Shift-U Bug in PTW & Conquests (?)

[Kingpin]

I don't know how much pull anyone here has with the programmers at Firaxis, but there is one thing I am desperately trying to get fixed. It is the Shift-U bug, and IMO it is the greatest bug that remains in the game. This could be of use in many mods if they get it functioning properly.

The shift-U bug allows the upgrade of units that do not have the upgradable box checked in the editor. This means that the human player can upgrade those particular units and has a HUGE advantage over the AI, who cannot upgrade those units.

Let me explain this bug... In real life F-15Bs are being upgraded to F-15Es (sorry if I got those designations wrong) because of technology developed for the F-22. No new F-15Es are being built, just F-22s but the old F-15Bs are all being upgraded. Both the F-15E and F-22 result from the same technology. F-15Es are not changed into F-22s, obviously.

Currently, trying to mimic this in Civ3 is possible for only the AI and not the human player. The three units are on the same upgrade path, but the F-15E would have the upgradable box in the editor unchecked to prevent it's being changed into an F-22. Both the F-15E and F-22 would be available at the same tech. As far as the human player should be concerned, once that tech was discovered they should be able to build new F-22s and upgrade their old F-15s to new F-15s... except that using Shift-U will magically change the F-15B's to F-22s even though the box is unchecked. Am I making sense here? You can see that this gives the human player a huge advantage over the AI.

Shift-U should only work on units that have the upgradeable box checked. And it should only upgrade to the very next unit on the upgrade path, and not skip to the latest unit on the path.

Please help me in my struggle to get this recognized as a bug by Firaxis and fixed for PTW and conquests.

 

[EddyG17]

i don't follow you, that hasn't happen to me, i think.
could you give me an example using the game's units?

 

[Lucky Dragon]

It's very simple:
If the "Upgrade" action is not checked in the unit actions box in the editor, you CANNOT upgrade that unit using the upgrade command, BUT if you move a bunch of them to cities with barracks/harbors, you CAN upgrade them all at once with Shift-U.
Until this bug cropped up, I was using this functionality in my mod: I had a number of units (wooden ships in particular) that I wanted to remove from the build box in industrial/modern times. For those units, I set them to upgrade to some other unit, but I left the "upgrade" unit action flag unchecked. This meant that after the tech for the new unit became available, the obsolete unit could no longer be built. But currently, the game is not checking this flag before implementing the "mass-upgrade" command. The only thing that gets checked is whether a unit has another unit in the "upgrade to" box.

THIS NEEDS TO BE FIXED.

 

[Kingpin]

Exactly, Lucky D. This is a huge problem, IMO. And I sure do not want it showing up in Conquests. And if it can be fixed in PTW too that would be great.

 

[sealman]

Sounds like it could easily be fixed but then again, I am not a programmer.