Changing/adding machine gun promotions

[freeluos]

I was wondering why the machine gun unit only can get the shock, ambush, march, medic1-2, drill 1-4 promotions.

Why not woodsman-1-2, guerilla 1-2 and garrisson 1-3 too?

I have looked into the xml files how I can change this but it seems this is not set up very logical.
In Beyond the Sword\Assets\XML I got the files CIV4UnitInfos.xml and CIV4PromotionInfos.xml. But there is no indication how to change the promotions for the machine gunner. It seems it should be somewhere else but where? The only way I can do this now is to add a complete new combatunit. That is a lot of wotk for somrthing that should have been simple.

Any ideas? Thanks in advance.

 

[lymond]

Machine Guns are classified as siege units.

 

[Choggy]

Crossbows upgrade to Machine Guns and like upgrading CR Mace to Rifles they keep their old promos.

 

[Dr.Null]

Hmm. Thinking about this, Guerrilla makes a lot of sense for Siege. There have been cases where having the "high ground" for cannons / artillery has given a significant advantage, right? So they'd get the Guerrilla defense bonus when on hills even though they don't get the hill bonus for being on a hill, and they could eventually get the G3 hill attack bonus and +50% withdrawal chance, which together would be about as good as CR3.

I can see the same logic being applied to Machine Guns. Having the high ground means your trenches don't fill up with water, so your troops don't catch malaria and TB. Healthy troops can fight better. Makes perfect sense.

 

[freeluos]

But why is a machine gunner a siege unit? The only explanation I can think of is that a machine gunner only take defensive positions and catapults, cannon, artillery, etc do not attack directly an enemy.

It should be more logical that a machine gunner is a gunpowder unit. But it is a little bit strange where you can assign promotions to a machine gunner. The machine gunner is a siege unit but it does not has barrage promotions (obvious). Where in the game is taken care of the unit promotions and not the combat group? It seems not to be in the XML files .

 

[Culture Bomb]

I assume the designers made that decision deliberately for gameplay reasons rather than realism - being a siege unit has 2 main advantages that I can see:

1. It has a better chance to defend against infantry, which get +25% vs gunpowder units (and also anything with pinch.)

2. AFAIK siege units are immune to collateral damage.

 

[Peasley]

I assume the designers made that decision deliberately for gameplay reasons rather than realism - being a siege unit has 2 main advantages that I can see:

1. It has a better chance to defend against infantry, which get +25% vs gunpowder units (and also anything with pinch.)

2. AFAIK siege units are immune to collateral damage.

I think that the second thing is the main reason.

 

[Sisiutil]

Crossbows upgrade to Machine Guns and like upgrading CR Mace to Rifles they keep their old promos.

Grenadiers also upgrade to MGs at a much lower cost. One of my favourite tactics in the game is to build several Grens, giving them promotions like City Garrison, Guerrilla, and Combat, then upgrading them to MGs.

 

[Choggy]

Grenadiers also upgrade to MGs at a much lower cost. One of my favourite tactics in the game is to build several Grens, giving them promotions like City Garrison, Guerrilla, and Combat, then upgrading them to MGs.

Thanks for the tip - I don't generally build Grens but that's definitely a good reason to start doing so.

 

[georgjorge]

One of my favorite defensive plays was upgrading the Drill IV Combat II City Guard Cho-Ko-Nus which had kept my conquest going for many centuries during medieval times to Machine Guns in order to fight off a massive Cavalry + Infantry attack in the 1600s...talk about longevity.

 

[capnvonbaron]

I do like the xbow upgrade to MG quite a lot. For protective civs, even better. A pair of promoted MGs in your more vulnerable coastal cities will shred pesky galleon-based sneak-attacks that the AI loves so much in the early industrial age. Sitting Bull's upgraded xbows are

On the collateral topic, I believe MGs are immune to collateral up until artillery, aren't they?

 

[s.bernbaum]

On the collateral topic, I believe MGs are immune to collateral up until artillery, aren't they?

Since they are classified as siege, they are immune to collateral damage from any ground unit. Air units can do collateral damage to all ground units, including siege.

 

[Sisiutil]

Since they are classified as siege, they are immune to collateral damage from any ground unit. Air units can do collateral damage to all ground units, including siege.

Even there, MGs have an advantage, in that they are your earliest-available form of anti-aircraft weapon.

 

[capnvonbaron]

Ah very true... I do recall them repelling some very annoying blimp attacks now that you mention it.

Cavalry doesn't have flanking against them, do they? I can't honestly recall the last time I saw cavs vs. MGs...

 

[Dr.Null]

Ah very true... I do recall them repelling some very annoying blimp attacks now that you mention it.

Cavalry doesn't have flanking against them, do they? I can't honestly recall the last time I saw cavs vs. MGs...

Flanking is always vs. specific units, not classes of units. For example, Horse Archers don't flank Cannons, even though Cannons are the same unit type as Catapults, and HAs do flank Catapults.

 

[s.bernbaum]

Ah very true... I do recall them repelling some very annoying blimp attacks now that you mention it.

Cavalry doesn't have flanking against them, do they? I can't honestly recall the last time I saw cavs vs. MGs...

Correct, cavalry does not have flanking versus machine guns. OTOH, machine guns don't have a bonus versus cavalry like they do versus gunpowder units.

 

[1984plusplus]

But it is a little bit strange where you can assign promotions to a machine gunner. The machine gunner is a siege unit but it does not has barrage promotions (obvious). Where in the game is taken care of the unit promotions and not the combat group? It seems not to be in the XML files .

This made me a little curious, so I tested it out by giving recon units city raider promotions. They didn't show up in game, so I imagine somewhere in the game code the <bDefenseOnly> tag removes offense only promotions like barrage and city raider.

As for how you could add the promotions to machine guns, there are a few options. You could just add them to the siege class, but then other siege units would get them as well (unless <bNoDefensiveBonus> also removes defensive promotions. I'll have to look into that later).

Or you could go the Gallic Warrior route and give all siege access to the level 2 and 3 promotions, and just give machine guns the first level promotions for free. I think that would work fine for just one type, but three free promotions is alot.

You could just make machine guns gunpowder units by changing <Combat>UNITCOMBAT_SIEGE</Combat> to <Combat>UNITCOMBAT_GUN</Combat>. This would make them weak to pinch promotions instead of charge promotions, and take away part of their advantage against infantry and weakness to artillery and mobile artillery. You could restore the unit advantages by giving machine guns a defensive bonus against infantry and the artilleries an attack bonus against machine guns using the <UnitClassAttackMods> and <UnitClassDefenseMods> tags.

Lastly you could probably keep everything otherwise the same by giving them their own machine gun combat type, but I'm not sure if you can do that with just the XML.

 

[Big_Bossman]

Well here's the rub in my book , if you want a machine gun to have the bombard promotion , you have to get a unit like a mace man and give it a combat promotion and a city attack promotion . Keep these guys alive and get them more points to upgrade with later . When your ready spend some cash to give them better weapons , i.e. grenades then upgrade to machine guns later on and then spend those promotions on the bombard promotion . En masse they are fearsome units as only five of these can lower most city defenses to zero in about 2 turns ... 9 of them can do it in about one turn ... from 80 % to zero ... I posted a collage of five of them from a game i was playing ... Played again and had 11 of them with the Aztecs * nice * oh yeah and best of all they got combat II to go with that bombard promotion * SWEET * !

 

[Big_Bossman]

Correct, cavalry does not have flanking versus machine guns. OTOH, machine guns don't have a bonus versus cavalry like they do versus gunpowder units.

Yes but if you build pikemen with the combat II + Formation you can get some anti - mounted machine guns for later on

 

[strijder20]

The main reason MGs are siege units is to complete the WW1 combat triangle Infantry < MG < Artillery < Infantry, I think.