Small discovery re: bodyguards & how to have a unique bodyguard

[Epistolary Richard]

Monkwarrior, Phoenicia and I have been working in this thread trying to work out why some upgraded bodyguards were appearing at the beginning of the game while Phoenicia's modded bodyguards weren't even though they had the correct general_unit and general_unit_upgrade attributes.

We've realised that it is the order that the bodyguard units appear in export_descr_unit that is crucial as to which version appears in the early years of a campaign. The game picks out the first one listed - whether it has the general_unit or general_unit_upgrade.

Phoenicia was creating a new unit specifically for early Spanish bodyguards, but while he removed the vanilla version he put the new entry at the bottom of the edu file - so when a character was adopted or came of age he got the upgraded version of the bodyguard (now listed first in the file) even though it was still in the 260s BC.

In the process of working out what was going wrong, we also picked up how to create different bodyguards for different generals, for which I have written a short how to.

[Monkwarrior]

That's great. Finally we know part of the history.
Thus it seems unneccesary the attribute general_unit_upgrade.
There remain (at least for me) two questions:

1) How to get one only general unit: I imagine it will be possible if one faction has only one unit with general_unit attribute. Did you try it?

2) When and why the general unit is upgraded in the campaign: is it related to Marius reform? Is it related to some degree of developement of the faction?

I hope you have the answers.

[The Stranger]

yeah but if that general dies the bodyguard goes with him. new born generals just get the normal version. this only works for the generals starting in a campaign.

[MajorFreak]

all the more reason to go with the 4 turns per year mod. ;)

[Epistolary Richard]

yeah but if that general dies the bodyguard goes with him. new born generals just get the normal version. this only works for the generals starting in a campaign.

I know, that's why I wrote this at the top of the how to.

This can only be done for named characters who are active at the beginning of the campaign, ie, they appear in descr_strat.