Promotion Limit

While trying to make a mod of mine compatible to others, I noticed that all spawned units somehow piled up attributes/promotions which I haven’t given them in any way.

After a while of figuring out why the heck, I noticed that by removing new promotions, the promotion-pile was getting smaller. I came to the conclusion that there seems to be a limit how many promotions the game can handle.
The game doesn’t even care if you delete unneeded promotions by XML or SQL command. Whatever is added will further reduce the number of available promotions, so it seems important that you only add what is really necessary.
The more DLCs are introduced, the smaller the number of available promotions for modders becomes what could sooner or later mess up large combo-mods.

I created a mod with a long list of new promotions to test how many the game can still handle. The number of "Test #" promotions on all spawned units showing should vary how many DLCs and Mods are installed.

I've attached the test-mod here to check yourself if there is a limit or not. It's important that you install and activate this mod after any other one.
Can someone confirm if any of those "Test" promotions appear on all spawned units?

This is certainly a bizzare issue!

Mentos said:

I came to the conclusion that there seems to be a limit how many promotions the game can handle.

Click to expand...

Known issue, listed on the wiki. Supposedly the internal promotion database has 200 lines, meaning you have room for ~60 custom promotions across all mods running at one time.

I ran your test on a new game with all non-map DLCs and only this mod active, my starting warrior and settler have test promos 51-60 (Names AY through BH). Further units purchased in that game also had those 10 promos, plus their normal ones.

Starting a New World Scenario game (as Spain) with the test mod also active results in my starting Caravel receiving 7 extra promos (54-60) plus their normal 3 freebies (Scurvy, Extra Sight, and No Melee Attack). A purchased Work Boat and built Scout also get test promos 54-60 in addition to their normal stuff.

EDIT: Looks like I was a little slow.

This collides with the other problem where promotions are limited to 4 prerequisites. I was forced to create a lot of duplicate promotions because of this... one promo with 4 prereqs, another with 2, or similar circumstances.

Just to confirm something... if we delete the two dozen unused promotions from the default game, that does not free up more slots?

Oh, I should have really taken a closer look at the wiki.

Last time I deleted TBC promotions in my UT mod, it thanked me by loading crashes what I hadn't noticed at first.
It also didn't help freeing up promotion slots anyway, so I would forget deleting right from start.

Feel free to use my test-mod anytime to check how many promotions are left. Just make sure you activate the mod at very last after any other mod.
If you get units starting with "Test 10" promotion and lower then the end is nigh.

If you are interested in some numbers:

All DLCs until Vikings = 50 left
CiVUP v71b12 = 45 left
CiVUP+TBC v71b12 = 25 left
CSD v21 + CiVUP+TBC v71b12 = 23 left
CSD v21 + CiVUP+TBC v71b12 + Unit-Tweaks v16 = 12 left