Upgrade-only unit that won't end Regicide game?

Hi all,

I was looking up how to make a unit that is available only through upgrade and not buildable ordinarily by a civ. I wanted the elves in my mod to have their Tree of Life automatically produce Oil of Sunlight (immobile) which they could upgrade to an Elven Lightship, but not have the Lightship buildable by any other means.

What I came across in my search of threads, was that I was supposed to flag the Lightship as a "king" unit, but not give it the "king" AI strategy. This worked great for what I wanted, but my mod works best with the Regicide mode enabled, and as soon as the Lightship gets defeated, I "suffer an embarrassing defeat" and the game ends.

Is there a way someone knows about to have a unit upgradeable only, but useable in a Regicide game?

Grandraem... The Upgrade situation for Units that cannot be built has been to make the Upgrade a King Unit.
If the Upgraded Unit is Not set as a King Unit, the Upgrade Unit has to be able to be directly built.

The thing to work on is finding a way to prevent the Unit that can be directly built from being built. You can try using extreme Costs to directly build the Unit but to Upgrade to it could cost very little.

There are indeed difficulties to work around what is required to have a one of a kind Upgrade that is Not a King Unit.

thoughts...
The Upgrade Unit could require a Resource that is only found on 1 location and that location could be set up as the only place the Upgrade Unit could be built. This would limit where the Unit could be built to 1 location. The Location would have to be disconnected so the Resource could not be shared with any other location. If that is accomplished, the special Location could be set up to produce very few shields and the Unit shield cost set Very High to the point that even if the Unit is selected to be directly built there, it would require so many turns to complete the Unit that it could not actually be built. A problem with this is that you would also have to deal with units being disbanded at the Special Location to gain shields. This would require setting 0 shields for disbanding units for the Elves that can build the Upgrade Unit.
You could also experiment with timing for the Resource as to when it appears and disappears to limit the amount of time the Unit could be built.

The easiest method to accomplish what you want is to consider having the Elven Lightship be auto-produced from the Tree of Life rather than Oil of Sunlight that has to be Upgraded to gain the Lightship. Even if you need to rename the Improvement or Wonder to something that fits better, it would correct the Upgrade and King Unit problem. The Improvement or Wonder could be set to produce the Elven Lightship as you prefer...probably as often as Oil of Sunlight is produced.
If cost is a factor where you want the Elven Lightship to have a cost, you could set the Improvement or Wonder to Require Maintenance.

Hi Vuldacon,

Thanks for the reply. I think my only option will be to have the Tree of Life auto-produce the Elven Lightship. I had only wanted the Tree to produce the Oil, which needed to be upgraded to the Lightship, for a couple of reasons - the first and main reason which was, as you mentioned, so that the Lightship had a cost. The second reason was just a minor reason of closer accuracy to how the Tree works in D&D, although it can just be assumed that the processes took place that enabled the creation of the Lightship. Ah well, it'll just be another one of those game limitations I'll have to live with. Thanks again.

Grandraem... Yes, there are limitations that we have all had to accept but in the end things work out well.
If you explain in the Civilopedia Entry, the process of the Tree of Life, that will set it as D&D...the only difference would be seeing the process. Actually, Very acceptable.

Many "Work Around" approaches can work in the CIV Game but can sometimes create more problems than they correct. When possible, it is usually better to use ones ability to explain in the Civilopedia a Plausible explanation to more closely gain what is wanted.

I recommend also adjusting the script.txt to have the Advisor state that the Tree of Life has made Oil of Sunlight and it has been Upgraded to the Elven Lightship. That would also help to more directly have the Elven Lightship seen as the Upgrade for Oil of Sunlight from the Tree of Life as in D&D.

All should work well and the Cost can be adjusted for the Tree of Life Maintenance so the cost for the Elven Lightship is the same cost as if it was manually upgraded.

Grandraem said:

I had only wanted the Tree to produce the Oil, which needed to be upgraded to the Lightship, for a couple of reasons - the first and main reason which was, as you mentioned, so that the Lightship had a cost. The second reason was just a minor reason of closer accuracy to how the Tree works in D&D, although it can just be assumed that the processes took place that enabled the creation of the Lightship.

Click to expand...

Grandraem, in addition to the -as always excellent -explanations of Vuldacon here the following thought:

Set the oil of sunlight to a unit that requires an era-none tech, that nobody has. The techtree is set to autoproduce the oil of sunlight unit all ... turns. It will autoproduce the unit even if the tech for that unit is not available. The unit oil of sunlight should be set , that it cannot be disbanded, is immobile, cannot rebase (if it is an air-unit), has no go-to and no explore command. The city holding the autoprucing building must have an upgrading-facility for that base-unit.

This unit can be upgraded to the unit lightship with some upgrading costs (also no costs are possible). The lightship has the king-flag, but not the king-tactics. The base-unit (here oil of sunlight) could even be upgraded to a couple of different units.

I described this as advanced autoproduction. CCM uses this concept since a longer time and it works.

Civinator... I also use era-none and King Units in EFZI2.
The problem for Grandraem is the Lightship cannot be a King Unit because the Game uses Regicide.

Vuldacon said:

Civinator... I also use era-none and King Units in EFZI2.
The problem for Grandraem is the Lightship cannot be a King Unit because the Game uses Regicide.

Click to expand...

Yes, this is correct. I shouldn´t have read only the last posts.

What if the Elven Lightship has a very high population cost? Upgrading to it wouldn't cost population, and even though it would appear in the city's build menu it could never be built if the pop cost is high enough.

The problem is: will the Artificial Idiot try to build it anyway?

What if the Elven Lightship has a very high population cost? Upgrading to it wouldn't cost population, and even though it would appear in the city's build menu it could never be built if the pop cost is high enough.

The problem is: will the Artificial Idiot try to build it anyway?

Click to expand...

...in my experience, it is best to control the AI Directly because anything that requires thoughts or feelings does not affect the AI at all.
Just like setting the Price of a Unit as high as possible... if the Unit is great enough, the AI will try to build it.

The situation of having to use King Units as upgrades for one of a kind Units is another area many of us would like to have options for.

I use many King Units in EFZI2 Complete for one of a kind Unit Upgrades and it works. The thing I do not like about King Units is that they do not defend other Units/Fight last in the stack but sometimes this can also be Good. The Good things about using King Units as Upgrades is it does work for one of a kind Unit Upgrades and the AI will use them on the Map as Normal Units if King Unit is Not set for the AI Strategy...only set in Unit Abilities.
Naturally, using King Unit Upgrades will cause problems for Regicide Games as Grandraem has experienced.