Overview
This Guide will walk you through several new concepts, such as having a Barracks combined with a Blacksmith, or renaming units that are trained out of a building, as they’re trained. If you’re looking for a shortcut to a semi-custom civilization, this is the guide for you.
Building Hybrids
This section shall teach you how to create building hybrids, such as an example of Vlad Dracula’s castle from “The Moon Rises“, in which, to save space, buildings are placed over other buildings. Observe:
If you are like me, you wanted to build a castle like that, but you never found out how. I’m still working on getting the units that close togeather, but I can help with the buildings.
Building Placement
1)Place a building, a barracks for example:
2) Place another building, a blacksmith for example:
3) Go to terrain, then to map copy and select a 3×3 area under the blacksmith. then test and make sure it is made inside the area when you paste it, it has to be exact in order to work and be simple.
4) Then paste it 1/3 of the way imposed on the barracks, like so:
5)You can also do it by using the blacksmith and super-imposing the barracks on it by following these steps:
i. Place Blacksmith
ii. copy barracks using map copy, however select from the barracks right to the center, therefore selecting only a 2×2 area of the barracks.
iii. Paste the barracks. It should be a 3×3 size cursor, and the barracks should be placed correctly.
iv. Place cursor 1/3 of the way into blacksmith. With late age civs, this should make the roofs look like they’re the same height. Observe:
This is not only for the example buildings. Experiment on different ones. In some cases, you can even super-impose larger buildings, such as castles with wonders (I would wait till I had mastered the simple things first, but that’s only a suggestion). If you have questions about the topic discussed in this section, feel free to comment.
Unit Modding 101
Sounds simple. The game triggers do that. William Wallace gets renamed “Vlad Dracula” or something. What if I told you that you could train, for example, Champions, but are renamed “Legionary”? That is possible. Let me tell you how:
1) Go into triggers and create a trigger. Set the trigger to loop (This feature is found beside the trigger description).
2) Create an effect, selecting “Change Object Name“.
3) Go to the unit list. In the case of champion, select “Militia”. In other words, select the base unit: for name modding an elite cataphract, select cataphract. For an arbalest, select archer. You get the idea. For reasons unknown, renaming the unit will not allow reasearches to affect it, unless it doesn’t exist till after the research is finished, so starting post-Imperial is advised.
In the next section, I shall explain how to rename a unit that doesn’t exist until spawned.
The Hero Exchange
Remember in the first El Cid campaign when El Cid reaches the stable and becomes El Cid Campeador? That was simply removing and creating an object via triggers. That can’t happen for a custom scenario with renamed characters. Can it?
Yes, it can.
1) Place unit/hero.
2) Go to triggers, creating “Trigger 1” a condition called “Object reaches object (If tree, building, or other staionary object.), or “Object reaches area”. Then create an effect that removes the unit/hero, creates the desired unit/hero, Object X, and an effect that activates a trigger, “Trigger 2” which has a starting state of “OFF”, which contains an objective for when the player in question has one of Object X, it has a trigger to rename, modify HP, attack, etc.
Do feel free to leave cquestions or comments. If something’s off, please let me know as this is my first guide.
Advanced Unit Editing: The Power of the Genie
This section will eventually include tips and knowlege I have accumulated from using the Advanced Genie Editor 2016, found on the age of kings blacksmith. It is in progress and will be updated eventually.