You can't upgrade something else to your special unit (I found out the hard way)

[hecose]

It's only my second game of Civ3, on Regent (i.e. Normal). I am the Russians, and my special unit is the Cossack, which replaces Cavalry. I have been doing pretty badly since the ancient ages because I didn't expand as quickly as the AI (7 others). I managed to keep up in tech by doing lots of trading, and I'm pretty rich too by buying & selling techs. I'm in one corner of a very large landmass where everyone is on, with the Germans blocking me from everyone else. So, to expand, I'll have to attack the Germans. Just before discovering Military Tradition, I traded for horses and started making lots of knights. I planned to upgrade them all to Cossacks once I discover Military Tradition. Then I found out, I CAN'T upgrade knights to cossacks. I have to build cossacks from scratch. Ouch! So I had to delay my invasion plans a little, after producing a couple of cossacks to accompany my tons of knights into battle.

 

[damunzy]

Hopefully that is something that can be fixed in a patch. Just wait until you get to modern times and have all those next to useless units hanging around. I noticed this when making Samurai. They can only be upgraded to Cavalry ( A/D/M going from 4/4/2 to 6/3/3 .....they lose defensive abilities???) while spearmen can be upgrade to Pikemen to Musketmen to Riflemen to Infantry to Mech Infantry. Yes it may cost gold but I think I will stay away from making those un-upgradeable middleages units from now on unless I am in the middle of a war.

 

[hecose]

I suspect it's intentionally done that way - not letting you upgrade a normal unit to your special unit - to maintain game balance. Perhaps they did it that way so that no civ will suddenly become too strong once it discovers the technology for their special unit.

On another note, sometimes it will be necessary to build unupgradable units, like cavalry (or in my case, cossacks). I have just entered the Industrial Ages. My strongest offensive unit now is the cossacks, which I'm building a lot because I want to use them to wage a big war against the Germans (and possibly the Persians soon after that). Germany's strongest defensive unit is the musket man. So I better make good use of my cossacks before they discover Nationalism and get riflemen. So, at times it's crucial to grab your window of opportunity!

I think a good design decision is making the defensive units upgradable all the way to mech inf. That way the peaceful players can worry less about replacing units and concentrate on empire building. I think Firaxis really has put much thought in ensuring different people can win using their own style.

 

[WUM]

i could never upgrade my Romans Legions, though i had barracks and all resources. Did i miss something?

 

[Malys Faisent]

Legions are based off of swordsmen, and swordsmen don't upgrade at all...

However, you can use the editor and fix this if you desire. You can also change how units upgrade to specials if you want. The only thing that annoys me is that in some cases not being able to upgrade into your special (or upgrade at all) just isn't correct.

Take the French, for everyone else pikemen > musket men. Well the French cannot make musketmen because they make musketeers instead...so instead of getting a better defensive troop before Cavalry shows up, they are stuck with pikemen until they get Nationalism, unless they rebuild all of their defensive troops from scratch. Either they should be allowed to upgrade their pikemen into Musketmen or Musketeers, else the 'special' unit is actually a penalty.

Personally I opened my editor and changed the upgrade path for pikemen to be musketeers, went back to my game and upgraded my units, saved, and then changed the pikemen upgrade path back to normal...I guess I could have changed it so that the French could also make musket men (the fact that your special replaces the normal unit is what is causing this...) and just upgraded to them...You could do the same with warriors > legionaires or knights > cossacks.

For Swordsmen, I'd probably change the upgrade path to be riflemen rather than musket men, Samuri could be the same. Cavalry based units should probably be a dead end path, but they have an extremely long shelf life so it balances it out...

 

[LoneWolf5050]

You can find all the upgrade paths in the complete and accurate reference file I made (from civilopedia and editor data, NOT the manual which is out of date).

The file is in this thread:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=7359

All special units must be built from scratch. You cannot upgrade to them.

Some special units can be upgraded.

All the details are in the file (complete with unit graphics).

--LW