[.75 bug?] Weapon Upgrade Paths not quite there yet?

By looking at the files, I suspect, when you design a unit to upgrade along the mage path it will upgrade that unit to what-ever staff that will give it the most fire / cold damage available. So if you gave your units a bonus to say ice, like an ice amulet, it should upgrade to the next ice staff because that will be greater damage sum than the fire staff (I suspect by looking at the .xml data) Not sure

Otherwise for your designed units, editing the .xml files directly when done playing is about the only way to gaurantee the ice path / fire path and so forth. (Adjusting the upgrade definitions) Not ideal or probably WAI.

As for your spear problem... do you have crystal? If you don't have crystal it won't upgrade your weapon as intended.

Ok, I'm back.  I gave a new unit the Ring of the Glacier, then chose the 'upgradable magic staff' and was given the fire staff.  Unless I'm misunderstanding what you mean (is there some other way to give a bonus to ice of which I'm unaware? -- wouldn't be the first time...), it appears to not help.

Thirty-six crystal should be more than enough for the unit at creation and also to upgrade weapons, so the test suggests not WAI.

Thanks for the help with this 

Kael et al -- I'm not complaining!  Lots of stuff is working great.  I've been 'just one more turn' for the past 4 hours!

Then it's not WAI in my opinion. Since it should at that point choose to upgrade to the ice staff.

Yup... that should be enough to build the ice spear (requires 2 crystal per unit, thus 6 crystal should be enough).

When you upgrade to the boar spear, if it upgrades to that one then we may have that the upgrade path is going along piercing damage and not considering the elemental damage.

Yeah, I've fixed the ice spear.

I went back and forth on the magic staves, whether to break them out into fire staff and ice staff lines, or leave them together.  Its just an xml difference, no code is required.  I'll have to think about it.

You could make them in the same category, but there's two instead of one, one that says "upgrade fire staff" and one that says "upgrade ice staff".

By the way I figured out why when you select the max upgrade for a unit why a certain item will not show up.  I.E. when you want anything on the right to show up and it won't is because if you do not have the resources available at the time of unit design then regardless if you have the tech the weapon/armor or choice for max upgrade value will not show up  even if you have an income for the item necessary to make that unit later.  So if you don't have metal, then no metal weapons/armor and the same for crystal and anything magic, hope this helps.

I'd like to see two separate lines. I will typically take both a fire and ice mage type units in each army, so that I'll have at least one effective magical ranged unit whether I run into creatures immune to fire or ice.  As it is now, I can't upgrade their weapons without risking a change of magic type.

Yes it would be much better to have separate upgrade paths for fire and ice.  And while we're at it, could regular melee weapons upgrade to magic weapons (spear to ice spear, axe to burning axe etc.) or have a separate option ("Upgrade to Fire Weapon" or Upgrade to Ice Weapon) if there are regular physical only upgrades already available?  So you could upgrade a Spear to an Ice Spear (using "Upgrade to Ice Weapon", or a Spear or Ice Spear to a Boar Spear or Pike (using "Upgrade to Physical Weapon").  Similar for Axes to Burning Axes or more Physical Damage Axes.

(Interesting tip: You can train units with ice staffs in a city with Heart of Fire enchantment, so they do both types of damage.  Adding in the +1 or +3 damage cold and fire items is cool too. =))

^This is positively devious, I like it.  I managed to find a 3 essence spot for a conclave and made a scryers pool and took the oracle improvement so that would have been a 5 fire damage with 6 ice damage for staves..... Mmmmm I am liking this idea.

I have just basic axes and daggers unlocked and when I click the upgrade button in the unit design screen it doesn't select them or anything. Is anyone else getting this bug?

Kael you'll probably 'hate' me for this suggestion but I'd like to see this whole thing revamped.  I think the original idea was to 'simplify' things while giving an upgrade option, thus the original fairly simple upgrade options.  If we're getting fire/ice/etc. options, why not step back and make upgrades more like unit design edits?  Units would stick with their original 'tree' (spear, axe, magic staff, sword, etc.), and original traits (scout/acrobat/bloodthirsty/etc.), and original hair/etc, but we could freely change:

-weapons within the original 'tree'

-armor

-mount/no mount

-accessories

Select a unit for upgrade (in a fortress city only perhaps?), hit the 'upgrade' button and get an upgrade unit edit screen similar to the unit design screen, and make the allowed changed, and pay the material costs (gold/metal/crystal/etc.) for said changes.

Might be simpler to have this one method for everythingthan getting nickled&dimed programming various trees (especially if you add more than fire/ice someday...).

Could you also look at making robes upgrade completely separate from armor?  And something I've always wondered: why do Aegis robes get an AC of 5 without a dodge bonus, while the basic AC 3 robes get +5 dodge?

And have you considered adding some elemental damage effects like in mqpiffle's Rise of the Magi mod?  I would love for at least the hero versions of weapons to have special abilities like the ice spear that slows on hit, etc.

Keep it up!

I try to avoid upgrading robes for exactly that reason.

New issue -- I designed a new unit using the 'upgrade one-handed sword' option and the unit did not appear in the list of available units after saving/etc.  It appeared to create/save/etc. normally, it wasn't until after saving that the problem (being the new unit wasn't to be found) was apparent.  I selected a one-handed sword (the one after dagger) and the new unit appeared in the list, so the 'upgrade' part seems to be the culprit.

The upgrades arent being displayed if you dont have the materials to make them.  Basically the game tries to build your dynamic unit, and if it can't match your criteria, they don't show up.  It doesn't know what stats to give them, it knows a bunch of weapons they oculd have, but not which one you will fulfill first.  Some weapons may be blocked by a tech, others by crystal, others by lack of metal, etc.

We have a bug in for it to have a developer look at what is happening.  I would like to have it show up greyed out with the worst weapon (with the desc on what is needed).  We will check.

That sounds like a great solution. Was about to suggest it. Still shows info and the path, which is helpful.

Your greyed-out unit suggestion is a good one, instead of just having the unit not appear in the list which leaves one wondering what the problem might be.