I'm playing the latest Realism Invictus update and I want to know how to change which units civs start with on an Industrial era start - civs that have access to the Longbowman unit have that as their starting unit, but others that don't have gunpowder Irregulars instead. This is a bit of an imbalance, and I want everyone to start off with Irregulars. Is there a setting I can change for this?
Change Industrial start units?
- Thread starter rbNEXUS6
- Start date
Those are probably the
defined in Civ4EraInfos.xml. But the unit type isn't configurable in XML; that gets decided by the DLL (mostly by CvPlayerAI::AI_unitValue with eUnitAI=UNITAI_CITY_DEFENSE) based on the unit stats: base combat strength, first strikes, built-in defensive modifier — assuming that Realism Invictus hasn't changed that evaluation (I doubt it). I don't know the stats of Longbowmen and Irregulars in RI, but I'm guessing that the former has a higher defensive modifier and the latter a higher base strength - and that the defensive modifier, on the bottom line, wins out. Assuming that recompiling the DLL is too much effort, I think you could only change the unit stats or tech/ resource requirements or try setting a positive iAIWeight in Civ4UnitInfos.xml for the Irregular. The AI weight gets added to AI_unitValue. But I don't know how high the value needs to be to tip the scales (10, 25, 100, 1000?), and it'll also encourage the AI to train more Irregulars. Or you could try to convince Walter Hawkwood to make a DLL change; but it's not obvious to me how the evaluation should be changed, or, put differently, why Irregular is the better (starting) defensive unit.
<iStartingDefenseUnits>3</iStartingDefenseUnits>defined in Civ4EraInfos.xml. But the unit type isn't configurable in XML; that gets decided by the DLL (mostly by CvPlayerAI::AI_unitValue with eUnitAI=UNITAI_CITY_DEFENSE) based on the unit stats: base combat strength, first strikes, built-in defensive modifier — assuming that Realism Invictus hasn't changed that evaluation (I doubt it). I don't know the stats of Longbowmen and Irregulars in RI, but I'm guessing that the former has a higher defensive modifier and the latter a higher base strength - and that the defensive modifier, on the bottom line, wins out. Assuming that recompiling the DLL is too much effort, I think you could only change the unit stats or tech/ resource requirements or try setting a positive iAIWeight in Civ4UnitInfos.xml for the Irregular. The AI weight gets added to AI_unitValue. But I don't know how high the value needs to be to tip the scales (10, 25, 100, 1000?), and it'll also encourage the AI to train more Irregulars. Or you could try to convince Walter Hawkwood to make a DLL change; but it's not obvious to me how the evaluation should be changed, or, put differently, why Irregular is the better (starting) defensive unit.
