Protounit

From AgeofWiki

I can't find the unit I want in a list of protounits?

The Proto names often differ from the names that you actually see in the game. To solve this problem, you can see this (http://nocheineaoe.de/proto3.htm) list or download various patches in the AoE3H Downloads Central (http://aoe3.heavengames.com/downloads/) which can display the Proto names in the editor.

Why?

Basically, a protounit is an entry in a long list of unit data (the proto.xml), and a Proto name is its name. This is the name under which the game technically recognises the unit. Many triggers thus use these names.

The Proto names often differ from the names that you actually see in the game, because of two reasons:

• Another file, the stringtable.xml, stores everything that is language visible to the human player. As there're many different language versions of AoE3 it's obvious that many of the units' names differ from the early English proto names.
• "Proto" probably stand for "prototype". That means that the units' names changed many times during the development of the game (which can be done easily with the stringtable.xml).

Anyway, the consequence is that you often don't find the unit you want in lists of Proto names. For help see above.