Gandhi the conqueror

Rufustfirefly1

Chieftain
Joined
Jan 31, 2015
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I'm sure a lot of you have heard about the glitch in the first civilization game regarding Gandhi. He would suddenly become incredibly more aggressive when adopting democracy, which often led to nuked continents. The developers of the game, along with everyone else, thought this was funny, and kept it written into every version of the game. However, it is my belief that the developers of civ 5 bnw have taken it a step further. It is not simply a matter of computer AI. Gandhi is set up nicely to kick some butt, if you just play him properly. (Gandhi 2 clip from UHF here)

The first thing to get out of the way is to deal with their unique ability. in my opinion, it is the most misunderstood ability in the game. People often make the mistake of locking into cultural victory mode with India. But India actually has one of the most useful bonuses for any victory type. Unhappiness doubled for number of cities, unhappiness halved for city population. Basically it means that you need to be able to grow each city you found, and should not have multiple new cities. However, you should never shy away from growing through founding cities or through conquering puppet empires because once any city reaches a population of 6, it is getting bonus happiness, and a happy empire can grow better. In general, Gandhi can use the extra population to produce and support a bigger military, and also the extra happiness means that it is easier to conquer other civilizations without going into unhappiness.
I highly recommend you use tradition, then patronage, then rationalism, depending on the map type.

I have discovered that Gandhi also has a very misunderstood unique unit. War elephants are awesome, if you understand them and use them properly. Technically, they are a replacement for the chariot Archer, but they are so much better. Usually, I don't bother building chariot archers, but in the case of India, they are basically a Composite Bowman with a movement of 3 instead of 1. That means it's a composite Bowman who can move into rough terrain and still fire. As India, your most vulnerable time is in the very beginning. Asap, build up your economy so you can build a few elephants to defend the empire early, then by the A.D.s, you can saturate the field with them and their support troops. Your enemies might Kill a few, and a single one is not that powerful, but you can get huge amounts of damage from all that firepower converging on one spot.
Then you just keep building up size, and an army to match. The war elephants make great support troops when you start bringing in more crossbowmen, then cannons. And when you beeline for artillery, the elephants can upgrade to cavalry to take the cities quickly.
If anyone is still around after that, nukes can break a stalemate pretty well if you get them first.
Their unique building is not amazing, but I think a defensive building that gives extra culture and tourism is never useless.

Based on my experience, I think the designers thought it would be funny to hide a great wartime civilization behind Gandhi, and a bonus that so often leaves people scratching their heads, or locking into cultural victory.

"This is one bad Mahatma you don't want to mess with."
 
War Elephants suck because they will lose their promotions when you turn them into Knights.

IMO a civ can't be considered a decent warmongering civ without a UU that can be upgraded at least through to the Industrial and keep the hard-earned promotions.

India are probably best with late-game warmongering, if anything, but if you grow massive cities and don't go to war, you can usually win any VC you want anyway.
 
Even with that upgrade issue, war elephants can make sure you dominate a big chunk of the game, since they're available pretty early. I'm just saying, I've heard some people talk like Gandhi can only win culturally, and clearly that isn't true.
 
Well any civilisation can dominate if you play them that way, and go Full Honor to make an insane profit from it. :)
 
IMO a civ can't be considered a decent warmongering civ without a UU that can be upgraded at least through to the Industrial and keep the hard-earned promotions.
So, what about Mongolia and Arabia :p
 
With UUs that good, you should aim to win with them before they need to be upgraded. Plus if you're going full Honor, Keshiks have quick study which means that you even if you lose Accuracy and Barrage, you'll maintain a whole load of other stuff. But War Elephants are unlikely to have the same effect as CAs and Keshiks, are they? :p
 
I was just playing a game where a nice island was shared between me as India and the computer was Mongolia. What I found is that the war elephant has obviously been upgraded from previous versions well. While keshiks have the advantage in a one on one matchup, elephants are available earlier. By 1000 AD, you should be able to build and maintain 8-10 of them and overwhelm them.
 
Now put those Keshiks in human hands and try the same match-up ;)
 
IMO a civ can't be considered a decent warmongering civ without a UU that can be upgraded at least through to the Industrial and keep the hard-earned promotions.

Besides the Mongols and Arabia as mentioned, how about Attila? Horse Archers upgrade into Knights.

Then you have the case of China/England. Yeah, their crossbowmen can be upgraded but how often are you relying/using Gatling Cannons for conquering? You need at least one melee unit to capture and you often have Artillery/Flight. Not saying Gatlings with range 2 and a bunch of other stuff are bad, just that you lose most of what makes the unique units so powerful (can get range 3 versus cities is a huge one -- especially on Deity where AI cities get insane defensive bonuses).

Obviously England can upgrade SotL so less of an issue for them.

How about Assyria? Do the melee promotions of a Siege Tower apply once upgraded to a ranged siege unit? Ranged don't apply to melee hence my question.

Etc.
 
With Mongols/Arabia/England/China, you should aim to win before they become obsolete. Very difficult to do that with India.

Assyria are completely underwhelming, IMO. Their UA is very poor, and Siege Units are good on lower difficulty levels, where you can win with them before the AI gets going. But on Deity they become obsolete really fast.

It was not my aim to start an OT argument, but my point stands that War Elephants are not a reason to consider India a warmongering civ. You could warmonger in the early game with Brazil. It's just not what they're made for :)
 
I agree with that. The key isn't the war elephants, I just think they're underrated. The key is India's UA, which is awesome. The elephants are not my first choice for a UU, but are pretty good. Definitely upgraded in the newest version. There is no reason in my opinion to lock into cultural victory as Gandhi, as if he can't set out to kick the collective butts of the world.
 
OK, so I'll revise it. A decent warmongering civ should either have a UU that you can win the game with, or it must have a unit that can be upgraded - e.g. Minutemen, Tercios, Caroleans.
 
Well as they said above, you can find many ways to use a civ, even some really weird ones, at the end the only limit is your imagination, and how you put to work those two things in order to perform a strategy.

This forum is full of uncommon strategies, for example, I don't want to make any mistakes, but i think that was consentient who one time he used Austria's UA to perform a surprise attack on other civ buying a city state to immediately disembark his units and use it as an operation base, that was a very clever and destabilizing move. I mean, you can expect that from Cartage, invading your territory coming trough the mountains, because that it's literally wrote in the description of his UA, and well, history can suggest it too, but, comming from Austria, is much less expected.

And Ghandi's UA it's a really manipulable bonus that indirectly can improve almost any other aspect of the civ, the only thing you really need, is time. But for speeding things up, when I play as India, I try to grab all the possible growth bonuses i can, the 15% for Tradition finisher (for the 4 first cities +10% for the capital), the global 10% for the Temple of Artemis (if I'm lucky enough), I get a total 25% from religion for the combination of Fertility Rites and Swords into Plowshares (i fell really funny when i do this because i also try to get Tithe and Religious Community, so it doesn't feel like a religion but kinda like a very early and technical ideology :lol:) you can get all these bonuses by turn 140 with some help.

Also having an eye on the cities and with some luck you can get a temporary 25 % boost from ''we love the king day'', and if that is not enough you can ally with maritime CS and establish some internal trade routs. Doing this with almost any other civ than India it will be suicidal, you will reach unhapiness levels at ''cero point'', but with India it's manageable.

With that over the table, sky is the limit, you can turn it into anything you want, a war machine its only one of many posibilities, more cities+big cities equals insane amounts of everything...
 
No it wasn't me. I think it could have been KB27787?
 
I think the main advantage of the War Elephant is that you get a composite bowman much earlier without having to go for Construction which means you can focus on the top of the tech tree.

On higher difficulties this means you can beeline Philosophy quite easily if you want an early National College and still be able to defend yourself without too much trouble. Whereas another Civ if your're threatened you may need to delay Philosophy and the NC to rush Construction instead. So usually it's one or the other - beelining the first technology into the Classical era is quite slow and the availability of the War Elephant really does make your early game more dynamic.

This is a bigger advantage than you might think and it really cements a Diety strategy. You have a decent unit that is easy to access that will allow you to secure some good sites to plop your cities on to.
 
The first thing to get out of the way is to deal with their unique ability.

See A general strategy for India (BNW), but I came away concluding that you have to play them 3/4 city Tradition. Just. Like. What. Works. For. Every. Other. Civ.

However, you should never shy away from growing through founding cities or through conquering puppet empires because once any city reaches a population of 6, it is getting bonus happiness, and a happy empire can grow better.

I have been thinking that India might be interesting try with Liberty on huge map where the break even point is pop 4. I really appreciate Redaxe's comment that the UU gets one the breathing room to hit the top of the tech tree, so this might be my next game.

The elephants are not my first choice for a UU, but are pretty good. Definitely upgraded in the newest version.

What upgrade? India got a tourism buff with BNW. Was there also a change to the UU?
 
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