example of the Civlopedia in the game being awful.

Thanks for the info, will come in handy.

Thank You. That's great!

You could clarify it a bit, do lbs upgrade to musket or not?

No, Longbowmen upgrade directly to Riflemen.

-- Roland

Great gif, thanks!

What would be nice in this thread would be some information on available best promotions for units and how they may change with upgrades. For example, warriors etc can get city raider but can't once they become upgraded to gunpowder units.

I can upgrade knights to helicopters but not calvary in my curent game. I can build helicopters so i'm sure i'm not missing a resource but I don't have the option to upgrade my Calvary (its not money either as the option shows up and is greyed out if your to poor, which i am not). Are you sure Calvary upgrade to helicopters? I know my knights do.

Thanks for all the comments guys :D

I am going to modify the diagram with any changes that needed be made. Below are some notes on it:

1. I have not included any UU because it would clutter the diagram.
2. If a line joins another line with an arrow at the end it means that both units upgrade to the same unit. For instance both Longbow Man and Musketman upgrade to Rifleman.
3. I did not include some units as they did not upgrade to anything or had nothing upgrade to them such as Marines. This was more of an oversight than anything as I also have Carriers and Battleships which are not in any upgrade paths.

I will add Marines and any other regular units in for the sake of completeness. It is nice to see all the units that make up say gunpowder or melee units.

If anyone has any ideas or improvments please let me know.

thanks for a easy way to see upgrade paths

Nice diagram. :)

I am moving it to the strategy articles forum.

Thanks for all the comments guys :D

I am going to modify the diagram with any changes that needed be made. Below are some notes on it:

1. I have not included any UU because it would clutter the diagram.
2. If a line joins another line with an arrow at the end it means that both units upgrade to the same unit. For instance both Longbow Man and Musketman upgrade to Rifleman.
3. I did not include some units as they did not upgrade to anything or had nothing upgrade to them such as Marines. This was more of an oversight than anything as I also have Carriers and Battleships which are not in any upgrade paths.

I will add Marines and any other regular units in for the sake of completeness. It is nice to see all the units that make up say gunpowder or melee units.

If anyone has any ideas or improvments please let me know.
If it's not too much to ask, would you mind adding the 3 points above to the diagram please?

TIA!

FC

As a graph theorist, I would like to point out that you could make the whole thing nice by avoiding lines crossing.
Just move The warrior-spear-pike line to the middle instead and it will be clearer...
Also why is the machine gun on the far right?

...
Also why is the machine gun on the far right?
Because it is grouped with the other "Seige" units, silly.
(You probably figured that out 2 minutes after you posted)

Actually, you beat me to it. :)

I was creating a similar chart but with icons and was going to post it but already noticed your thread. Anyhow, I hope some people would like it to be more visual.

Here are the pics with cost of units in hammers:

Land units upgrade path:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads10/civ4landunitsupgrade.JPG

Fast moving units upgrade:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads10/civ4fastunitsupgrade.JPG

Air units upgrade:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads10/civ4airupgrade.JPG

Naval units upgrade:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads10/civ4navalupgrade.JPG

Other miscellanous upgrades including scouts, tanks and seige units:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads10/civ4artyscouttankupgrade.JPG

Sorry for my poor drawing skill.

There might be some errors here, please either post or pm me about them and I will update the charts. :)

Other units, which are not on the chart, are apparently not participating in upgrade paths. The following land units have to be built from scratch: Archer, warrior, swordsman, and musketman.

Overall, the tree is very peculiar in terms that rifleman is the central figure serving to converge various upgrade paths. Rifleman can be obtained from pikeman, maceman, musketman, longbowman, and crossbowman!

Can we somehow color-code these charts to show when a unit's upgrade takes it from one grouping to another grouping? For instance, an archer is a missile unit. But upgrade it, and it becomes a gunpowder unit. Each type of group has different promotions (e.g., Combat 1/2/3).

As has been posted (by mharmless, I believe), moving from one grouping to another means you can get some benefitial promotions in one group that mesh well with the upgraded unit's new group.

Some important points to remember:

Caravels do NOT upgrade to Transports. If you need to transport units but dont have Galleons, build galleys.

Gunships cannot capture cities. So be careful about upgrading Cav if ur exclusively using them to attack (though u shouldnt be in many cases).

Same theory with regards to Grenadiers. These (and Machine Guns) are more specialized units. Machine Guns cannot attack. If you not careful, you could be moving a stack of Artillery and Grenadier and realize you have a bunch of artillery after a wholesale upgrade.

Because it is grouped with the other "Seige" units, silly.
(You probably figured that out 2 minutes after you posted)
Actually I would never have figured it out.
I havnt even played the game. (I plan to eventually, I just don't have time these days)
I was asking just from a "nice graph" point of view...

Fast moving units upgrade

Great pictures! :goodjob:
The only minor and funny point is that war elephant is not "fast": its movement is just 1. But, if it's your first mounted unit, the game still tells you that it's fast and can pillage and retreat! :lol:

Other units, which are not on the chart, are apparently not participating in upgrade paths. The following land units have to be built from scratch: Archer, warrior, swordsman, and musketman.



Ha, and tank! :D

A note is that if any unit upgrades to rifleman, it can also upgrade to grenadier. It would be nicer to make this clear in akots' picture. :)

Yes, indeed this whole classification is extremely confusing and different from civ3. I was trying to stick to the system provided in the manual.

A note is that if any unit upgrades to rifleman, it can also upgrade to grenadier. It would be nicer to make this clear in akots' picture. :)

Are you sure about that? It seems that musketman and longbowman cannot upgrade to Grenadier at least that is what civilopedia is telling. I'm yet to play to that point in the game. So far it had been moslty lower difficulty (Monarch) and the AIs did not survive to gunpowder units.

Are you sure about that? It seems that musketman and longbowman cannot upgrade to Grenadier at least that is what civilopedia is telling. I'm yet to play to that point in the game. So far it had been moslty lower difficulty (Monarch) and the AIs did not survive to gunpowder units.

Oh, you are right, longbow and musket are exceptions. :)

This is the table with upgrade cost for normal game speed. Sorry again for lack of designer skill. It is partially due to the glitchy nature of Microsoft Office and lack of any good imaging software on my PC. Apparently for epic speed these costs are just multiplied by 1.5 similar to the hammer price of units and rounded.

Thanks for the info provided by snepp, there is a flat upgrade fee of 25 gold and then it is 3 gold per each hammer.

Good thing, upgrade cost does not depend on difficulty and map size and does not seem to depend on starting and target unit strengths.

The starting point of the upgrade is in top row and left column is the target of upgrade. Intersection give the price for upgrade.

There are some very peculiar features to notice here. The most important is that the player gets some discount for bulk upgrade due to upgrade fee.

For example, if warrior is upgraded to pikeman directly, the price is 160. On the other hand, if warrior is first upgraded to spearman (85) and then spearman is upgraded to pikeman (100) this gives upgrade fee of 185. Thus, upgrading directly costs 25g less. In the case of warrior to mechanized infantry upgrade this gives even larger discount. Direct cost of upgrade is 580, whereas gradual upgrades through all intermediate steps will cost 680 for a total savings of 100g which is a lot of money.

Another thing to notice is that AI even on lower difficulty levels is either disbanding the old medieval units or upgrading them, cannot tell exactly. This is supposed to be a feature of civ4 apparently so that no more spearmen defenders against tanks. It seems that AI accumulates some cash and then as soon as a new unit is available either disbands the old one or upgrades it. Which means AI spends some extra money by doing all intermediate upgrades.

Never mind, here are the tables:


http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads10/civ4upgradecost.JPG

I really don't understand where these numbers come from, it seems that the cost varies from 3 to 4 gold per hammer with some additional flat fee or it is just a result of rounding the unit cost. :confused: I'm not good at XML and have tried to find it out in xml files but failed miserably.

For example, if warrior is upgraded to pikeman directly, the price is 160. On the other hand, if warrior is first upgraded to spearman (85) and then spearman is upgraded to pikeman (100) this gives upgrade fee of 185. Thus, upgrading directly costs 25g less. In the case of warrior to mechanized infantry upgrade this gives even larger discount. Direct cost of upgrade is 580, whereas gradual upgrades through all intermediate steps will cost 680 for a total savings of 100g which is a lot of money.

There is a base fee of 25g when upgrading a unit (consider it an administrative fee :lol:) plus the gold per hammer fee. So yes, it is considerably cheaper to make one big upgrade (warrior-->mech infantry) than it is to do incremental upgrades.

Thanks for the info! I'll edit the post.

Thanks for the great info akots!! It is much better than anything was going to post. It seems when I get home and have time to update the chart I find myself inexorably drawn to playing the game. Funny how that happens. :D

Great job.
It's usefull to see the upgrade path for all units type and the cost also.
Thanks.

LeSphinx

akots,

Wow! Great chart! Would you mind if I integrated that into my set of reference charts found here: Civ IV Reference Charts Thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=3350202#post3350202)?

This is a good ideas kroym!
LeSphinx

This is a good ideas kroym!
LeSphinx

Working on it as we speak! Erm ... write. :)

akots,

Wow! Great chart! Would you mind if I integrated that into my set of reference charts found here: Civ IV Reference Charts Thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=3350202#post3350202)?

Yes, sure, go ahead. I have an Excel file at home. Can either post it or pm it to you, whatever you prefer later today.

There are also a couple of typos in the upgrade picture, I have to update that as well. Will try to do it as soon as there is time.

Great akots! I've included that in the latest copy of the files. Look for post #10 at the Civ IV Refernce Charts (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=3350202#post3350202) thread.

kroYM

I do not remerber witch wonder allows you to half the upgrade cost!
LeSphinx

On thing that was brought up briefly but not addressed is the issue of promotions. For example, I have Jags and now macemen with the 'City Raider' promotion. They eventually upgrade to riflemen...who are not eligible for the 'City Raider' promotion. If I upgrade, do I lose those promotions? Or do they become something else (just go to Combat II, Combat III, etc)?

Just wondering...I'll find out soon enough, when I get back to my game tonight...

I do not remerber witch wonder allows you to half the upgrade cost!
LeSphinx

It's not unit upgrades, but purchased upgrades like going from cavalry to gunships.

And it's the Kremlin fyi.

Ju me la coule douce

While we're talking about unit upgrades and promotions, could someone please tell me how many XP are needed for each promotion? I've done an extensive search and didn't find the answer anywhere.

... If I upgrade, do I lose those promotions? Or do they become something else (just go to Combat II, Combat III, etc)? ...

IIRC, you keep all promotions the unit had before upgrading even if the unit to which you are upgrading does not have this promotion when built from scratch. I'm not sure about the patch 1.08 version.

While we're talking about unit upgrades and promotions, could someone please tell me how many XP are needed for each promotion? I've done an extensive search and didn't find the answer anywhere.

It is in the manual and should be somewhere in xml? The manual says 2 xp for a first one, 5 more for the second, 10 for the third and 17 for the fourth. Don't know about fifth.

I believe it has an increasing increase
so its 26, 37, 50...
2+3=
5+5=
10+7=
17+9=
26+11=
37+13=
50+15=
65....

(although I'm not sure how high up it actually goes)

The promotion levels look like n^2+1.
such as 2 = 1*1 + 1, 5 = 2*2 + 1....

Thanks a lot guys. And great observation Amao; it's much easier to remember like this. Everytime you sit on a square, it's around the corner. Easy!

It's not unit upgrades, but purchased upgrades like going from cavalry to gunships.

And it's the Kremlin fyi.

Ju me la coule douce


Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think Kremlin allows you to hurry a building (not sure about units) at half cost, not upgrade units.

As for promotions, I promoted a medic cavalry to gunship and it kept the medic icon, didn't check to see if it actually worked though.

From what I have seen you keep and can use promotions when you upgrade even if they are not available to your current unit type.

e.g I had a swordsman with the "city raider I & II" promotion and upgraded him to a grenadier. when I went to attack another grenadier in a city and it showed he still had +45% bonus even though this promotion is not available to gunpowder units.

Hmm, just thinking this can be a very useful exploit. If you don't have any civics or wonders that boost your experience (i.e. Theocracy/West Point) and you just want to make the best use of the one promotion your barracks will give you to attack a city (and you have a little money to spare) build a maceman, give him city raider and upgrade him to a grenadier! This will give you an extra 10% above what you would have got with Combat I.

Another example:
You've got to go and fight a Rifleman defending a city. You can build a unit that will get 3 promotions. The best attacking unit available to you is also Rifleman

Option 1: Build Rifleman and take Combat I, II and Pinch = bonuses of +45%*
Option 2: Build Maceman and take City Raider I, II and III = bonuses of +85%!! (note the extra +10% vs gunpowder for City Raider III). Then upgrade to a Rifleman

Going for Option 2 gives you a relative strength of 25.9 vs 21.75. It all depends on whether or not you want to spend 145 gold for the extra strenght (note though you are also saving 40 production)

I presume you can also use this to give gunpowder units first strike abilities if they were upgraded from archers.

(* from what I gather from the "combat explained" thread bonuses don't apply quite like this but I will explain it this way for simplicity purposes)