New Feature: Automatic Upgrading of Unit Types

New Feature: Automatic Upgrading of Unit Types

[Eric McDonald]

Hello fellow Xconquerors,

  I have added the ability to have units of certain types 
automatically upgraded to new types. These upgrades can take place 
at the beginning of each turn. The Bellum Aeternum game now uses 
this feature: after Towns reach size 60, they become Cities, and 
after Cities reach size 180, they should become Metropoles.

  Game Developer Notes:
  
  (1) Manual change-type actions are now actuated through 
'can-change-type-to'. This is to handle acp-independent units, but 
applies to both acp-independent and -dependent ones. Setting the 
'acp-to-change-type' to 0 will still work to prevent a change-type 
in acp-dependent games. <IMPORTANT> But, to allow a change-type to 
happen, 'can-change-type-to' MUST be set to true, AND 
'acp-to-change-type' must be set greater than 0 in acp-dependent 
games. </IMPORTANT>
  (2) Automatic upgrades ignore both 'can-change-type-to' and 
'acp-to-change-type', since ACP's are not spent at the turn start. 
Instead, use the 'auto-upgrade-to' unit type property (this is not 
a table!) to specify ONE unit type that should be considered a 
"promotion" from the existing one.
  (3) Both manual change-types and automatic upgrades respect the 
following tables: advance-to-change-type, material-to-change-type, 
occupants-to-change-type, size-to-change-type, 
turn-to-change-type, and cxp-to-change-type.
  (4) The above tables should be fairly self-explanatory. I have 
updated the Texi docs, but have not updated the HTML on the Xconq 
Web site yet. Note that occupants-to-change-type is not just a 
boolean table, it actually takes full numbers. So, for example, 
you could require that a Village have 4 Walls as occupants before 
it can become a Fortified City, rather than simply requiring that 
it have a Wall. 
 
  Please let me know about any bugs with the new code. Thanks.

  Enjoy,
   Eric

Re: New Feature: Automatic Upgrading of Unit Types

[Eric McDonald]

On Sun, 1 Feb 2004, Eric McDonald wrote:

>   (4) The above tables should be fairly self-explanatory. I have 
> updated the Texi docs, but have not updated the HTML on the Xconq 
> Web site yet. Note that occupants-to-change-type is not just a 

The HTML documentation has now been updated on the Xconq Web site.

One thing I forgot to mention yesterday, is that I may be adding 
a new table: 'new-size-upon-change-type'. This would allow for a 
unit's size to be altered after a change-type has occurred.

Eric