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Helicopters Can Fly Over Water

Removes helicopter embarking in favor of being able to hover over coast and ocean. Transitioning from water to land or vice versa does not cost any extra movement points except in weird cases, but helicopters are still much more maneuverable now. Should work for in-land water as well.

Testing seems to indicate that it should work if you have Gods & Kings or Brave New World (or both), but it's unlikely to work by default for only Vanilla. Could be easily extended by you to work with custom helicopter units as well.

Direct link available here[www.dropbox.com]

Version 3 includes tighter restrictions on helicopters, though players who prefer the old style of unrestricted flight can find a *_Old.xml file containing that style in the mod folder. Replacing the new file with the old file within the modinfo file (and possibly renaming the old XML to just be "CIV5Units.xml") should allow you to keep the unrestricted flight. Or if you don't want the hassle of fiddling around with all that, just download the old version here[www.dropbox.com].

Since version 3, helicopters lose 25 HP per turn (aka 1/4 of their health) if they are not in friendly territory in order to simulate fuel, and this loss occurs even on land (this is the fault of too general XML tags). They also do not normally regain any health when fortifying outside of friendly territory. To help counteract this for longer ocean voyages, carriers have been granted a passive ability to heal adjacent units for 35 HP per turn automatically (35 - 25 for helicopters since the damage never goes away outside friendly territory), though the serial priority of the healing compared to the helicopter damage can cause helicopters to end up still somewhat damaged even when adjacent. (Healing will not occur whenever the helicopter has used some moves, so remaining stationary next to a carrier at times is important as well.) Helicopters can also fortify to slowly heal / "refuel" when adjacent to a carrier and over water (but not when on land).