First of all, this is actually not the place for questions. Only finished graphics should be posted in here. But maybe it's good you asking this here where everybody can see it, because I recognized there is a very bad style of creating and publishing units. I had also problems with some of Zervers units and I was able to solve them. The problem had something to do with that I am playing on freeze-mode because my computer is already a bit older. You can try the following: go to the graphics menu (where you can adjust on which resolution you want to play etc.) and check if the units animations are switched off. Can't tell you what this option is exactly called at the moment, I have not much time now. Just have a look at the options menu and you'll sincerly find it. If you switch it back on and everything is fine, I know what your problem is and I can help you. If you have a stronger machine than you can keep it the way it is. If not, the game will slow down for you and it'll maybe be a horror trip to play it. Then you should do the following:
- find out on which unit the new one is based on; every unit was made out of an existing one that came with civ4, in your case you can see it cause you wrote they change back to rifleman etc.
- once you did that, go to Zervers files you have included to civ4; check if the unit has it's original name, for example: if the unit is based on the rifleman the nif should be rifleman.nif and the fx version of it (if there is one, it is not necessarily needed) should be rifleman_fx.nif, if this is not the case then rename those files
- next step is to copy the kf's from civ4, that's a bit triggy, because there are units coming from vanila, warlords and bts, and all the original files are spread out over different folders; you have to ind out to which game the original unit (the one your unit is based on) belongs to; your rifleman should be a vanilla unit so you have to look up for it in civ4/Assets, there should be fpk files which are archives, you can unpack them with a certain program but I can't remember its name right now... there is a tool section at this forum where you can load it, you may have to search for it a bit, but you'll find it; if you have unpacked the archives (will need some space on your harddrive) there should be a folder "art" and inside it "units", there should be a folder with the same name the unit has you are searching for, there will be a rifleman folder for example (I know that, because I worked a lot with the rifleman), inside it you'll find the original nif, a kfm, some dds and kf's, now copy the kf's (not the kfm) to the folder where Zervers files you have included to your mod are in, NOTE: if your unit is based on a warlords or a bts unit, there will be no archive, instead go to civ4/warlords/Assets/art/units or civ4/beyond the sword/Assets/art/units, all units are there, already unpacked, NOTE2: the size of your mod will increase, maybe this is why all the modders don't put the kfs into there files
- last step is looking up your xmls again (civ4artdefines_units.xml of your mod), you have to point to the files in your mods folder, not to the subfolder of the original game, this is also often the case in other people's mods, these are the lines of one of my unit:
<NIF>Art/Units/Infantry_Magyar/hun_inf.nif</NIF>
<KFM>Art/Units/Infantry/Infantry.kfm</KFM>
<SHADERNIF>Art/Units/Infantry_Magyar/hun_inf.nif</SHADERNIF>
as you can see it doesn't point to the infantry folder anymore but to Infantry_Magyar folder of my mod, if you are creating a bts modular mod the path is a bit different, you'll find it out by reading some tutorials if you already haven't
->if you don't do it this way your machine will have the idea to animate your unit the way the original unit is, this happens although and even only if you switch off the units animations
I bet this will solve your problem, it always worked for me everytime I included one of Zervers units. Hopefully some of the modders will recognize this problem when reading this. I guess they didn't recognize it because they have stronger machines then me.
If this doesn't help you, please post you xml entrys of the civ4artdefines_unit.xml.