How to: Make Military units tradeable

Yes, it's possible folks! Although it does have three giltches: 1) Only 1 unit can be tradeable, 2) It replaces the worker & 3) It can only be sold from the Capital. But I've invented a way to work around the first two minor flaws. For me, buying workers is not useful as they work at ½ the speed.

So, to make a military units, you have to simply edit the 2nd unit on the unit list (typically this is the worker) to have whatever stats you want it to have (say a "Mercenary Hoplite" with an A/D of 3, movement of 1, foot unit, etc).

Then, make a new unit, call it a Worker and make it an exact copy of the normal worker.

Now, to make use of the mercenary when you get to better units, make several new units (one for each era or more, your choice).

Now, make the Mercenary Hoplite steadily upgrade into better units (like warriors & spearmen do).

Now you have a tradeable unit, the Mercenary Hoplite which can be upgraded into newer, better units as time goes by!

Ahhh finally we add our big debate................

Well after doing a bit more experimenting with this, I discovered another small (yet very very annoying) flaw.

In a normal game, due to the position of the worker on the list, the governor will rarely-if ever build workers in cities, usually building the latest cheap-but-effective military unit, or building a city imp. Unfortunately, when you move the worker to another part of the list (and moving a military unit to the workers spot), the governor recognizes the worker as a really cheap military unit, which means when you try to play, it always (and I mean always) wants to build workers and nothing else. This would be ok if the governor asked you what you wanted to build for every city, but they will only ask you if they're trying to build a city imp (or you just finished a city imp)... and because they want to build worker, they don't contact you often (or not at all). Now if you check all of your cities at the end of every turn, this isn't too big of a deal. But most likely your going to forgot to check from time to time and end up with 5, 10, maybe 15 extra workers the next turn because of the low shield cost.... waste of time, and shields.

So basically the governor goes worker crazy, and you end up with extra workers to summarize.

If anyone knows how to fix this, please post, but I’m thinking this isn’t really possible to prevent.

Corn Shucker said:

So basically the governor goes worker crazy, and you end up with extra workers to summarize.

If anyone knows how to fix this, please post, but I’m thinking this isn’t really possible to prevent.

Click to expand...

How is that possible?? How can anyone think that an unit without A/D flags OR the points for it could be a military unit?? The AI is

The AI is

Click to expand...

...yeah it is lol

..Of course, this is my own explanation for it, no guarantees lol. IMO it’s the only believable explanation that I can think of. Why else would the computer go worker crazy? Nevertheless, any way you look at it the computer goes worker crazy, explanation or no explanation. But if my reasoning is wrong.... then there is a change that maybe this could be changed (so I hope it is wrong ). Of course maybe if I finish the game I'll discover something else... so maybe if i feel like it lol. Anyway, if anyone has a better explanation, please share it!

I think I may have discovered a solution to the problem. I contacted the governor while playing and looked at the production tab. I made every line say 'build ___ often in all cities.' except the worker line, I put 'build worker never in all cities." I think that pretty much solved it. Occasionally the AI continued to try to build workers in some cities, but about 70-75% of the time it would build something else. This makes it a lot less annoying. should have thought of this before....

What if you make the governor build only workeres often & everything else never? Will it begin to build the tradable military unit? This might be a problem, sa in my WWII scenario The Worker is the first unit & the Destroyer is the 2nd... So destroyers can be bought & sold

Corn Shucker said:

they will only ask you if they're trying to build a city imp (or you just finished a city imp)...

Click to expand...

Not if you go to preferences and check the... what's it called? The option that says something about always ask for build orders. Then you'll get the build pop-up everytime you build something, but it's still irritating to change the suggestions all the time. Not like I don't do that all the time anyway...

I can buy from the AI but they can't buy from me. Is that supposed to happen or am I doing something wrong?

They probably just don't have enough money, or yours aren't in your capital.
@Corn: Do the AI civs do this too, or just your governors? If the other civs build nothing but workers, this could be a big problem.

they start with 10 gold and I do have tradable units in my capital I actually made sure of that. What do u mean not enough money? Like no money at all or too little?

1) Is the tradable unit the second on the list?
2) Can you speak with the AI?
3) Is the tradable unit in your capital?
4) Do you have a trade route?

If all are yes then you can trade the unit.

The AI civs typically have very little to no gold because they spend it all. I thought maybe the option was available but the AI said they couldn't see how any such deal could be worked out or something along those lines. If they didn't have any gold they wouldn't want to offer anything in exchange, because cities, techs, and resources would all be too valuable. So I guess what I'm saying is... can you select the unit from your list during diplomacy, and the AI just won't buy it, or is the "Workers" list not visible?

Paasky said:

1) Is the tradable unit the second on the list?
2) Can you speak with the AI?
3) Is the tradable unit in your capital?
4) Do you have a trade route?

If all are yes then you can trade the unit.

Click to expand...

Well I can't sell it to the AI but I can buy it from the AI.

That most propably means that you don't have the tradable unit in your capital.

There is a flaw.

I can trade the unit which replaced worker but I am unable to trade its upgraded versions of Mercenaries. Is this supposed to happen?

Yes, because the only unit that can be traded is the second one in the list. That's why it only works in small time-scale scenarios.

... waiting for civ4 ...

Ah... I can live with that.

Good work, Paasky. Yet I wonder why the programmers for Firaxis/Atari aren't aware of it. It's a convenient trick, let's hope the Civ4 programmers are at least as smart as you...