FriendAtArms wrote: ↑Tue May 19, 2026 5:22 pm
Next question, and this is just to make sure I understand how "native" tiles and units work.
If I want a particular ship to move down rivers, do I have to assign it its own unit class, which considers tiles with rivers to be "native tiles"? (It seems like this is the case.) Or is there a special moving-down-rivers flag I can assign to that unit, so it can stay in the same unit class as other ships?
I think you have to create a new class. There doesn't seem to be any way to assign terrain restrictions at an individual unit level.
My ruleset has had a huge proliferation of unit classes, because it allows flexibility in not just terrain restrictions, but other things like unit transporting, interactions with different building types, ability to attack into or from non-native terrain, and so on. It does result in a lot of repetitive effect clauses, though.
I have four or five different ship classes: Brown Water, which can navigate River, Lake, or Ocean, but not Deep Ocean; Green Water, which can navigate any water terrain; Sail, which can navigate Lake, Ocean, and Deep Ocean, but not River; Sea, which can navigate only Ocean or Deep Ocean; and debatably Hover, which can navigate River, Lake, and Ocean, but not Deep Ocean, but can also travel Swamp, Grassland, Plains, Glacier, and Desert, without MP cost, but is restricted from Hills, Mountains, Forest, and Jungle without a road (but can use Rivers as roads).
This means that things like Port Facilities have to have repeated effects clauses for each class of ship, though.
Brown Water includes Triremes, but also a couple of earlier ship types, Boats and Sailboats, and Ironclads, which I split into Brown Water Ironclads and Armored Cruisers, which are Sail. Green Water includes Longships and Patrol Boats (and I think I need to add another one between them, but I haven't figured out what yet). Sail has the other sailing ship types, from Caravel on up, and Sea the modern ships. All of them get MP bonus from Magellan and the Pharos Lighthouse (though I don't think there's any way to get a Sea unit with the Lighthouse still active), but only Sea get the bonus from Nuclear Power... no more nuclear Triremes, or nuclear Galleons, for that matter.
My Rivers are native_to only Brown Water, Green Water, and Hover. I took the ground units out of the native list after a discussion in an earlier thread here. Land units can still enter River squares if they're native to the underlying terrain, but they don't get road bonuses from them anymore (and I removed the River-road speed multiplier anyway), and they can't use them as roads through non-native terrain (unless they're Hovercraft). It's been working out well. I've been getting a lot more use out of my riverboats under this scheme than previously, where even basic land units could move just as fast on rivers without a boat as with one, and cavalry units could move twice as fast.
(In addition to the ship types, I have Land, Wheeled, Armor, Artillery, Civilian, Diplomat, Light Air, Air, Missile, Warhead, LTA (Lighter Than Air), and Helicopter.)