Trucks.

[Predator145]

How do you guys utilize truck units? There is great unit graphics out there.

One solution is to have a separate unit line of "Motorized Infantry" using the default unit animation of the infantry unit and a truck run animation.

Another is trucks as land transport. That way they can transport infantry and tow artillery pieces (remember to give your artillery the "foot unit" ability and set trucks to "transport foot units only"). But the AI can't use that at all and land transport turned out to be far stronger than what I originally thought. Loading to into a land transport takes up no movement point. A truck with 2 movement points gives the transported 1 movement unit the equivalent of 3 movements a turn. Also land transports are time consuming. You have to load each ind unit. Ain't nobody got time to load 50 artillery pieces.

And there is the army route. Setting auto produced trucks as "Army" AI strat and giving them the "Army" ability (not having the ability would result in the AI doing nothing). By having 1 transport capacity ,no blitz and no support cost you can add movement without any combat ability increase, "motorizing" the infantry unit. The AI uses this well. If your trucks have an upgrade path they can upgrade the truck, spit the infantry out, upgrade the infantry and load them back again. Of course by the time you've reached the final truck stage that's no longer possible.

Unfortunately the bombard stat of artillery units are lost once you've loaded them into an army (make sure to give your artillery token A/D stats to be able to load). The AI won't motorize bombard units at all anyway so this is a human only thing. You could give the truck bombard value, blitz and range and only bombard once you've loaded your artillery pieces. Sometimes you've just gotta refrain. A 2 movement army truck with loading capacity of 3 and blitz could have 3 artillery loaded and then bombard max 3 times per turn. Or you can use a "towed artillery" army unit with blitz that you can bombard from the start with and not have to refrain. Loading more artillery pieces will increase your movement and shots. Just don't load anything else. Guard them carefully. All your eggs are in one basket.

Make sure to set the number of cities required to support an army to 1, the lowest possible.

The pallet is messed up when assigning a regular unit to army. Is there a way to fix this?

Last is sacrifice. I've not tested this at all. Just throwing this idea around. That's the closest thing to a freight/caravan unit short of disbanding.

 

[Civinator]

The best role for trucks is missing in your list: Use the trucks as trucks.

In the CCM mods the trucks are the eraspecific units for supply shipments in era 3 and era 4, giving 25 gold to the civ, when arriving escorted in their capital.

Spoiler :

Here are some screenshots, how supply shipments are working in those mods:

 

[tjs282]

By having 1 transport capacity ,no blitz and no support cost you can add movement without any combat ability increase, "motorizing" the infantry unit.

An Army-flagged unit presumably always gets the A/D stat-bonus added to its loaded unit(s):

A-bonus = A_{total for all loaded units} / (4 if MilAcad; 6 if no MilAcad)
D-bonus = D_{total for all loaded units} / (4 if MilAcad; 6 if no MilAcad)

This means that if you build Pentagon, allowing you to put 4 units into an Army, each of those 4 units' stats can be as much as doubled, e.g. an Inf-unit in the epic game has A.D.M=6.10.1 — but a 4-Inf Army (after MilAcad) has A.D.M=12.20.2

So even if you can only load a single unit, then provided that unit's A/D stats are >4 (after MilAcad) or >6 (before MilAcad), it will still get a small increase in A/D power, e.g. if a single Inf were loaded into your hypothetical Army-flagged, TransCap=1 truck, it would get bonuses of +1(.5)* and +2(.5)* to its A- and D-stats, respectively.

*I can never remember if the decimals are rounded up or down

The AI uses this well. If your trucks have an upgrade path they can upgrade the truck, spit the infantry out, upgrade the infantry and load them back again.

The only problem with this, is that you can only upgrade Army-flagged units in a town(s) where you have an improvement (like the MilAcad SW in the epic game) that allows you to build Armies without an MGL.

So while the AI might happily load and use its 'motorised infantry', it won't be able to use the upgrade-option reliably, unless it's possible to give the 'Build Army' ability to a (cheap?) generic building* (e.g. a "Supply dump"?) that it can construct (quickly) in any town. But as soon as one of those buildings goes up, that may also trigger the lower-value denominator to be used in the Army-bonus calculation, guaranteeing that your (upgraded) Army-trucks are that much more powerful.

*Not sure if this is possible though, because IIRC, that flag can only(?) be given to Wonders

 

[Predator145]

The best role for trucks is missing in your list: Use the trucks as trucks.

In the CCM mods the trucks are the eraspecific units for supply shipments in era 3 and era 4, giving 25 gold to the civ, when arriving escorted in their capital.

Spoiler :

Here are some screenshots, how supply shipments are working in those mods:

How do you implement that in the editor? What kind of unit ability and AI strat is required. Can the AI use that?

 

[Predator145]

An Army-flagged unit presumably always gets the A/D stat-bonus added to its loaded unit(s):

A-bonus = A_{total for all loaded units} / (4 if MilAcad; 6 if no MilAcad)
D-bonus = D_{total for all loaded units} / (4 if MilAcad; 6 if no MilAcad)

This means that if you build Pentagon, allowing you to put 4 units into an Army, each of those 4 units' stats can be as much as doubled, e.g. an Inf-unit in the epic game has A.D.M=6.10.1 — but a 4-Inf Army (after MilAcad) has A.D.M=12.20.2

So even if you can only load a single unit, then provided that unit's A/D stats are >4 (after MilAcad) or >6 (before MilAcad), it will still get a small increase in A/D power, e.g. if a single Inf were loaded into your hypothetical Army-flagged, TransCap=1 truck, it would get bonuses of +1(.5)* and +2(.5)* to its A- and D-stats, respectively.

*I can never remember if the decimals are rounded up or down
The only problem with this, is that you can only upgrade Army-flagged units in a town(s) where you have an improvement (like the MilAcad SW in the epic game) that allows you to build Armies without an MGL.

So while the AI might happily load and use its 'motorised infantry', it won't be able to use the upgrade-option reliably, unless it's possible to give the 'Build Army' ability to a (cheap?) generic building* (e.g. a "Supply dump"?) that it can construct (quickly) in any town. But as soon as one of those buildings goes up, that may also trigger the lower-value denominator to be used in the Army-bonus calculation, guaranteeing that your (upgraded) Army-trucks are that much more powerful.

*Not sure if this is possible though, because IIRC, that flag can only(?) be given to Wonders

Hmm, 1/4 bonus is quite significant for having soft skinned trucks, although the truck does cost like 100 shields so gameplay wise it's balanced. Plus a supply convoy does increase combat strength. Battering Rams and Siege Towers could also be fielded as such. Though having those move as fast as horsemen doesn't make sense. I'm looking for ideas how to fit them in as well.

If I implement that I'd give the barracks the "build army" flag. Real armies are nerfed enough in my mod with 1 transport cap and only 5HP bonus+an AI bombard heavy environment at 400 shields. The AI gets both the trucks and real armies SW auto produced as they never build them so the city cap doesn't bother them.

 

[AnthonyBoscia]

The only problem with this, is that you can only upgrade Army-flagged units in a town(s) where you have an improvement (like the MilAcad SW in the epic game) that allows you to build Armies without an MGL.

So while the AI might happily load and use its 'motorised infantry', it won't be able to use the upgrade-option reliably, unless it's possible to give the 'Build Army' ability to a (cheap?) generic building* (e.g. a "Supply dump"?) that it can construct (quickly) in any town. But as soon as one of those buildings goes up, that may also trigger the lower-value denominator to be used in the Army-bonus calculation, guaranteeing that your (upgraded) Army-trucks are that much more powerful.

*Not sure if this is possible though, because IIRC, that flag can only(?) be given to Wonders

Yeah, with the regular editor, the wonder flags will be greyed out if it's a regular improvement. I can't remember whether this works if you use Steph's editor, although I'm thinking no. Basically was trying to do the same thing with barracks but don't remember what the outcome was.

 

[Civinator]

How do you implement that in the editor? What kind of unit ability and AI strat is required. Can the AI use that?

Please see here: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/modding-q-a.609965/page-2#post-14649555

The AI is using these settings, but of course not as clever as a human player. With the 'capture the princess settings' the AI has especially problems when the supplyshipment is autoproduced in the capital. Therefore I set the value of such a supply caravan to only 25 gold, the same sum a civ receives when plundering a Barbarian village.