Nobles' Club LXXXVI: Gandhi of India

dalamb

dalamb

Deity
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May 9, 2006
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The Nobles' Club series started out as a way for Noble-level (and below) players to improve their game. Most of the original participants now play at much higher levels, so this has become a way for advanced players to help others learn to play better. You can play your own game at any level and with any mod, but it would be nice to comment on the games of other players and give them advice.

Our next leader is Gandhi of India, whom we last played in NC XXVIII; we last played India under Asoka in NC LXXXI. The Indians start with Mining and Mysticism.
  • Traits: Gandhi is Philosophical and Spiritual. PHI gives faster Great People generation; later in the game it gives faster Universities, which in turn mean getting Oxford University sooner. SPI gives cheaper temples but its main role is allowing cheaper religion and civic switches for diplomacy; you don't lose turns to anarchy, and can change back five turns later. If the game lasts a long time, cheaper Cristo Redentor plus :espionage: (augmented by the UB) lets you mess around with AI civics, changing yours to something bad for them, then changing back in one turn while they suffer anarchy.
  • The UB: The Mausoleum, a Jail with +2 :). It can be a good warmongering building, since the happiness boost synergizes with the Jail's -25% war weariness to reduce :mad: from prolonged war.

  • The UU: The Fast Worker, a Worker with 3:move: instead of two. Some people consider this one of the strongest UUs because it lets you start improving or chopping a mine or forest on the same turn you move there, is available immediately at the start of the game, and never goes obsolete.
And the start:

Spoiler map details :
Medium and Small, Normal Continents, Islands (as opposed to Tiny Islands), Islands Mixed In.
Spoiler edits :
No edits, but lots of regenerations. I wanted to get some first-tier food (Agricultural or Fishing) in the starting BFC, avoid having too much water if it was a coastal start, and avoid anybody having too much territory into which to expand unopposed. It took a surprising number of regenerations to get all that to happen; in retrospect maybe I should have done a bit of editing on some earlier map.
Finally, a cut and paste of our standard doctrine:
There are no hard and fast rules here: fun and learning are our primary goals, but we do suggest that you update your progress at various points in the game, using the Spoiler feature of the boards. You can post as often as you like; here's one suggestion:
  • 4000 BC (starting thoughts, no spoiler required for that discussion)
  • 1000 BC or so (how you decided to progress up the early tech/build paths, which AIs you have met, where you're thinking of putting cities, etc)
  • 500 AD or so (after establishing some cities and a possible plan of action)
  • 1200 AD or so (mid-game, Lib race, wars or peace, or whichever happened or didn't, met other
  • continent if applicable, etc)
  • 1600 AD (or when you have decided on a course of action and a specific victory condition)
  • End of game (Victory!!! or defeat, no shame in losing, especially if you tried a higher level. Learning is what we focus on, not fastest win or biggest empire)
This is just a guideline. If you're trying to improve your game, then posting more frequent updates, in as much detail as you can manage, is the best way to get suggestions from other players. If you come to what seems like a major decision and you want some advice, post an update, regardless of what game-year it is.

We also welcome players to ask for specific game advice, as we have a number or stronger players who lurk and help out with solid tips, and of course, we help each other. Replies to specific questions should also be in spoilers, with a simple "@" in front of the person the answer is directed towards.

Special Thanks go to Bleys and TMIT, who really made this series a great one, r_rolo1, mapmaker extraordinaire, for his maps in the early days of the series, and all of you for playing.
Click to expand...
The WB-saves are attached (zipped; they are bigger than standard saves). To play, simply download and unzip it into your BTS/Saves/WorldBuilder folder. Start the game, and load your favorite MOD (if you use one, if not, check out the BUG MOD), select "Play Scenario", and look for "NC 86 Gandhi Noble" (or Monarch, etc., for higher levels)You can play with your favorite MOD at the Level and Speed of your choice. From Quick-Warlord to Marathon-Deity, all are welcome! We stuck with the name "Nobles Club" because it has a cool ring to it.
Spoiler what's up with specific difficulties :
In each scenario file you can select your level of difficulty, but that doesn't give the AI the right bonus techs by itself. Use the Noble save for all levels at and below Noble. The Monarch save gives all the AI Archery. Emperor adds Hunting; Immortal adds Agriculture; Deity adds The Wheel.

For players on Monarch or above, you should add archery as a tech for the barbarians (if you don't, the AI will capture their cities very early). This cannot be done in the WB save file and must be done in Worldbuilder as follows:
Spoiler how to add techs to the barbarians :

  1. Zoom in all the way so you can't see the rest of the map.
  2. Use the CTRL-W key (or the menu) to enter the worldbuilder. Avoid looking at the mini-map in the lower right corner.
  3. By default you're in "player" mode (look in the box in the upper right; the icon that looks like a person should be selected). You'll get a drop down menu labeled with your leader's name. Barbarians are at the bottom, so cover the rest of the list with your hand if you don't want to see who else is on the map. Select "Barbarians".
  4. Select the "Technologies" tab in the box on the left.
  5. Find Archery (the arrow head icon; 8th row, 3rd column from the right) and click it.
  6. Exit the worldbuilder.
  7. Zoom out again after the map fades, and start playing.
Spoiler huts and events :
Note: The standard saves have no huts and have events turned off. If you want tribal villages and random events, choose the saves with "Huts" in their names. If you want huts but no events, select the Huts saves and use Custom Scenario to turn on the option that suppresses events.
 

Attachments

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Woot! I love playing as Gandhi.

Settle 1SW I think. Keeps clam, corn, 2fp, gains some more forest, and looks like it gains a couple hills to the south of the one already visible. Also allows for a floodplain city to be settled north later.
 
Spoiler :
We got Marble? K, forget rushing, I'll just expand to 6 cities if possible, turtle till[ Rifle/Cannon, then use capital for a Globe/Nationhood draft center to destroy people.

Problem is that the capital is also a good Bureau city, so I dunno what to do with it. Will have to see the rest of the map.
 
Spoiler :
I wouldn't be doing too much warring. You have 2 nice neighbors, Huayna and Isabella, and you can share one of their religions and get an easy Friendly.

Marble in BFC, PHI trait, solid production capital, but the rest of the land is commerce-poor and mediocre on food. Seems that the best way to play this will be an SSE. There's also little danger of a DoW because of the neighbors we have.

Playing this on Emperor/Normal, but restarted the first time cause my Settler performed the "Exit, Pursued by a Bear" stage action from The Winter's Tale. :(


and

Spoiler :
I recommend allying with Isabella since she's farther away than Huayna, and she will REX to get more land than Huayna. I got off to a very bad start since I got bogged down building Pyramids (and forgot to switch to Pacifism when it was available), but I still got to 6 cities, which is enough to win the game. Once I get to Rifle/Cannon I will destroy Huayna, then DP with Friendly Isabella (get your mind out of the gutter ;)), go into buildermode, and probably launch into Space!

Btw the tech rate on the other continent will probably be utter crap since our continent gets all the religions and thus gets more happy points.
 
GenerallyGreat said:
I love Gandhi. Such a good war leader. :D
Click to expand...
It's hard to tell if you mean to be kidding, but it's a good prompt for a strategy question:

Like I said in the advice about the Mausoleum, I've seen people claim Gandhi really is a good late-game war leader. However, I don't recall the details of what they advised one does to achieve this. The basic idea appears to be that fast workers help you get improvements online faster in the early game, which has a snowball effect, as does PHI getting great people faster (for settlement or bulbing). SPI means you can accede to AI civic and religion switch demands without an anarchy penalty, then switch back later, which gives you good diplomacy benefits (such as lower-cost trades if the AI likes you, and less chance of being attacked by some of the leaders). Then when you have a more modern unit the mausoleum helps a lot with war weariness, so you can keep attacking longer without :mad: citizens.

So for the sake of noble-level players, could some of y'all who are more experienced comment on whether this advice makes sense? and maybe fill in a few more details of how to go about playing this strategy?
 
SPI--> as you said you can manipulate diplo more easily and get dogpiles. You can also switch into war civics temporarily for a army build up.

PHI--> Faster GSs mean faster tech timings, so that Lib--> MT/Steel attack can come sooner. Academy and bulb both PHI and Education. You can also mess around with a fast machinery or engineering bulb which could come really fast. Pikes, X-bows, and Trebs during the early ADs is gonna roflstop on Noble/Prince easily. (You'd have to skip fishing though...) :S
 
Emperor/Normal, No Huts/No Events, 1924 AD Cultural Victory (with only about 3 Cottages!). Pretty easy game because of the diplomacy.

Took lots of screenshots, and will make a big post (this isn't it) about long-term strategy for the Nobles and Princes here. :)

Spoiler :


Victory Screen, Cultural Win with 8 cities. Then again, 6 is all you need, and I could have played this a lot better (Run Artists in Capital after Caste, Cottage everything else, turn off tech after Lib/Nat), if I wanted a Fast Culture win. But I decided to run an SSE earlygame rather than use the Capital as a GA Farm. That was safer, and kept me up in tech, but slowed me down a lot.

If you KNOW you can win Culture from the start, then you can win Culture very fast. But let's say that you only have good land for 2 cities, like we did, and it's going to be pretty hard to bring the third city up to Legendary. Well, then you're going to have to get creative...




Ever seen a Size 6 City go Legendary? Heh, National Park is a really powerful wonder even if you don't have that many trees. Also, I set Vijaynagar to build the Statue of Zeus as a throwaway build for failgold. Little did I know I would actually get the wonder.

If you're wondering why I didn't build a Lighthouse, well, there weren't any seafood so I didn't really need it. Also, production in this city was pretty bad, and I didn't have turns to spend on it.



The most important part about playing for Culture is Diplomacy. I pretty much had a Defensive Pact with Isabella for the whole game except when she decided to go after heathens in Holy Wars. This protected me from many DoWs.
 
Deity / normal

Spoiler :
Stupid map, no horses, no iron, no ivory.

I got totally lamed when both Izzy + Hyuana went buddhist and I was crushing Hyuana and then he made the AP and the defiance anger forced me to make peace. Lame lame lame. That on top of not having any counter to knights / maces / xbows ( because no iron / horses / ivory ) slowed me down big time. I'm probably going to replay and try something different.
 
AbsoluteZero said:
Deity / normal

Spoiler :
Stupid map, no horses, no iron, no ivory.

I got totally lamed when both Izzy + Hyuana went buddhist and I was crushing Hyuana and then he made the AP and the defiance anger forced me to make peace. Lame lame lame. That on top of not having any counter to knights / maces / xbows ( because no iron / horses / ivory ) slowed me down big time. I'm probably going to replay and try something different.
Click to expand...

Spoiler :
Guess you got a really bad RNG roll. For me, Izzy went Buddhist and Huayna went Hindu.

Also, I don't know if this is possible to get it on Deity, but there's some Iron on the mini peninsula of the easternmost part of the continent. In my game a Barb City got placed there.
 
Spoiler :
Actually it's pretty slow as far as Culture victories go, mainly because I wasn't able to win by Culture until after National Park, and I played the game planning to win by Space after I killed HC. But after HC vassaled to Isabella, I had to change plans.
 
Dropped down to immortal to do a bit of experimentation again. Things were a huge success, though perhaps too easy. Burned off my GE for the Mids and the rest was a joke from there on...
Spoiler :





 

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AbsoluteZero said:
Deity / normal

Spoiler :
Stupid map, no horses, no iron, no ivory.

I got totally lamed when both Izzy + Hyuana went buddhist and I was crushing Hyuana and then he made the AP and the defiance anger forced me to make peace. Lame lame lame. That on top of not having any counter to knights / maces / xbows ( because no iron / horses / ivory ) slowed me down big time. I'm probably going to replay and try something different.
Click to expand...
Spoiler :

I often think we should simply ban the AP from standard saves to begin with. It's just a broken wonder (in may ways), still buggy as hell, and was rushed into a release without any clear thinking.

Anyhow, I knew I was in trouble early on, so I beelined after Astro for my war supplies.
 
Emperor/Normal
Spoiler :

I expanded into 9 cities, libbed rifling in ~1300 although it could've been earlier because i self-teched nationalism before it.


I sweeped my continent by 1625 and I thought I could either:

a) go kill all those longbows on the other continent with my rifles + cannons
b) use my superior tech advantage to go into space
c) nuke everyone

I chose to c) nuke everyone.


That was a mistake. I threw dozens of ICBMs on Gilgamesh who was the strongest civ on the other continent and had vassalled Mao. I levelled all his cities down to dust (3 or less people and almost no troops in them). Mao wouldn't break free nor would Gilgamesh capitulate. Eventually I got bored and quit, although I could've still won by invading or going to space.

Are capitulation mechanics explained somewhere? Sometimes nuking someone to the ashes works and sometimes it doesn't. I hate it how it seems random like that.
 
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