A note to all mod builders: how to make one unit upgrade into two new ones....

[Kryten]

(Forgive me if this is already widely known, but I thought it may be useful)

I wanted to add a bit more historical accuracy to the already great game of civ3, such as stopping WWII Fighters being built in the Modern Era and having Napoleonic Cavalry (or even worse, Russian Knights!) running about in the late Industrial/WWII Era.
The simple solution is to have WWII Fighters upgrade into Jet Fighters and Cavalry upgrade to Tanks, but this still leaves problems. For example, the American nation in civ3 cannot build Jet Fighters, only F-15's, so you end up in the Modern Era with everybody building Jet Fighters EXCEPT the Americans, who can build the most advanced Jet Fighter in the game AND still build old WWII Fighters as well!
Not very realistic.
It's worse with the Russians. Making Cavalry upgrade to Tanks means that everybody in the WWII period builds Tanks instead of Cavalry EXCEPT the Russians, who cannot build Cavalry so that their Knights never become obsolete. You end up with Russia still able to build Medieval Knights against the Wehrmacht's Panzers! Very, very unrealistic.

But there is a simple solution. It seems that in civ3 "if you can't build the new unit (because you can't own it or don't have the resources), then you can continue to build the old unit".

So, by making WWII Fighters upgrade to Jet Fighters, and Jet Fighters upgrade to F-15's (even though they are both discovered with the Rocketry Advance), what happens is that anyone who has Rocketry can now only build Jet Fighters (or F-15's if American) and not WWII Fighters. It is as if WWII Fighters have upgraded into two new units.

Making Cavalry upgrade to Cossacks works as well, because when Military Tradition is discovered Knights cannot be built and Cavalry (or Cossacks if Russian) are built instead. In effect, the Knight unit has upgraded into two new units: Cavalry and Cossacks.

The same thing needs to done for Panzers, because the Germans in civ3 cannot build Tanks and so their Cavalry will only become obsolete if Tanks upgrade to Panzers. Otherwise, you could have German Napoleonic type Cavalry being built in WWII (I know things were going badly for the Third Reich by 1945, but not THAT bad!).

I have also used this "double-upgrade" method on bow and arrow units in my mod, using Dark Sheer's excellent Crossbowman graphics:-
Archers --> Crossbowmen --> Longbowmen --> Musketmen
If I make only the English and the Americans able to build Longbows, then everybody else will carry on building Crossbowmen untill Gunpowder is discovered (why shoud the Americans build Longbows? Well, the English and American nations in civ3 are the only two who don't have a 'special' land unit. And the Americans WERE culturally English, at least untill the late 1700's. So if we Brits can build them then the Yanks should too!)

There is only one slight problem left: How can you stop Legionaries/Immortals/Men-o-War/Cossacks being built in the later ages? Because these units can trigger a 'Golden Age' I can't find a way of making them obsolete and have them removed from the build queue. The best I've been able to do is make them upgradeable to more modern units. But I can't find a way to stop them being built altogether.

I hope this "double-upgrade" technique is of use to you all.....

 

[Lelopticos]

It isnt really all that unrealistic to have cavalry hanging around in later eras. In WW1 horses were still used, especially early on in the war before trenches and barbed wire put a stop to the cavalry charge tactic. I think they went fairly unused in World war 2 but I think there is still the odd example. Admittedly they were not used anywhere near the front line by then.

 

[Kryten]

You are quite right, there usually are some old Cavalry units still floating about in the later ages: there are the AI nations who are technologically behind, other nations that don't have the modern resources, maybe even your own units that you can't afford to upgrade due to a lack of cash, and so on. I just don't like the idea of building NEW Cavalry units in the WWII period (or Knights, or Swordsmen!).

Anyway, I was just using the WWII period as an example of how it is possible to make units upgrade more realistically by using the "double-upgrade" idea.

 

[Psychlone]

And what do you do in Civ if you lack the resources to build modern units, and have taken away the ability to build obsolete units? You'd be screwed. Obsolete units are better than no units.

 

[Kryten]

That's a good point Psychlone!

Fortunatlely civ3 already covers this type of situation. As I said before, the golden rule in civ3 seems to be that "if you cannot build the new unit (because you are not allowed to own it or don't have the resources to build it), then you CAN carry on building the old unit". For example, as soon as you discover Iron Working, and have a road to the iron, you must build Swordsmen instead of Warriors. But if you LOSE that source of iron, then the game allows obsolete Warriors to be built instead.

It is even technically possible for players to deliberately pillage their OWN roads leading to resources so that they can revert back to building obsolete units, but I don't think it's likely that anyone would!

(By the way, I like the look of your B1 Bomber!)