Is it possible to make the "Army" upgradable???

[YaKidK]

I'm a big time newbee in modding. However, this have not kept from playing with the editor a bit.

I have tried to make the "Army" unit upgradable to better army with say, bombardment and a better transport capacity. But it have been unsuccessful this far.

I have tried with a leader. The leader makes the "Army" unit, but the "Army" unit will not upgrade. I have check everything like, checking the "Upgrade unit" flag, making use that the "Army" in Civilopia upgrades to "Better Army".

I have seen that the Rise & Rule mod have several Army units, but the better ones have been swiched off, since the modders never got the functionality to work reliable.

Do anyone have some advice? Experience? Or anything...

 

[davbenbak]

I wish there was a way to unload units from an army so they could be upgraded.

 

[cheesecurds]

in RaR, the better armies were supposed to come from buildings, but they were never put in

 

[Steel General]

In TJedges Mytara mod he uses a small wonder (I think) to increase the "carrying capacity" of armies. They start out with 2 then once the wonder is built they increase to 3.

Youm ay want to PM him or he may see this thread and respond.

 

[Camber]

If you make the army upgradeable, upgrading the army it has the side effect of kicking out all the units that were loaded into it.

Once when playing around with Rhye's of Civilization, I gave Israel a UU called Prophet. It was an army unit with clairvoyance abilities (recon, range 4 tiles) and the ability to load 1 unit (2 with the Pentagon). I had them upgrade to Explorers. When I upgraded the Prophets (with units loaded inside), it freed the loaded units. I'm not sure if the loaded units would have remained stuck inside if I had upgraded the Prophets to another army-type unit.

EDIT: I just checked my .biq and it looks like I may not have had them working right. I gave them a bombard value (fire from heaven), and had the Artillery and Explore AI strategies flags checked. But I didn't have Army checked on AI strategies or unit abilities. I never actually used them in battle except to bombard. So...I never realized my mistake. Sorry, these probably wouldn't have upgraded if I had had them working properly.

 

[Pfeffersack]

If you make the army upgradeable, upgrading the army it has the side effect of kicking out all the units that were loaded into it.(...)

Really interesting...didn't know that!


@Yakidk

Upgradable armies are possible; however, with some serious restrictions:
1.You will always get the basic army out of MGLs.
2.Upgrading is beyond AIs ability and only possible in cities where you can produce armies manually.

So we decided to take them out of RaR, because it would give the human player a too big advantage (since this advantage cumulates with the AI MGL-bug).And making stronger armies available via upgrade is questionable from view of balance anyway...armies in Conquests are already overpowered or at least close to it, so increasing transport capacity for example would make things even worse.

 

[tjedge1]

The only way to really upgrade an army that the AI can handle is creating small wonders that act like Pentagons from the original game. Any other way pretty much the AI doesn't understand, and as Pfeffersack posted, it would give the human player too much an advantage. The wonders in my mod that increase capacity, allow a new unit to be added, so in effect it makes it better than before, I also made the army normal capacity, only 2, so it doesn't start out overly powerful.

 

[Camber]

Really interesting...didn't know that!

It is possible that it only forcibly unloads the units in the army if the army upgrades to a non-army. What happens when you upgrade a naval transport and it contains units? Do the units stay inside the vessel or are they removed by the upgrade? I can't recall right now.

 

[davbenbak]

This idea of upgrading an army to a single unit is very interesting. Say you have an army unit called a tercio with a unit capacity of 2 to represent the combination of "shot and pike". The army could be upgraded to a single unit say a musket armed "fusiler" to symbolise the uniform equipping of infantry with the bayonet mounted musket. Then a army unit called "Corp" could be built. Another thought...can you flag "only load foot units" for an army like you can naval units? Tercios could be flagged this way and Corps not to represent the combined arms aproach though I've never seen the AI load mixed troops in an army.

 

[Camber]

I've almost always seen the AI load mixed troops in an army; it does a very poor job of maximizing the movment bonus of these, by combining footsoldiers with mounted ones. So yes, it would be a good idea to use the foot-only flag, if that will work. Might reign in some screwy AI behavior.

Likewise, you can give mounted units the "tactical missile" flag, and make an army for cavalry that only allows tactical missile units. The tactical missile flag itself doesn't grant or limit any special abilities, it is only in the game to subdivide land units, so that not everyone can board a submarine. The side effect would be that your cavalry could board submarines, unless you make them "only transport foot units" and "only transport tactical missiles," and then flag tactical nukes as both foot and tactical. Trust me, it works, and it completely excludes the foot-only and tactical-only units.

 

[YaKidK]

Thanks, y'all!

@Pfeffersack
One way to psydoupgrade the army units in RAR could be to make the Military Academy obsolete, when an new Army unit becomes available (say "Army II"). In order to get "Army II" you need to (re)build the Military Academy as "Military Academy II". The "Military Academy II" then gives you an "Army II" unit every 15th turn or so.

The "Great Leader" should then not have the “Build army” checked. The only way to get an Army unit would be through a Military Academy with “training” and some patience… This would take out some of the Human Player’s advantages of being able to load and use the Army in the most optimal way.

Otherwise the "Great Leader" created army should have the “transport only foot units” check. The rational would be that you get “proper” armies from training at a Military Academy. Also an army is only powerful at the time it is created, not at some point in the future, hence giving a rational for not making the infield army unit upgradeable.

@Camber
Did some tests. If you upgrade the army unit to another better army unit, the units don’t get freed. Also you need city capacity for an additional army (Say 2 cities pr army, you have one army, then you need 4 cities to upgrade).
The “transport only foot units” is a really interesting option to use. This way you could make the ordinary Army less powerful by checking the “transport only foot units”. The Human Player could then make (relatively) weaker armies since foot units generally are weaker. No more 3 Chinese Rider army 6/4/4 blitz rampage!!!
Who did you get Prophet to work? It seems like, if you make the army unit upgradeable and you civilization cant build that unit, the Military Academy does not allow you to build any armies at all. You get a similar effect, if you have more than one Army unit. How were you able to build it?

General findings:
If only the Human Player is able to take advantage of upgrading the army, then the option shouldn’t be used. I played around with the editor a bit and found some interesting aspects of the Army units itself (please let me know if this is going off topic. Check my post count to see what I mean…).

The army keeps the following abilities, if you give them to the army unit itself:
- Bombardment (fire from heaven)
- All terrain as roads
- Ignore moment of xxx terrain
- Stealth (Shadow armies…)
- Airdrop (teleporting armies…)
- Workers actions (or at least “Build roads”)

Things I couldn’t get to work:
- Enslave (it seems like the unit ability that takes places “after” a battle cannot work on an army unit)
- Invisibility

This way, you could create a lot of different army type units as either flavour or unique units.

All this came from player Drift’s Master of Myrron mod (version beta2). The mod is very good, work through indeed. But I missed my favourite Master of Magic unit: the hero/champion. By the above you should be able to make a “Summon Hero” small wonder that gives a hero every 10th turn. By mixing the above abilities you can give each wizard a unique hero (warlords with high capacity, magic users with a hit point penalty but bombardment/spells, rangers that ignore forest moment, dragons that fly/all terrain as roads).

 

[Camber]

@ YaKidK: I was using the Rhye's of Civilization mod, and had the Temple Mount wonder autoproducing Prophets every 30 turns. I made it obsolete with Fascism (a Jewish nation that turns Fascist loses the mandate of heaven). For the graphic, I just used the military great leader graphics by Firaxis for the ancient era.

 

[Willem]

I've almost always seen the AI load mixed troops in an army; it does a very poor job of maximizing the movment bonus of these, by combining footsoldiers with mounted ones. So yes, it would be a good idea to use the foot-only flag, if that will work.

Yes it does work, I've done that in my mod. I only have certain units that are allowed to join an Army, i.e Swordsman, Med Infantry, Rifleman etc., and the AI doesn't have a problem with it.

 

[tjedge1]

That's a great idea. I never thought to do that. Now I'll have to that. That would help in my mod a lot since it's a fantasy and that will keep the special units like Giants and Dragons out of the army as well. They just get too strong with those types in them.

 

[Willem]

That's a great idea. I never thought to do that. Now I'll have to that. That would help in my mod a lot since it's a fantasy and that will keep the special units like Giants and Dragons out of the army as well. They just get too strong with those types in them.

Another thing you should do is reduce the number of units in an Army to one, then add extra hit points to the Army itself. Even with only foot units available to it, the AI still has a hard time filling it up sometimes. It will stick one unit in, then let it sit around for quite awhile. By adding hit points, you still get the same results as you would if you had two or three units in it.

 

[tjedge1]

That's a pretty good idea too.