Changing General Units

[Steppe Merc]

How can I make it so that instead of their being an Early and Late General, their's just one General? For example, instead of the Parhtians having that javilen throwing one at the beggining, just have Cataphracts through out the game.

[Sinner]

At a guess - I'm at work so can't check, sorry - you could try 2 methods, both requiring that you edit export_descr_unit.txt...

The first is to remove the attribute of general_unit from the east generals cavalry early unit stats. This would leave only the later general units for the Eastern factions of Armenia, Parthia and Pontus.

The second would be to copy the unit stats for the east generals cavalry from soldier down to stat_cost and use them to overwrite the same fields on the early general. This would get around any possible problem of the game perhaps requiring a early and late general. Or perhaps do this but tone down the stats so that they're not overly unbalanced at the beginning of the game.

[Duke John]

This is new for me. When does the general's unit chance from early to late?

[Sinner]

The unit is supposedly meant to change when your faction builds the highest level of governing building it can, eg. Imperial Palace for Rome.

In export_descr_buildings.txt you'll find the capability upgrade_bodyguard 1 requires factions { barbarian, } under the governors_palace and proconsuls_palace buildings and upgrade_bodyguard 1 under the imperial_palace.

It does appear that this trigger isn't working since I've never seen a late general unit in my Roman campaigns. I've tried re-training, just leaving generals in the city and building other units to try and trigger the upgrade, but nothing seems to work.

[Duke John]

I tested upgrade_bodyguard 1 some time ago and the only thing it apparently does is giving the bodyguard unit +1 valour.

Does it chance from early to late when the Marian reform happens? Although that doesn't make sense when Barbarian generals are upgraded.

[Sinner]

Ah, I'd misunderstood the effect of that capability. I assumed that the change from Early to Late would be linked to the Marian Reforms for the Romans and would follow similar lines for the other factions, with that upgrade bodyguard capability looking the likely culprit. I knew that the upgrade to Late never seems to happen so I didn't investigate further.