I'm Starting To Like This Numidian Mercenary...

[Bamspeedy]

Actually according to the civilopedia (when looking at it while playing the game), it says that Numidian Mercenaries upgrade directly to Musketmen. And of course this makes infinitely more sense than "upgrading a unit" by "downgrading" it.

Well, the editor shows it as upgrading to Pikeman. Can anyone who plays Carthage confirm for certain whether or not it upgrades to pikeman?

 

[narmox]

Catt, I guess we'll have to test it. I remember being able to build it, even when it was obsolete and I had had a golden age. That was with Legions (in a mod where legions upgraded to riflemen or infantry), and with Hoplites. And other ones too. But let's still still test it, in case either one of us is wrong

 

[Rambar]

In my current unmodded PTW 1.04 the mercenaries upgraded to musketmen. I couldn't build them once they become obsolete unless the city in question was disconnected from saltpeter.

 

[werdhertz]

They upgrade to Musketman, the same as Greeces Hoplites upgrade to Musketman.

 

[Cantankerous]

Originally posted by Bamspeedy
Well, the editor shows it as upgrading to Pikeman. Can anyone who plays Carthage confirm for certain whether or not it upgrades to pikeman?

That's the way the UU units progress through the upgrade process.

Numidian Mercenary upgrades to Pikeman, Pikeman upgrades to Musketman. And the editor does not allow Pikemen to be built by Carthage, then an upgrade automatically skips to Musketman.

Here's a better example:

Several civs build UUs in place of Swordsmen, but Warriors upgrade to Swordsman and Swordsmen upgrade to Medieval Infantry. The civs that have a UU in place of Swordsman (Celts, Rome, and Persia) need to be able to upgrade their warriors to these units (and not to swordsman), but the editor only allows a warrior to be upgraded to ONE specific unit. In other words, you can't tell the editor to upgrade a warrior to a Swordsman, Gallic Swordsman, Legionary, AND/OR Immortal. So how to get around this?

The editor gets around this by upgrading the Warrior to Swordsman, the Swordsman to Gallic Swordsman, the Gallic Swordsman to Legionary, the Legionary to Immortal, and the Immortal to Medieval Infantry.

Take Rome for example. Their warrior can be upgraded directly to Legionaries (skipping Swordsman and Gallic Swordsman since the editor doesn't allow them to build those units), and the Legionaries upgrade directly to Medieval Infantry since the editor does not allow the Romans to build Immortals.

It works the same way for other UUs.

The thing is that since nothing upgrades TO a Numidian Mercenary, its not necessary for the editor to "upgrade" the Numbidian Merc to a Pikeman (and then immediately skip to Musketman) since you could set the editor to upgrade it directly to Musketman.

But its not wrong to set the editor to upgrade a Numidian Merc to a Pikeman because you'll achieve the same result.

Just check out the progress the editor takes to upgrade a Russian Horseman to a Cossack:

Horseman -> Mounted Warrior -> Knight -> Keshik -> Answar Warrior -> Rider -> Samurai -> War Elephant -> Cavalry -> Sipahi -> Cossack

Now, that's exhausting.

 

[narmox]

well I was wrong. I had my golden age in 1100BC,and now that I can build musketeers, I can't build Numidian Mercenaries anymore.

 

[Bamspeedy]

Cantankerous- Stupid me. I knew how the upgrade chain works with UU's. I just forgot to check Pikeman to see if Carthage could build it. I just assumed they would, since usually most civs can only not build regular units that their UU replaces, in this case spearman. It always was just replacing 1 unit, but in this case it is actually 'replacing' 2 units (spearman + Pikeman).