Modding Commander Abilities

In response to this post:

Hello again Planet Smasher, how did you go about modifying the Commander abilities? Did you clone the Tiger call_in and just replace the UI elements and squad it calls in?

For OKW support commanders I'm wanting to give them the SturmTiger over the KT, but I wasn't sure if changing the UI Icon would affect the in-game commander's CP abilities.

It's usually best to make a new ability for stuff like that. There's two general steps in adding it to a commander:

1. Go to the "army" category, clone the army that should get it, open "abilities" and add it to the list.

2. Give it the proper requirements:

a) "required_resource" with a CP value, with "reason" set to "usage".
(Unless it should come at 0CP, then you obviously don't need this.)

b) Each commander is basically defined by the five upgrades it grants to the player when chosen; the rest is just fluff. You can find these by going to the category "inventory -> commander", then clicking on "Go To Reference" for each entry in "commander_abilities" and finally looking at the value for "upgrade".

For example, Elite Troops Doctrine gives these upgrades:

attributes\upgrade\german\commander\passive\stormtroopers
attributes\upgrade\german\commander\passive\jaeger_light_infantry
attributes\upgrade\german\commander\passive\panzer_tactician
attributes\upgrade\german\commander\passive\tiger_tank_ace
attributes\upgrade\german\commander\passive\blinding_grenades

If you want to add an ability to this commander, simply give the ability a "required player_upgrade" with an upgrade that is unique to the commander. In this case, that would be either the "tiger_tank_ace" or "blinding_grenades". You should set "reason" to "usage_and_display" here.

Some commanders don't have a single ability that is unique to them. For example, Jaeger Armor Doctrine gives you these upgrades:

attributes\upgrade\german\commander\passive\heavy_at_mine
attributes\upgrade\german\commander\ability\recon_plane
attributes\upgrade\german\commander\passive\stationary_los_gain
attributes\upgrade\german\commander\ability\stuka_bombing_run_upgrade
attributes\upgrade\german\commander\passive\elefant_unlock

All of these are available in other commanders. You can still add abilities to Jaeger Armor Doctrine by using a combination of upgrades only found here: While both "heavy_at_mine" and "recon_plane" are found in other commanders, none of them has both. So you would add the following:

required_all_in_list (reason: usage_and_display)
--required_player_upgrade: heavy_at_mine (reason: usage_and_display)
--required_player_upgrade: recon_plane (reason: usage_and_display)

For commander abilities that have other components, such as squad weapon upgrades or units unlocked in base buildings, you have to add the same requirements to those.

Sometimes, you will also want to remove another commander ability. That works in a similar way. If the ability is only available in a single commander (or you want to remove it from all the commanders that have it), you can simply remove it from the army's ability list. If you only want to remove it from one commander, use the same required_player_upgrade (or combination of them) described above, but set "is_present" to False.

(Didn't want to discuss this in my mod's thread. I hope that's alright!)

Thank you for this!

I watched Paavo Benet's tutorial videos and the video on Modifying Existing Armies mentions

"If you want to have abilities that the race starts with just remove any requirements that would be commander related."

- So in essence you could clone the army on the army page and delete abilties like ambush camouflage (and in unit upgrade portions set the required value from true to false) to make it default on a unit? You would also need to replace those abilities that were deleted on a per commander basis I assume.


or "you could make use of the group secondary which sits above the normal commander abilities if you wanted to just add them all here [army abilties]"

He does not however mention how to add group secondaries. How exactly do you use them?


I'm not sure if I was doing something wrong but I was not able to give a commander 9 abilities for example. Does that only work by using group secondaries?

He does not however mention how to add group secondaries. How exactly do you use them?

I'm not sure if I was doing something wrong but I was not able to give a commander 9 abilities for example. Does that only work by using group secondaries?

To make an ability a group secondary:
Set in the ability 'ui_group' to: group_secondary.

This will only position the ability above the commander abilities. If it wasn't visible before, then it will not be visible with this change. Can you create a new thread with a little more details about what you tried so far?