National Units blocking Regular production

[Fafnir13]

When you gain access to certain national units like Knights, their prerequisite becomes unaccessible until you have filled the national unit slots. Upgrading to an intermediate (like an axeman to a champion) also seems to be blocked. These blocks can be quite troublesome as the player may not be able/willing to fill those slots right away for any number of reasons.
There is also a bit of micromanagement trouble as prerequisite units you had queued will automatically upgrade their production to the new one. In a Hippus game yesterday, I had to spend a bit of time looking through all of my build queues to find where the a knight was which was blocking the upgrading if a high level horse archer.
The current work-around would be to cancel all build orders in your main cities, head over to one of your slower production cities, and plop all the national units in there, filling the slots but ready to be canceled well before they'd ever have a chance to be built. Not the smoothest operation. Making it so national units don't block regular ones would be for the better.

 

[cyther]

This would be quite easy, I think it would only require adding a never obsolete to the tier3 units.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

should be posted in the bug thread imho

 

[westamastaflash]

I'd like an option or something to never obsolete any units. It's so much easier to build cheap warriors / scouts, and then pay to upgrade them to whatever I need.

 

[attackdrone]

I'd like an option or something to never obsolete any units. It's so much easier to build cheap warriors / scouts, and then pay to upgrade them to whatever I need.

If this is preferable to you, I would recommend just having a city or two that lacks training yards, hunting lodges, and archery ranges. These cities produce your warriors and scouts, that move to a different city to upgrade to whichever unit you choose.

 

[westamastaflash]

If this is preferable to you, I would recommend just having a city or two that lacks training yards, hunting lodges, and archery ranges. These cities produce your warriors and scouts, that move to a different city to upgrade to whichever unit you choose.

I *know* this. But sometimes on smaller maps it'd be nice to build them in *all* cities.

 

[Sarisin]

One other thing with this.

I had a couple of Hunters I wanted to upgrade to Rangers. Upgrading to Beastmaster and I think Druid was too expensive and I was saving those upgrades for a couple of high XP units that were involved in a war abroad.

However, I was unable to even upgrade this units, let alone build new Rangers in my main unit-building city as mentioned by the OP.

Someone said not having a certain building would allow you to keep building units that have been obsoleted. Is this true with Soldiers of Kilmorph? It seems like whenever I research Fanaticism and Paramanders are available, the Soldiers cannot be built anywhere.

I miss their Hurry Production talent when that happens.

 

[Grey Fox]

I kinda think upgrading from warriors is overpowered but I guess everything has been designed around this anyways. Except the AI don't do it (on purpose, building warriors in one city to be upgraded in another I mean).

I think it's the biggest reason that I'm able to win on the higher difficulties, and it was the biggest reason I could win on the higher difficulties in Civ3 as well.

On another note, the Axeman costs 2.4 times as many hammers as a Warrior with only 1.33 times as much strength without any metal weapons. With Copper weapons it's only 1.25 times and with iron weapons it's only 1.2 times more. If you ONLY have access to Mithril, you get a whooping 2.66 times the strength of a warrior without any weapons.
This is without counting any other bonuses, such as promotions

Another comparison, a Warrior with Copper weapons has the exact same strength as a Axeman (with copper) when defending a city for 41.6% of the cost!

 

[megamanx06]

On another note, the Axeman costs 2.4 times as many hammers as a Warrior with only 1.33 times as much strength without any metal weapons. With Copper weapons it's only 1.25 times and with iron weapons it's only 1.2 times more. If you ONLY have access to Mithril, you get a whooping 2.66 times the strength of a warrior without any weapons.

but sometimes it pays to have that extra strength. an axeman with bronze weapons easily beats a warrior with no weapons.

 

[Ranos]

One other thing with this.

I had a couple of Hunters I wanted to upgrade to Rangers. Upgrading to Beastmaster and I think Druid was too expensive and I was saving those upgrades for a couple of high XP units that were involved in a war abroad.

However, I was unable to even upgrade this units, let alone build new Rangers in my main unit-building city as mentioned by the OP.

Someone said not having a certain building would allow you to keep building units that have been obsoleted. Is this true with Soldiers of Kilmorph? It seems like whenever I research Fanaticism and Paramanders are available, the Soldiers cannot be built anywhere.

I miss their Hurry Production talent when that happens.

Don't Soldiers of Kilmorph and their upgrades just require RoK in a city to build? If so, then there is no building requirement so no workaround.

I agree with being able to fix the national units but fixing any of the smaller ones would mean allowing the human to have an exploit that the AI probably wouldn't be able to figure out.

 

[heisenberg]

Yea i try not to hit fanat unless i'm really going for paladins/eids when I'm running RoK. Not being able to build soldiers hurts sometimes when you want to rush buildings on your new cities--especially as the clan when you could get the same number of hammers back while rushing using warrens.

 

[westamastaflash]

especially as the clan when you could get the same number of hammers back while rushing using warrens.

That is a fantastic idea. Why did I not think of this!

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

yeah, I really hate losing the ability to build soldiers of kilmorph too. methinks they should never obsolete, they are just SO good.

 

[zup]

Just don't obsolete anything, ever, please.

 

[Zobo]

What if:

instead of obsoliting an unit making it disappear on the buildable list, there is a different "obsolete" category that is placed after all non-obsolete units, buildings and wonders.

In that way you could still build them, but their clutter-effect wouldn't really hurt the usability of the interface as much?

 

[Grey Fox]

but sometimes it pays to have that extra strength. an axeman with bronze weapons easily beats a warrior with no weapons.

I know, that's one of the things that make it hard to balance.

 

[sylvanllewelyn]

Yeah, that's definitely a bug. Never obseleting also sounds nice, but be careful about balance. For example, Mahala of the Doviello would run rampent. Imagine spamming beastmen (25 hammers) and then upgrading then into battlemasters (150 hammers) for a total of 120 gold. That's 2.08 hammers per gold. 60 gold? Yup - beastman to SoA for 40, SoA to battlemaster for 80, but halved for ingenuity.

Be careful what you wish for.

 

[Brokenbone]

Never obsoleting may make sense for some units, some times, but not universally in my opinion... the "be careful" post above helps illustrate that.

Still, regarding National Units, I agree pretty much unconditionally. If I desperately need horse archers, and have my four most highly promoted horse archers who I intend to make knights, off to war, I do not want to be forced to make more knights at home as some kind of throwaways. Same with needing waterwalking Stygians and being forced to get non-amphibious Eidolons, and several other examples you can think of, for being "forced" down this path.

 

[Yashkaf]

At least the warriors and scouts should never be obsolete. I always hate having huge garrisons in every border city, and I like to be able to rely on popping some quick bronze warriors when I see the enemy approaching. So what happens? I see the enemy coming three turns away from my city with 30 production, thinking I'm going to have 3 nice warriors ready to meet him and hold off the first charge. 3+1 strength with +25% warrior bonus and another 65% from hill city and +10% from fortify is 8 strength, which is a toss-up with a bronze axeman with CR2. Guess what? I can only build a champion for 120 prod, which is one turn too much, and my lone archer defender is brutally murdered and his body hung from the ruins of the city walls.

Haha, fun times.

 

[Methuselah]

Guess what? I can only build a champion for 120 prod, which is one turn too much, and my lone archer defender is brutally murdered and his body hung from the ruins of the city walls.

Well, if you only have one unit defending a border city, you deserve to lose it to be honest, especially if you know the civ that it borders is more technologically advanced/has more units.