I dont think I've seen any unit with an animation in the defend bracket in its .ini

How canwe take advatage of this? If it's possilbe I may have some Ideas to make some of my units better.

Near as anyone has been able to figure out, it does nothing at all. Probably one of those planned and abandoned ideas. I know others have tested it and I think I did once too and the DEFEND animation simply doesn't play.

apparently the INI system is a hang-over from some other game

just like the 'dead' function in the ini file, doesn't have any use either. has this been tested also?

Yep, Zulu's right. A while ago, I E-mailed Firax asking them about the INI file. They responded saying that most of the things in there aren't used and they used the INI of another game for Civ3. I believe that when I posted this, someone said "I wonder what that other game was...", but anyway, yes, it does nothing. The only things that do anything are:

Default
Run
Attack A
Attack B
Attack C (although I was told that it doesn't do anythig, but it has been said that it does)
Fortify
Death
Victory

The rest are duds.
A wish for Conquest, get the INI working w/all the spots! WE COULD HAVE SO MUCH MORE FUN WITH UNITS!
Anyway, back on topic, Zulu's right, does nothing (for like the 3rd time, I'm done now)

don't forget 'fidget',

and i don't think it's ever going to work, probably is too much of an effort to the game engine

... and capture (self-explanatory), build (for air drops), and all the worker stuff... :)