How to handle custom taxonomy archive when no posts will have that taxonomy

I decided to do what I suggested at the end of the post:

  • public => false in the taxonomy settings
  • Add add_rewrite_tag/add_rewrite_rule to ‘unit_num’
    and add a pre_get_posts action to tweak the query when get_query_parm('unit_num') is set.

This is all working well now.
(Often when you write a problem out on a forum it triggers a new outlook on the issue)

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