| Unit Information | Game Strategies | History |
The Main Battle Tank standard tank unit of the 
Information Age, available to upgrade from the Tank and are built at the Auto Plant.
Overview[]
When Tanks become Main Battle Tanks, they gain +35 hit points, +2 attack strength, +1 attack range, +1 armor, +2 movement speed, and +1 line of sight.
Main Battle Tanks have the second highest armor rating of all units in the game, surpassed only by Elephants (actually predecessors to Tanks), which have an even higher armor rating of 8.
This unit is affected by an upgrade bug, which causes several minor issues.
Unique units[]
- The Germans build Leopard Tank instead of Main Battle Tank.
- The Russians build T-80 Tank instead of Main Battle Tank.
Trivia[]
- The Main Battle Tank uses three different models:
- M1 Abrams for most nations.
- T-80 (virtually the same as Russians' unique tank) for the Chinese and Mongols.
- Challenger 1 for the Bantu, British, Dutch, Egyptians, Greeks, Indians, Iroquois, Lakota, Nubians, Persians, and Romans in Thrones and Patriots. (The Germans also use this model, if unique units are disabled).
Technical Information[]
Main Battle Tank Upgrade Bug
This bug is causing several issues in the game:
1. While playing as the Bantu, Egyptians or Nubians, starting from any Age except Information Age, when a player gets to researching the upgrade from Tank to Main Battle Tank, the uprade won't disappear from the Auto Plant, unless researched two more times (which is a waste of resources).
2. Incorrect models are used in the game, while playing as the Bantu, Egyptians or Nubians: a human player gets the Challenger 1 model and computer players can get either the Challenger 1 or a desert version of the T-80.
3. An issue in the Scenario Editor: the "Main Battle Tank" units of those three nations have three the same looking icons (so there are three different variants of the same unit).
The reason is this value in the TRIBE_MASK parameter in the unitrules.xml file:
<TRIBE_MASK>000000000000000010011000</TRIBE_MASK>
for the "Main Battle Tank" units with their GRAPH parameters being
<GRAPH>HEAVYTANKCTWE</GRAPH> and <GRAPH>HEAVYTANKCTWW</GRAPH>
which is the same as for a desert variant of the T-80 model with the following GRAPH parameter
<GRAPH>T80DES</GRAPH>
According to the GRAPH names it's most likely that both "HEAVYTANKCTWE" and "HEAVYTANKCTWW" are intended for the Conquer the World campaigns (thus there's the "CTW" part in those names).
It's possible to fix the triple research bug, the bug in the Scenario Editor and allow the Bantu, Egyptians and Nubians to use a desert version of T-80 model.
It only requires changing the TRIBE_MASK parameter's value for the "HEAVYTANKCTWE" and "HEAVYTANKCTWW" variants of the "Main Battle Tank" unit to the following:<TRIBE_MASK>000000000000000000000000</TRIBE_MASK>
Most likely it was the intended value of the TRIBE_MASK for those units, considering the fact that it is used for all other units with the "CTWE" and "CTWW" endings in their GRAPH names.
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