Unable to give my Macemen with Guerilla I, Guerilla II

My understanding of the Guerilla II (and III) promo is that melee units can get it provided they have Guerilla I. Of course, only Gallic Warriors can get Guerilla I.

So I upgrade my Gallics to Macemen, but then find that I can't give these Macemen either of the Guerilla promos - the option simply isn't there. I've checked the Civilopedia, and it does indeed say that melee units with Guerilla I can get Guerilla II.

I'm using the v3.13 patch, and v1.05 of the Unofficial Patch. Oh, and I'm also using the xmls from the FexF mod, but that's mainly just to change the game speed. As far as I know, FexF doesn't alter the units in any way.

Here's a couple of screenshots:

http://img261.imageshack.us/img261/2333/guerillaibh0.jpg

http://img520.imageshack.us/img520/5163/guerillaiith6.jpg

I noticed the same thing with Drill II. I got Drill I for all meelee units as a quest reward, and Drill II was still unavailable, even though the 'pedia says it should be available.

Drill II+ should be available to melee units, otherwise the Samurai just got nerfed.

I was using Drill IV samurai all night last night, so it seems to work fine on my version (3.13 and 1.05Bh).

Ghostofkuji said:

I was using Drill IV samurai all night last night, so it seems to work fine on my version (3.13 and 1.05Bh).

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It's already been established that Drill II-IV work correctly for Samurai, and Guerilla II-III work correctly for Gallic Warriors. They just don't work for any other melee units, as far as I remember.

That does seem odd - in the XML file, although Melee units can't get Guerilla I, they are allowed to get Guerilla II and III. The only prerequisite is that they have Guerilla I, which your Macemen very clear has. So yes, it does look like it's a bug. I'll try and see if I can duplicate it here.

edit: Hmm, well, it's either a bug, or it's by design, I can't tell. Basically, for it to allow a unit to get any promotion, it checks to see if that unit can validly get the previous promotion. Since a Maceman can't validly get the Guerilla I promotion, it won't let it get II/III.

Bh

I can't help but think that this is a bug. The Civilopedia says that melee units can get Guerilla II and III, not just Gallic Warriors. One of the things that makes Gallics any good is that you can (or should be able to) get Macemen up to Guerilla II and III at some point in the future.

Is there any way to change it from how it currently works?

I don't think it's a bug, I think that the civilopedia just hasn't been updated to reflect the change.

Gameplay-wise, I think it's odd enough that we can have (for example) city raider infantry via unit upgrades, but can't train CR infantry with promotions. This oddity is magnified when a single CR promotion is sufficient to train all infantry units that have it up to CR3.

Just my two cents, personally I'd prefer it the way it is now, because it lets the units remain more the way they were intended to be (i.e. infantry not having CR).

How would this be a bug ? It takes about 5 seconds to check in the civilopedia that Macemen are not allowed any Guerrilla promotion (nor Drill). Gallic Swordsmen and Samurai are unique units, and as such have special abilities. One would expect that... >_>
You have to look at the unit not the unit class. That because if you prevented the unit class to have a certain promotion, then UUs with unique abilities would not be possible. IE if Melee units would not be allowed Guerrilla 2 or Drill 2 it wouldn't be possible for Gallic Swordsmen and Samurai to promote with these.

Psyringe said:

This oddity is magnified when a single CR promotion is sufficient to train all infantry units that have it up to CR3.

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That situation doesn't exist now, and it wouldn't if the change was made. Infantry aren't allowed to get the CR promotions, so even if they had one, they aren't eligible to get the others (only Melee, Siege and Armor units are allowed to get any of the CR promotions). Melee units are eligible to get Guerilla II & III.

Bh

onedreamer said:

IE if Melee units would not be allowed Guerrilla 2 or Drill 2 it wouldn't be possible for Gallic Swordsmen and Samurai to promote with these.

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Exactly. And btw, I just checked the Civ4PromotionInfos for vanilla Civ4, Warlords, and BtS. As expected, Melee units do *not* have access to Guerilla II in vanilla. Only when Firaxis introduced the Gallic warriors in Warlords, the "melee" category had to be added to give Gallic warriors (and only those) access to Guerilla II and III. This is working as intended, it's not a bug.

Edit: Bhruic, you're correct about the infantry I mentioned, I chose a bad example. When I wrote my first post, I didn't understand that melee units are actually eligible for the guerilla II and III promotions.

However, after checking the vanilla XML, I'm pretty sure that this was just Firax*s way to ensure that the Gallic warriors have access to guerilla II and III, and not meant as a way to allow those promotions for all melee units. (I think they consciously added the check whether the first promotion could be earned "legally" to prevent the situation that other melee units get access to those promotions too).

Oh, I'd agree. I'm just playing Devil's Advocate. One of the problems, imo, is that the Civopedia uses the xml files to document promotions, and it doesn't "know" why Firaxis chose to allow Melee units. So it's going to report that all Melee units can get the promotions, which is going to lead to this confusion.

The question at this point is whether it makes sense to make the game match the documentation? I mean, consider the only possible situation: the Gallic Swordsman upgrades to Maceman. That's it. The Samurai doesn't upgrade to a Melee unit. And the Gallic Swordsman can't upgrade to any other melee unit than the Maceman. Considering the extremely limited scope of this change, I'm not sure there's any reason not to do it - but I'm open to differing opinions.

Bh

I thought it was a bug because the Civilopedia tells me that Guerilla II and III are available to "Melee Units". It also tells me that the Maceman is indeed, shock/horror, a melee unit. If the Civilopedia is wrong, isn't that a bug?

Edit: The above comment is directed at "5 seconds" onedreamer.

Bhruic, regarding whether to make the change, I do find it limits the Gallic if you can't continue with the Guerilla promo once you've upgraded to a Maceman. The Celts already have a crappy UB, so why nerf the potential of their UU?

Bursk said:

IIf the Civilopedia is wrong, isn't that a bug?

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You are right. Bhruic: get rid of the Civilopedia please - it is a bug One of my pet with this game would be gone
Seriously: the Civilopedia has quite a few flaws and mistakes (it still claims for example that any wonder will go obsolete ones any civ knows the required tech - a remnant from beta testing Vanilla. It causes only confusion in quite a lot of places. But I would not change a game mechanic in order to get in line with the Civilopedia.
Re Macemen and guerrilla: Since Guerrilla 3 gives 50% withdrawal and 25% attack it is quite a powerful promotion if you allow celts to build them by promoting all their swords and not only their guerilla 3 swords you increase the strength of their army considerably and I would fear that this might unbalance the warfare at this time tremendously (basically you would give them lots more of those maces than they can get now since not all swords have 3+ promotions when macemen come around but all will have guerilla 1). I would not make this change.

So, basically (if I understand it correctly) we agree on the following:

1. Firaxis intended to make the G2 and G3 promotions accessible for GWs (Gallic warriors), but not for all melee units. (It's very unlikely to *accidentally* arrive at the data in the XML and the coding that checks for the "legality" of a promotion when you intended to allow G2/G3 for macemen too).

2. The civilopedia is confusing in that regard. (Basically, the way Firaxis implemented the guerilla promotion line for GWs is a hack of the system. The way Civ4 is coded, all units of one category have access to the same promotions. Firaxis would have had to make an extra unit category for the GW to implement the different promotion possibilities "legally", but this would have complicated other matters, for example it would have made the shock promotion useless against GWs. So they used this hack instead, which the civilopedia can't really cope with.)

3. We disagree in the question whether it would be better or worse for game balance if the macemen could promote along the guerilla line too (given that they already have G1). Bursk says that this advantage is offset by the other disadvantages the Celts have, ori fears that the guerilla macemen might become unbalancingly strong. Personally I don't have much experience with the Celts, so I can't provide a well-based opinion here. I do however think that the change as proposed by Bursk would basically provide the Celts with a second UU: guerilla macemen. If I'd play the Celts then, I'd probably never build macemen, but keep building GWs (are these even obsoleted by macemen?) and immediately upgrade them to macemen, which could then gain experience until they earn G3. Doesn't sound very balanced to me. Even *if* the Celts have a crappy UB, there must be better ways to address this than to give them easy access to hordes of guerilla macemen.

4. Bhruic, you say that the scope of the change is so small that you're not sure there's any reason not to do it - depending on how which position someone has towards (3), you're probably right - for the unmodded game. However, in a game with Civ4's modability, I'm not sure whether we can estimate the scope of such a change correctly. (Admittedly I might be a bit too careful here.)

5. However, as far as I can see, the actual problem is not that macemen cannot get guerilla promotions, but that the civilopedia gives confusing info due to the hack-like way in which the Celtic UU's special ability has been implemented. The solution I'd prefer is to fix the civilopedia so that the confusing info isn't displayed (fox example, add a "legality check" like the one that prevents macemen from promoting to G2/G3 to the civilopedia display.)

Edit: Just checked the Civilopedia: Interestingly, the entry for macemen does *not* list G2 and G3 as eligible promotions. G2 and G3 do appear for Gallic warriors, but not for the other melee units. So the civilopedia does not simply check "ah, this is a melee unit, so let's list all promotions eligible to melee units", instead it checks for each promotions whether it can actually be attained by this unit.

The only pages where confusing info is presented are the info pages for the G2 and G3 promotions. I think the best fix for this problem is to introduce a check there - i.e. instead of simply mirroring the data in the XML entry for these promotions, the page should only list unit types which can legally get the promotion in question and all promotions that are required for it. Perhaps this can be coded by a loop that checks all unit types, discards any unit type that has at least one unit which cannot reach that promotion, and display the rest.

Psyringe said:

The only pages where confusing info is presented are the info pages for the G2 and G3 promotions. I think the best fix for this problem is to introduce a check there - i.e. instead of simply mirroring the data in the XML entry for these promotions, the page should only list unit types which can legally get the promotion in question and all promotions that are required for it. Perhaps this can be coded by a loop that checks all unit types, discards any unit type that has at least one unit which cannot reach that promotion, and display the rest.

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Now that's a good idea. It should be easily doable because, as you say, it already does the propery checking for the Gallic Warrior entry.

Bh

Bursk, just a head-up - I didn't catch that one on my first read of your post:

Bursk said:

Oh, and I'm also using the xmls from the FexF mod, but that's mainly just to change the game speed. As far as I know, FexF doesn't alter the units in any way.

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FexFX includes a Civ4UnitInfo.xml, which means that it undoes many fixes from patch 3.13. You may want to check my recommendations for playing the mod with 3.13.

This is not related to the topic of the thread, I just thought I'd tell before you wonder why paratroopers still never survive interception, the attack submarine's stats haven't changed, great generals can still build military academies without knowing Military Science, etc.

Bhruic said:

he question at this point is whether it makes sense to make the game match the documentation? I mean, consider the only possible situation: the Gallic Swordsman upgrades to Maceman. That's it. The Samurai doesn't upgrade to a Melee unit. And the Gallic Swordsman can't upgrade to any other melee unit than the Maceman. Considering the extremely limited scope of this change, I'm not sure there's any reason not to do it - but I'm open to differing opinions

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Remove the check if the prerequisite is valid would also affect the Swordsman quest, which would allow all meelee units to get Drill II-IV. It would be fun , but I suppose it makes more sense the way it is currently. It doesn't seem like a bug to me.

Hmm, it's amazing how inaccurate some of those Promotion labels are... For example, there are multiple promotions that list "Siege" as their prerequisite. But no mention is made of the fact that the Machine Gun, considered a "Siege" weapon, can't get most of them.

Bh