Okay, but what changes in DE would make that happen? I'm at a loss. 

Nice. Which part are you animating? The grindstone? I wonder of you'd be willing to help animate the Sasanian farmstead. It has two sail-driven grindstones. Perhaps as with the forge smoke, the sails can turn when the farmstead is researching (rule of cool). 

I fixed a few refs in research manager and had a match vs AI where their units didn't go idle. I'll attempt some more test matches tonight.    EDIT: Nevermind. Still happening:   I see they have plenty of food, but have stopped gathering the wood needed for phase-up for some reason.

You kinda could. They way I invivision it is a low kit unit would have the same actor for all 3 ranks…. Then if you get a tech for spearman increased body armor say, all spearman would “promote” they would have to go back to rank 1, but then the “new” unit would have a new actor…. So you may need 9 templates just for that civ’s units if you have 3 “kit” upgrades.

Sadly, we can't currently only change props from techs, we can only swap in a whole unit actor. So, the best you could do is "levels" of gear, like "Basic Kit" -> "Medium Armor" -> "Heavy Panoply", which is fine and can definitely work. Then attack could increase by ranking.