Can we add victory conditions without causing the unit transformation bug?

[Alwyn]

Obviously, this question assumes that adding victory conditions caused the unit transformation bug. I think it does; I could be wrong. (I believe that, when we clone the victory conditions from faction X to provide victory conditions for faction Y, then faction X will experience the units transformation bug. When this bug happens, units turn into different units, e.g. a unit of artillery turning into a Native Musketmen Auxiliary unit.)

This question was prompted by a discussion here on the Minor Factions Revenge thread. I realised that I was going off-topic, into a discussion of modding, so I thought I should make my next comment in the Mod Workshop. My next comment was:-

I have been playing Itan's nod for a very long time and I have never ever experienced the unit transformation bug. But reading the explanation above it makes sense. I have only played Major factions and what Alwyn said may be true

That's interesting. I wonder if there's a major faction which you do not play?

My theory came from my experience of adding victory conditions in my Early American Revolution mod. I cloned the British victory conditions to provide victory conditions for the United States. I then thought that it would be interesting to develop the mod so that you could play my version of the American Revolution from the British perspective, so I started a campaign as Britain - that's when I saw units transforming. I guessed that the problem was that I had cloned the British victory conditions. (I have never experienced units transforming when playing as the United States with that mod.) I tried starting campaigns as other major factions and their units did not transform. I could be wrong, of course - my theory fits the facts which I saw, but there might be a better explanation which I missed.

For my new mod, These United Colonies, I experimented with a slightly different process for adding victory conditions. When making Early American Revolution, I cloned victory conditions from a major faction in the same startpos file. When making These United Colonies, I opened another startpos in the ESF Editor (so I had a These United Colonies startpos and a copy of the vanilla startpos open in the same ESF Editor). I copied and pasted victory conditions from a major faction in the other startpos onto my These United Colonies startpos. I wondered if this would make it possible to add victory conditions to a faction without causing the unit transformation bug to happen. I have not yet tested playing as the faction whose victory conditions I copied (Prussia) to see whether that faction experiences the unit transformation bug - so far, I have been playing campaigns as the Thirteen Colonies (they do not experience the unit transformation bug - I would not expect them to, as my theory suggests that it is the faction whose victory conditions are copied which suffers the bug).