Unit Upkeep Cost Mod?

from Elemental Forums

Has anyone created a mod to tweak the cost of unit upkeep?

Unit upkeep right now is so high, that building a single squad of heavily armored cavalry can put you in the poor house. It has become the case that I am no longer building troops, but rather outfitting any crappy hero that comes along instead, as they apparently have no upkeep cost. And that of course renders much of the technology tree and resources rather moot.

I expect that unit upkeep could be tweaked with a single setting, but I as of yet have no clue as to how to mod this game. Rather than spend who knows how many hours learning to mod just to tweak one setting, I figured I would ask if anyone has bothered with this already?

And does anyone know the exact formula as to how unit upkeep is calculated? I suspect it is simply a fraction of the original unit's gold cost, but I cannot find anything anywhere that specifies it.

7,322 views 7 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

I don't think there is a mod that does this on its own right now.

 

Funny, because I hear lots of people complain that they end up with more gold than they can spend. So far that has been closer to my experience.

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

In ElementalDefs.xml you will find

    <!-- ** factor of gold cost of training that gets added to wages ** -->
    <TrainingCostFactorOnWage>0.01</TrainingCostFactorOnWage>

End of quote

and

<!-- ** Unit Wages ** -->
        <BaseUnitWages>0.20</BaseUnitWages>
        <PovertyUnitWages>0.10</PovertyUnitWages>

End of quote

Unsure if PovertyUnitWages is in effect, haven't tested it. You might also want to have a look at

<MinTurnsBeforeUnitsDesert>25</MinTurnsBeforeUnitsDesert>

End of quote

Sins of a Solar Empire II
Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

Thank you Heavenfall. I guess I am going to have to learn a bit of this game's modding after all. But you've just done half the work for me. :-)

Quoting Goontrooper, reply 1

Funny, because I hear lots of people complain that they end up with more gold than they can spend. So far that has been closer to my experience.
End of Goontrooper's quote

I do not have the slightest idea how that is possible. They must be playing an entirely different game than I am. I can easily spend 5000 gold equipping a single hero. Usually of course for lack of gold, I spend far less. Build a half dozen squads of heavy armored cavalry, give them a couple of packs and spend some crystal on them, and watch your per turn gold drop by ~200 from the maintenance of just a half dozen units. Good luck if you are trying to garrison 20 cities. I certainly would not expect everyone to use such a mod. Obviously people have very different playing styles. I expect my conundrum is caused by me not being particularly interested in playing a 'hurry up and conquer' game, preferring to build a kingdom and fight wars when others start them.

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

So, if I got this right... I insert the code below into an XML file saved in the /My Games/Elemental/Mods/ folder and all should be well? (Reducing maintenance costs to 10% of current.)

Code: xml
  3. &lt;?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?&gt;
  4. &lt;ElementalDefinitions&gt;
  5.     &lt;DataChecksum NoParse="1"&gt;
  6.         &lt;Ignore&gt;DisplayName&lt;/Ignore&gt;
  7.         &lt;Translate&gt;DisplayName&lt;/Translate&gt;
  8.     &lt;/DataChecksum&gt;
  9.     &lt;ElementalDefs&gt;
  10.         &lt;!-- ** Unit Wages ** --&gt;
  11.         &lt;BaseUnitWages&gt;0.020&lt;/BaseUnitWages&gt;
  12.         &lt;PovertyUnitWages&gt;0.010&lt;/PovertyUnitWages&gt;
  14.      &lt;!-- ** factor of gold cost of training that gets added to wages ** --&gt;
  15.          &lt;TrainingCostFactorOnWage&gt;0.001&lt;/TrainingCostFactorOnWage&gt;
  16.   &lt;/ElementalDefs&gt;
  17. &lt;/ElementalDefinitions&gt;

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

I'm always poor.

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

I believe you have to copy over the entire contents of elemenaldefs. I believe it completely overwrites the entire xml if you mod anything. So just copy the whole thing, then make your changes.

And yes, that is the correct folder.

Reply #7 from Elemental Forums Top

Is it possible to tweak the numbers to specific buildings?  For example, having the barracks reduce upkeep costs in addition to faster training.