I unloaded units from my army!

Thrawn05 · February 24, 2002, 14:18

No joke. I finally got an army (thank you huts!, still no leader). I saved it untill mondern age and filled it with mech infantry. I attacked the english (I was russia) and I detroyed all their cities on my turf. However, they still had cities overseas and I sent a transport with my one Army with Mechs, as well as an additional three mechs. I destroyed both cities and brought the transport back to a nearby city of mine.

I sent the transport into the city and press the unload button. All the units poped up. I wanted the three mechs to defend my only captured English city of Londen by using the stack command. The three mechs went, but then there were three mechs from the army, that seemed to HAVE LEFT the army, and are now independent!

A bug? An overlooked piece of code?

Dida · February 24, 2002, 14:44

Great.

so, if you load army unto a transport, and then unload it, units will be able to separate from the army?

Jaybe · February 24, 2002, 14:54

From other posts I have read on this subject, it seems that if you 'j' the Army or a unit type that is in the Army from that tile, they and the Army will separate. It's a 1.17 'bug' (that is, not intended feature).

Thrawn05 · February 24, 2002, 15:21

Quote:

Originally posted by Dida
Great.

so, if you load army unto a transport, and then unload it, units will be able to separate from the army?

Remember to put in the city first.

Quote:

Originally posted by Jaybe
From other posts I have read on this subject, it seems that if you 'j' the Army or a unit type that is in the Army from that tile, they and the Army will separate. It's a 1.17 'bug' (that is, not intended feature).

It may be, I might want to test it, I posted this before I could test for that. I'll give it a shot (after I make my rounds on these forums

)

Dida · February 24, 2002, 15:58

This bug actually makes the game more interesting.

Thrawn05 · February 24, 2002, 16:20

After further "debugging". I have concluded that in order for this to work, follow these steps.

1: Make an Army.
2: Place a unit that in not in the army on the same tile.
3: Press J to move the stack of that unit elsewere
4: Units of that type in army will MOVE outside the army by one step, regardless of terrian/road/Rail. Those units which exit should still be able to be given move orders.

What you need to know:
1: The army DOES NOT need to be all of the same type for this to work. If you had an Army of two Mech Infanry and one Modern Armor, and you stacked moved the Mechs, the Modern Armor will remain in the army.

2: You don't need to put them in the transport as what happened to me.

3: The Army unit still works, so you can upgrade those units and put them back.

Dida · February 24, 2002, 16:33

This is great.

I Am Jeff · February 24, 2002, 16:56

I did a post on this army bug a few days ago. You can read the post at http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...threadid=42957

Just a warning about this army bug, it is not perfect. For example, the army I did it to first (by accident) lost all the men supposedly there. But it would not allow for more units to be loaded. Then if I moved the army into enemy terrain or terrain with no road/railroad all units would slide from anywhere on the screen to the army, in the shortest direct straight line. And for some reason units would not be visibly in the army but they were there. It could not attack, because the army would not move close enough. I could only move on about 10 different squares, and even if I told it to go somewhere else it just would not go there.

The units that came out of the army were messed up. In the link above you will see such a unit, it has the health as if it was in an army. I tried attacking and it crashed civ3.

My advice is to save before you attempt to do this, if it fails you will have to disband it.

DrFell · February 24, 2002, 17:22

I thought the new patch prevented armies from huts.

muppet · February 24, 2002, 18:47

Depends on which version of the 1.17 patch you ended up with. If you were (un)lucky, you had the (mis)fortune of being one of the downloaders to get stuck with having to download an editor separately -- which means you also got the (right)wrong version of 1.17.

The (corrected)new verson of 1.17 does not allow armies from huts. However, I believe Gramphos has already determined that this is merely a 'barbarian chiefdom' setting.

That is, if I understand Gramphos correctly, with the (correct)new 1.17 you can re-create this (feature)bug by flagging 'army' in the 'barbarian chiefdom' settings.

I like the (feature)bug, so have not (returned)updated my (recently acquired) out of date patch.

In case you haven't noticed. Some bugs, I consider to be 'features'. Some features, I consider to be bugs. And some (features) bugs like army unloading, I'm thankful somebody found. Now I don't mind wasting my 2 empty armies on knights.

Thrawn05 · February 24, 2002, 20:56

Sorry I am Jeff, I was just thrilled at the idea of an unloading army. Next time I make a thread (which is once in a blue moon, and this week's moon glows blue), I'll read all the threads.

Quote:

Originally posted by muppet
Depends on which version of the 1.17 patch you ended up with. If you were (un)lucky, you had the (mis)fortune of being one of the downloaders to get stuck with having to download an editor separately -- which means you also got the (right)wrong version of 1.17.

I was the (un)lucky one. But still, I only had the game since December, and only got two leaders, both of which DIED at the hands of my mortal enemies. I'm sure this bug could still "work" with an army that was created from a leader.

PS: When download a future patch, I'm going to recheck that army hut deal, I think it's cool.

reefer addict · February 24, 2002, 21:36

i attacked with 2 armies of mod armor and sent them to some nearby barracks to rest. the city also had more mod armor so i hit "j" and saw my units from the armies step out at 100% hp with all there movement left. the armies were wounded (9/17). stayed in the city. i was able to reload the 100% armor back into the armies but they remained wounded. i

Worthingtons · February 24, 2002, 21:51

BE careful with this though, It caused my game to Crash

candidgamera · February 25, 2002, 00:15

playing with 2/14 1.17 patch did the j unload trick just tonight.

-j'd from activated same unit as in army, stacked with army, not army, and units in army left army, not in a city either.

couple of "funny" events afterward:

-don't know if its coincidence but when I went to disband (they were bowman and I have cav and riflemen now - needed a factory more) the former contents of the army got a windows "illeagal program operation shut down" was able to get back to same point and tried again this time no crash, game proceeded normally.

-successfully loaded 3 cav units into old army and its now acting mounted - but with no hit point display now (ISTR someone may have posted about this elsewhere).

going to look for wierdness when new army makes its first attack.

exeter0 · February 25, 2002, 00:45

yeah... works great! Thanks for the heads up!

pauli · February 25, 2002, 00:56

this worked great for me

i unloaded all three cavalry from my army (manufactured from military academy) and nothing's gone wrong yet... granted, i'm only on the next turn

Solver · February 25, 2002, 10:43

This is a bug I've had, too. And the army didn't fight as it should, and my Tanks were going all over the map, activating when already moved and such. I'll not transport full Armies ever again...

Flight · February 25, 2002, 14:02

i did this a while ago as well, it seemed very strange to me

maybe i should have posted about it

Thrawn05 · February 25, 2002, 14:13

Forgive me if what I'm about to say may not make sense to those who do not or are new to programing....

It appears to me that Firaxis did a little oversight in their implementation of the Stack function. Since I don't have the scource code for Civ3 (

), I can only guess of the worse possible scenario. My suggestion is that, if on your computer you tride this, and errors came in what ever form, then I suggest not to do this, since the error can leak to other areas of the program or wrose to other applications (hence, you get this:

).

I would be extremly curious of what Firaxis has to say about this, and weather or not it requires a massive recoding of Civ3, the requirment of removing the stack feature all together, or just a little try/catch statement that won't let you use the stack command when an Army in on the same tile (I would do that, it's easier

, at least for a while, to give Firaxis some time to do a bug free version).

Until then, happy stacking!

Flight · February 25, 2002, 14:17

lol nice smilies

Spatzimaus · February 25, 2002, 19:13

All this fuss over the ability to unload units from armies. Ironic, since I just added that ability to armies in the editor for my own mod (just click on "Unload").

Basically I made three types of "Army".

Mob: no tech, holds 3 units, exerts ZoC, costs 300
Regiment: Feudalism, holds 4 units, also has Blitz and can unload, costs 400
Brigade: Nationalism, holds 5 units, also has Radar, costs 500

And they upgrade to each other, so you always have to go with the most recent (although I'm thinking of letting the last two co-exist). The way the Pentagon works is it just adds +1 to size. Since I removed the "victorious army" requirement from the Military Academy, it makes Industrial-era combat more of an Army-centered thing.

The AI is getting really good at using these, too. He'll always have at least one or two around, and when they attack they WILL do damage.

Willem · February 25, 2002, 19:19

Quote:

Originally posted by Spatzimaus
All this fuss over the ability to unload units from armies. Ironic, since I just added that ability to armies in the editor for my own mod (just click on "Unload").

Well I tried that and so have others, and it doesn't work. If yours is, you just got lucky.

PS I just tried it again, it doesn't work.

Thrawn05 · February 25, 2002, 22:48

Quote:

Originally posted by Flight
lol nice smilies

thanks, I found a site http://www.mysmilies.com/ , they have lots of them.

Worthingtons · February 26, 2002, 01:52

ok, I've had several problems with the Army unload bug.

Once it crashed the game, as i said

Another time, when i went to activate the (now empty) army, one of it's former units (which was somewhere else on the map) was 'selected' instead.. this lead to a lot of confusion....
Finally, I now have tanks in my armies, they used to be Infantrymen, and while the Army is functioning ok, it 'appears' as Infrantymen still, and makes thier sounds in combat.

What does your Sig mean in English Thrawn??

exeter0 · February 26, 2002, 01:56

Same phenomena here.

Oh well... it was too good to be true! Back to dreaming about CTP2 stacked combat in CIV3.

Thrawn05 · February 26, 2002, 12:19

Quote:

Originally posted by Rothy
What does your Sig mean in English Thrawn??

Thrawn05 rules in Rome.

Solver · February 26, 2002, 12:28

Thrawn05,

I know of programming and what you say makes sense. Should I get the source for Civ 3...

Thrawn05 · February 26, 2002, 12:38

Quote:

Originally posted by Solver
Thrawn05,

I know of programming and what you say makes sense. Should I get the source for Civ 3...

Only of Firaxis releases it, which I dout anytime soon, since that is the very bread and butter of the game. It took Rebellion a few years to release the code for AvP (I think they did that last June-ish). ID software just released the code for their game Quake, which is God know how old last year as well.