Contemplations of Gandhi

[BjoernLars]

Some of you might choose random leader and end up with Gandhi, or you might just want to show the world that petite pacifists do have the bravado to use nuclear weapons.

Either way, if you are starting off with your first city as New Delhi, here are some thoughts on how you might want to play this civilization based on the available information out there.

Unique Trait

From the game manual:

Population Growth: Unhappiness from number of Cities is doubled, and Unhappiness from total population is halved. (Build bigger, fewer cities!)

When I first saw this trait, I thought it was the worse trait of all the civilizations. Worse than the German and Ottoman dependency on Barbarians for their trait. Take pistol, aim at foot, fire, start the race.

After thinking for a bit, I believe that this trait will make your game play very interesting. You will be force to play a certain style. While this may hinder your flexibility, it will make your game very interesting and a bit more challenging.


Overall Strategy

Based off of the Unique Civilization Trait, your main goal as Gandhi should be to build a few, but insanely massive large cities. Large cities lead to excess population, in which the unemployed can become specialist. With these specialist, your cities can start cranking out Great People for extra bonuses throughout the game.

Just as in real life, Gandhi should probably play a more peaceful and diplomatic game. A strategy of going out and conquering cities will be very hard to make successful since each new city that you conquer will exacerbate your unhappiness levels due to the civilization trait. Also Gandhi may have a hard time expanding his territory to gain new resources, so developing relations with City-States to access new resources may become extremely important to him as the game progresses.

Obviously if Napoleon, Montezuma and Askia are your starting neighbors, you are going to have to change your strategy... quite a bit.


Victory Conditions

What victory conditions should you be aiming for if India is your civilization?

2050
I don't think anyone really aims for having the highest score on the last turn. If you are able to create a fair number of well built colossal cities, you may have a fair chance at this method of winning.

Domination
Unless you are force to exterminate belligerent neighbors in order to secure peace in your region, this would probably be your last choice to win. For a Domination win, you have to capture all other civilization capitals. A key note, capitals cannot be destroyed nor razed. In order to get the least amount of unhappiness penalties from Gandhi's trait, you would have to capture only all the other capitals and hold onto them in the midst of extremely hostile neighbors.

Science Victory
If you find yourself with a few cities that have good production rates, you could start to focus your plethora of specialists on science to gain an nice technological lead. From here a space race victory would be quiet plausible.

Cultural Victory
Cultural Victories come from completing 5 Social Policy tress and completing the Utopia Project. From my understanding of the Social Policy trees, the more cities you have, the more culture required to unlock the next policy.

Example:

A) 5 cities, each producing 10 culture per turn (50 culture/turn)
B) 10 cities, each producing 5 culture per turn (50 culture/turn)

Scenario A would unlock social policies at a quicker rate.

With Gandhi's few, but giant cities, I believe going for a cultural victory is probably your best bet since your massive cities are going to be producing a lot of culture every turn.

Diplomatic
I think that this route is also a good option for Gandhi. Due to a restriction on expanding, India may find itself developing relations with City-States in order to secure more food and resources. Plenty of good relations with City-States could put you over the top for the UN elections.

Other civilizations will not vote for you in the UN, unless you liberate their city and bring them back into the game. City-States will vote for their most recent liberator or the civilization they have the best relations with.


City Building
No more fat crosses! Instead, with fully expanded borders, cities now have up to 36 tiles for citizens to work. Because of Gandhi's Unique civilization traits, cities need to be extremely large. In order to make this possible, your neighboring cities should be built to have the least amount of overlapping tiles.

Also, well spread out cities play a role other than to allow maximum city population. With a limit on the number cities you can build, the amount of territory that you gain from each city should be maximized in order to acquire the most amount of resources that you can on the map.

When figuring out which direction to expand your empire, or where to place your next city, food production should probably be one of your highest priorities for choosing a location. Obviously do not forgo resources or tiles with good production values, but careful placement of a city can result in a drastic change in the maximum city population.


Military
So you don't want to be pushed around on the proverbial schoolyard? Good for you! Way to have some backbone! What should the purpose of your be military?

More than likely you are probably going to be playing a more peaceful and diplomatic game. The first obvious reason for a military is defense, but should India play a completely pacific game?

If you are going for a diplomatic victory, a good military can behoove you. In order to get those votes on the UN, you need to keep the City-States happy. Some Barbarian hunting completed early on at the request of a City-State can start you off on a long and healthy relationship.

Also, if a City-States get capture by another civilization, you could liberate it and be guaranteed a vote in the UN Council (as long as you are the most recent liberator).

If you have any plans to become a bit aggressive, make sure when you decided to conquer a city that you do plenty of reconnaissance and pick the best cities that you want to add to you empire. These new cities should have the potential to become mammoth cities or else your going to be hurt severely by your Unique Civilization trait.


Social Policies

There are a total of 8 different Social Trees for civilization. Here is a review of which Policies would be helpful to India based on this type of strategy.

Tradition
For your first Social Policy, this would probably be your best choice to help your empire grow. Tradition is about a strong capital for a civilization that is limited in size. Upon unlocking tradition, your capital city gets +1 food, helping it grow faster and slightly raising its potential population size.

The following are certain sub-Policies that would probably be the most beneficial to India.

Legalism: Reduces unhappiness from population in the Capital by 33%.
- Less unhappiness, bigger cities!
Monarchy: Purchasing tiles is 50% cheaper. (requires Oligarchy)
- This helps you expand your territory faster and get key resources under your control faster.
Landed Elite: 33% faster population growth in Capital. (requires Oligarchy, Aristocracy)
- Since India's unhappiness per citizen is lower, your capital city can grow quicker and higher earlier on than most civilization without destroying your civilization's Happiness. A strong capital right off the bat can hand you a nice lead early on.

Liberty
This Policy is all about rapid expansion. For India, this is probably not the best choice since you will not be building a lot of cities. A plus for rapid expansion is that you can grab up the territory you want first, but from the beginning you will be fighting large unhappiness levels which will slowdown the growth of your empire.

Citizenship: +25% construction rate of Workers.
- This will probably be the best sub-Policy for India since you can get your farms up and running quickly, allowing for quick growth early in the game.

Honor
Unless your neighbors are bloodthirsty and eyeballing your civilization, this is probably another Policy Tree you want to avoid.

Piety
When you are about to unlock Piety, one idea you must have in mind is you end goal for victory. While the classic era may be too early decided this, if you are hell bent on winning through a cultural victory, this would be a nice Policy Tree to invest in. If you are aiming for a Science Victory, it would probably be best to skip this one and work on Rationalism.

Mandate of Heaven: 50% of excess Happiness added each turn to the amount of Culture that may be spent on Policies.
- Under Piety your Happiness levels will be greatly increasing leaving you with extra Happiness. Half of this excess Happiness will be added to your Culture!

Patronage
If you are gunning for a Diplomatic Victory, this Policy Tree is a must. Even if you don't aim for a Diplomatic Victory, this Tree can help increase the resources you get from City-States that you may be lacking due to the limited size of your empire.

Cultural Diplomacy: Quantity of resources offered by City-States increases 100%; Happiness from gifted luxury resources increased by 50%. (requires Scholasticism)
- This would be the big sub-Policy for India. More happiness, more resources.

Commerce
This may not be the strongest for India, but it is not useless.

Protectionism: +1 Happiness from each Luxury Resource (requires Mercantilism).
- Extra Happiness, yeah!

Freedom
This is probably going to be the strongest Policy Tree for India. Once activated, you specialist produce half they amount of Unhappiness that they would.

Civil Society: Specialists consume only half the normal amount of Food.
- Couple this with the reduced specialist Unhappiness levels and your cities can start grow even larger and be more productive. Let's go for 2 Billion people India!
Democracy: +50% Great Person production rate. (Requires Civil Society)
- Given your large specialist population already, now you will be able to pump out Great People even faster!
Free Speech: Reduces the Culture cost of future policies by 25%.
- If you are aiming for a cultural victory, this is only going help you get there faster.

Rationalism
If you are aiming for a Science Victory, this will be helpful for you. If you have already Piety you may want to pass on this one.

Order
For a late game Policy Tree, Order would do you well.

Planned Economy: Unhappiness from number of Cities reduced by 50%.
- This would help you if you are getting a little itchy and want to expand your empire a bit and take in some more cities.
United Front: Causes other civilizations' city-state influence points to decay 33% faster.
- If you are aiming for a diplomatic victory and you notice that you have some competition, this will be a nice addition.

Autocracy
Unless your Gandhi empathizes with Darth Vader or became corrupted by the taint of saidin (just for you WoT fans ), this militaristic policy isn't going to be that much help.


Buildings
Beyond the buildings that provide Happiness, I think the following buildings are some must haves for every Indian city you build if you want to take advantage of their Unique Civilization trait.

Granary
+ 2 Food. Bigger cities, more tech support for your PC...

Hospital
If later in the game your cities still have not reached their full potential in size, having hospitals will help them get to their maximum size faster.

Library
Good lordie! +1 Science for every two Citizens. With your large cities this efficiency rate of this building is divine! BUILD IT!

Medical Lab
Being this late in the game, city growth may be mute, but if you still have some room to jam more people into your cities, go for this building.

Water Wheel
+ 2 Food. Enough said.


National Wonder

Since your cities are going more than likely to be Specialist factories, there is one National Wonder that is a must have for Gandhi's Unique Civilization trait.

National Epic
+25% Great People generation in the City where it is built.
- Place this one wisely.


World Wonders

What World Wonders should Gandhi be aiming for?

Chichen Itza
Length of Golden Age increase by 50%
- This has a two fold benefit for this play style.
1) Gandhi developing high levels of Happiness to accommodate future large population levels will trigger more Golden Ages.
2) Large cities are more likely to produce more Great People, letting them be sacrificed for more Golden Ages.

Cristo Redentor
Culture cost of adopting new Policies reduced by 33%.
- If you are aiming for a Cultural victory which will probably be Gandhi's best bet for victory, this will help you get there faster.

Eiffel Tower
+8 Happiness empire-wide.
- You know what Gandhi is all about by now.

The Forbidden Palace
Unhappiness from number of cities reduced by 50%.
- If you want to expand your borders and get some more cities produced, this is a must for India.

The Hagia Sophia
Great People generate 33% faster
- Large cities, lots of specialists, lots of GP points. Get those Great People to manifest faster!

The Hanging Gardens
+1 Population in all existing Cities, +3 Happiness Points
- If you have expanded a decent amount this Wonder works quite nicely with India's Unique Civilization Trait.

Notre Dame
+5 Happiness Points
- Keeps your cities growing!

The Oracle
Gain a free Social Policy
- Especially prominent if you are aiming for a Cultural Victory

The Pyramids
Worker Construction speed is increased by 50%
- Since India can grow faster early on due to its Unique Civilization Trait, faster land improvements will help that quick growth happen.

Sistine Chapel
An additional 33% Culture is produced in all cities.
- If you are going for a cultural victory, this will definitely help.

Statue of Liberty
+1 Production gained for every Specialist in all cities.
- Sweet Jesus in a smoking birch canoe! Coupled with Gandhi's mega-cities and large number of specialists, this bad boy will increase your production levels by leaps and bounds. BUILD IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sydney Opera House
Choose one free Social Policy
- Again, it helps with the cultural victory just like the Oracle.

Taj Mahal
Lengths of Golden Ages increased by 50%.
- See Chichen Itza

United Nations
Completion trigger voting for Diplomatic Victory
- If you are on peace path and you want to get an edge to get voted for the Diplomatic Victory, build this and you will receive two votes instead of one.


Summary

Even though I haven't played Civ V yet, I have gone through articles on the internet and read through the Manual. Based on my passed experiences with Civilization (ever since the first one) this is how imagine playing India will proceed.

1) A few, but extremely large cities.
2) Specialists galore
3) Cultural victory will probably be the most prominent way to way
4) Emphasis of City-State relationships to make up for lack of resources due to limited territory.

 

[Feyd Rautha]

I concur that Ghandi will be a beast once he gets rolling. I hope the AI knows how to play to his strengths.

Ghandi will definitely be a civ where you spread your cities out so they can work all 36 tiles around it. You need luxuries galore if you want to get those cities high and with a small number of cities you want to use all the land you can get your hands on.

It will be interesting especially once we see how long it would take to hit 36 (or if it is even possible).

 

[Polobo]

Some points to consider:
1) Don't focus on farms too much as you will need gold as well. Consider evaluating how and when merchant specialists become available and how many trading posts are likely to be needed.

2) Domination would be a fun victory; hold off the opposing dominiation civ long enough to capture their capital and win the game (you only need to be the last civ owning your own capital - you are not required to be holding all other capitals as well).

3) Managing a Food-Gold-Production balance is going to be critical; specialization (especially for gold) will be important. Consider whether and how overlapping specialist cities would have benefits (e.g, triangle formation F-G-P; both food and gold need to build things; production and gold both need to grow; put the women and children in the middle of triangle - sorry I meant food and production).

3) Playing India as a hyper-expansion civ could be fun as well with different balancing needs since you need to overcome the short-term #-of-cities unhappy as opposed to the long-term population unhappy that most civs are most concerned with.

4) Specialist slots are limited so when you get lots of population you are going to have a fairly well balance distribution of specialists. Get (or make) yourself a good overview of what specialist slots become available when to get a feel for how to compensate for whatever resource you lack.

5) Tradition; Patronage; Commerce; Freedom; Rationalism = Culture Victory.
5A) Tradition Filled First
5B) Patronage - Asthetics - Philatrophy
5C) Commerce - Naval Tradition
5D) Freedom - Civil Society - Democracy
5E) Rationalism - Secularism
5F) (Commerce) Trade Unions - Mercantilism
5G) Others as needed from those trees.

 

[DalekDavros]

IIRC, the base unhappiness is 2 per city and 1 per pop, so Gandhi is looking at 4 per city and 0.5 per pop. At size 4, these line up and past size 4 Gandhi gets a reduction in unhappiness. So, it's not really accurate to say that India is limited to only a few cities (although that might still be a decent strategy if going for culture) since in any decent sized city the savings in unhappiness from pop will be vastly more important than the losses from number of cities.

Legalism: Reduces unhappiness from population in the Capital by 33%.
- Less unhappiness, bigger cities!

Not a great early policy for Gandhi. It makes intuitive sense ("focus on my strengths"), but the fact of the matter is you're paying the same amount of culture for this policy as every other player but only getting half the benefit since your unhappiness from population is already going to be significantly lower. Once your capital becomes significantly bigger than the capital's of the other civs, it might be worthwhile, but earlier on there are better policies to buy.

Planned Economy: Unhappiness from number of Cities reduced by 50%.
- This would help you if you are getting a little itchy and want to expand your empire a bit and take in some more cities.

For the opposite reason as above, buy this policy as soon as possible: it costs the same for you as it does for other civs, but it provides you with twice the benefits (as long as you're not buying into the "don't build many cities as India" hype).

 

[playshogi]

5) Tradition; Patronage; Commerce; Freedom; Rationalism = Culture Victory.
5A) Tradition Filled First
5B) Patronage - Asthetics - Philatrophy
5C) Commerce - Naval Tradition
5D) Freedom - Civil Society - Democracy
5E) Rationalism - Secularism
5F) (Commerce) Trade Unions - Mercantilism
5G) Others as needed from those trees.

For cultural victory I prefer Piety over Rationalism and Honor over commerce.
The Mandate of heaven and 2 free policies from Free Religion seem essential.
Honor offers more for defense since the AI should attack you as you start the Utopia project.

 

[DalekDavros]

Honor doesn't really offer than much for defense. Since a CV will require a small number of cities, Protectionism beats Military Caste. Since you'll be building a lot, opening the Commerce branch and/or Mercantilism are probably stronger than Professional Army. Warrior Code has a nice benefit up front, but isn't strong in the long run. The main benefit of Honor would be from Discipline, but Oligarchy ought to be enough for defensive purposes. I'd take either Commerce or Order ahead of Honor.

 

[_hero_]

Cultural Victory
Cultural Victories come from completing 5 Social Policy tress and completing the Utopia Project. From my understanding of the Social Policy trees, the more cities you have, the more culture required to unlock the next policy.

Example:

A) 5 cities, each producing 10 culture per turn (50 culture/turn)
B) 10 cities, each producing 5 culture per turn (50 culture/turn)

Scenario A would unlock social policies at a quicker rate.

With Gandhi's few, but giant cities, I believe going for a cultural victory is probably your best bet since your massive cities are going to be producing a lot of culture every turn.

Just to fill the details, it's 30% higher SP cost for each additional city. Thus, for every city you add to your empire you'll have to increase your culture generation rate by 30% to maintain your SP unlockings. It seems that earlier in the game have multiple cities and simply getting them monuments actually speeds your SP discoveries. Later on, once your capital or another city has a hermitage, wonders, and other benefits on top of all the cultural buildings, you're other cities begin to become a drain. If you can't make each city produce at least 30% culture per turn of your top culture city, than those other cities are slowing you down rather than speeding you up. So, if you can afford it, you're best off having a solid number of cities so long as you make sure to keep the top level culture buildings in each of these cities. If you get a lot of wonders and a hermitage, it may become impossible to stay at or above 30% with just the culture buildings.

Now this isn't just significant for India but all civs. Just thought I'd share it. If anything, it's more important for other civs who can afford a larger empire. If they can keep all their cities at the culture level of their capital -1 from palace, they can effectively out-culture a small empire with cheap policies.

 

[Thyrwyn]

IIRC, the base unhappiness is 2 per city and 1 per pop, so Gandhi is looking at 4 per city and 0.5 per pop. At size 4, these line up and past size 4 Gandhi gets a reduction in unhappiness. So, it's not really accurate to say that India is limited to only a few cities (although that might still be a decent strategy if going for culture) since in any decent sized city the savings in unhappiness from pop will be vastly more important than the losses from number of cities.

This. The net effect of India's UA is twofold:

1) They will be less able to REX than other civs, since quickly establishing many small cities will rapidly push them towards their happy cap. However. . .

2) Once their cities start growing, they will always have more happy room than any other comparable civ. With 5 cities with an average size of 10, India will have 45 unhappiness; everyone else will have 60 - which means India can either afford more cities, more pop, or simply settle back and enjoy more Golden Ages.

Another thing to note, is that India will benefit tremendously from a really huge capital. Since the capital's pop is a factor in figuring the value of each and every trade route, Gandhi will get see a greater return on each capital pop.

 

[playshogi]

Honor doesn't really offer than much for defense. Since a CV will require a small number of cities, Protectionism beats Military Caste. Since you'll be building a lot, opening the Commerce branch and/or Mercantilism are probably stronger than Professional Army. Warrior Code has a nice benefit up front, but isn't strong in the long run. The main benefit of Honor would be from Discipline, but Oligarchy ought to be enough for defensive purposes. I'd take either Commerce or Order ahead of Honor.

I'm assuming for cultural victory that you will not be able to afford to buy any policy outside of the 5 branches you intend to complete. That's why I pick honor.

 

[Polobo]

Honor has advantages admittedly but the lighter ones can be compensated for with a few units (Honor, Code, Discipline, Caste) while tradition needs lots of Civ-on-AI war to really be useful (since you do get Armory and Barracks fairly early which makes any kind of barb farming obsolete) and Army, arguably the most useful, requires Honor, Caste, Discipline in order to even research. Since none of the others are THAT important for pacifist Ghandi the expense of getting Army is high; I'd rather just focus a little more on gold in my cities.

Piety is a great choice as well though with few cities I do not forsee that many difficulties getting social policies so two free ones (1 net) in exchange for locking out Rationalism is a pretty severe trade-off. Theocracy is one of the better policies in the tree as it is always active but with the UA its effects are muted. By the time you get Heaven you should probably be running near your happy cap anyway though I am not sure to what degree it would be worth limiting growth in order to have extra happy for Golden Ages and supplemental Culture since both are excellent in their own right. In all you really cannot go wrong with Piety but your empire management will be different compared to someone who has chosen Commerce.

Commerce was the harder one for me to choose but I think it would be more helpful overall than Honor. If I could choose Piety without losing Rationalism I would choose it over Commerce but that is not a valid option. The other thing about Piety is that it comes up during the Medieval Era where you also want to start working on city-state relations (requiring gold which reinforces Commerce) which means Patronage - and you are likely still filling in the Tradition branch. Choosing either Piety or Honor over a later branch means that you will have many more options in the early game that cannot all be met right-away. If you do plan for Commerce founding cities on the coast will have some advantages to consider and plan for.

 

[Earthling]

I'm not a fan of this ability because it extremely out of line regarding balance and playstyle to most other civ abilities. Could be fun for players but not necessarily so even with other civ abilities which force things much less and are more minor or flexible.

It will be effective and work in many game settings and situations; it will be difficult or possibly close on a disadvantage on others. And most worrisome is that the AI might not manage it well at all outside of very specific conditions - it will be especially crippling to Ghandi on higher levels relative to the other AI.

And having to research around a 10000 tech just to get my Dragon who's not even a Hero! Bogus man!

 

[Thyrwyn]

If you are going for a Culture Victory, the "2 free policies" is more than "one net" - you buy one policy, get the effects of 2, and credit for 3. That is pretty significant, since if you are going for a Culture Victory, the difference between 20+ Policy effects and 21+ Policy effects is pretty minimal. . .

If you can manage to make that Policy the last one you buy, you can save yourself an enormous amount of culture by not having to buy policies 29 & 30.

 

[Polobo]

The "credit for three" I agree with but you only really get "one net effect".

Either option is viable and really the map and opponents will have more of an influence on the decision compared to isolated benefits of the various policies. Culture for Social Policies, as well as science, should both be readily available (production and happy are going to be the issues) so I would probably tend toward Piety > Rationalism at this point but I'm busy planning my Ottoman strategies so considering various permutations in greater for Ghandi is taking a back seat.

 

[King Jason]

I'm gonna admit I skipped the entire first post as soon as I got to the interpretation of India's UA simply to come here and explain that it wasn't... Fortunately, DalekDavros played the tune that I've been trumpeting in almost any discussion that pops up about India. So to sum up for the Xth time;

India's ability doesn't restrict it to a playstyle. cities @pop 4 cost equal amounts of happiness as any other civ. Higher pops continue to cost less. The negative draw on India's ability is a decrease in the rate at which the nation can expand. NOT a decrease in the capacity (meaning city count) of that expansion.

I'm gonna go back and skim the rest of it... but that interpretation is one of the bigger misconceptions that seem to float around the board.

 

[Earthling]

India's ability doesn't restrict it to a playstyle.

I'm gonna go back and skim the rest of it... but that interpretation is one of the bigger misconceptions that seem to float around the board.

Being pedantic about which word in English was used doesn't really make something a misconception. And especially when a lot of people don't even have English as first language on these boards.

If you must insist on not saying "restrict" anywhere you could just replace that with "severely limits in order to play a competitive or successful game" which is accurate and everybody else would take to mean the same thing. India's ability is going to be "severely limiting" to some player strategies and especially the AI. Not necessarily a bad thing and players could still do very well with them, but it's definitely very far out in left field and inconsistent with other civ abilities.

 

[bjbrains]

Being pedantic about which word in English was used doesn't really make something a misconception. And especially when a lot of people don't even have English as first language on these boards.

If you must insist on not saying "restrict" anywhere you could just replace that with "severely limits in order to play a competitive or successful game" which is accurate and everybody else would take to mean the same thing. India's ability is going to be "severely limiting" to some player strategies and especially the AI. Not necessarily a bad thing and players could still do very well with them, but it's definitely very far out in left field and inconsistent with other civ abilities.

I think you overestimate the downside on Ghandi's ability. While it does shut off one strategy (Rapid Expansion), there's nothing stopping him from expanding at a normal rate. Since his ability stops being a negative at pop 4 (and thus is much better as your cities continue to grow), there is nothing stopping him from expanding. I think you'll find that rapid expansion is a more niche strategy than it was in Civ 4 (because of the major strain it puts on your happiness and social policy progression) anyway.

 

[bhavv]

I dont think rapid expansion will be any good in Civ V due to how much longer social policies will take to unlock, and the extra unhappiness caused.

It will be completely different to rexing in Civ IV and earlier versions.

 

[Earthling]

I think you overestimate the downside on Ghandi's ability.

Nah, I agree the trait is not bad, but think you overestimate the AI

I would expect a player with a decent grasp of the game would probably handle Ghandi fine and get a great net benefit out of the trait. (there's still the fact this trait is very different from many others - the balance of the game where some folks like Oda have nothing but warmongering and others have extensive economic focus probably isn't the greatest. But on its own the trait shouldn't lead to inability to play, just different balance than other civs)

The AI is a whole different story though, past evidence would indicate Ghandi will be particularly hard to leave even close to balanced. Basically a repeat of the Kurios situation entirely as I hinted earlier. It's extremely difficult to get one AI to play a radically different game and be balanced/competitive - I don't think we'll see this as a concern just with Ghandi alone, but the civs whose traits are straightforward and work with any settings/niche will be easier to handle for the AI. But either the AI will have a crippling playstyle preference where it's coded in for Ghandi to try to pursue certain interests that won't work on many, many games and map settings, or it won't make use of its traits well at all. Though we might see this economic bonus like other civs with an economic bonus becoming absolutely runaway on higher levels.

The tipping point for Ghandi is razor thin, in other words, unlike other AI, due to the nature of the trait I'd say. A Ghandi coded to not effectively expand is toast - and it has to evaluate positions very well because the difference on land/water/small/big maps could be extreme.

 

[DalekDavros]

If you must insist on not saying "restrict" anywhere you could just replace that with "severely limits in order to play a competitive or successful game" which is accurate and everybody else would take to mean the same thing.

I disagree. The UT are nice flavor, but none are really overpowering. You could probably play any Civ (including India) fairly well up to at least Emperor-ish without even considering what their UT was or making any conscious attempt to take advantage of it. Instead of "restricts," a better phrase is "has almost no effect on."

India's ability is going to be "severely limiting" to some player strategies and especially the AI.

Nonsense. That would suggest that the UT was worse than nothing (since clearly the AI wouldn't have to be specially programmed to deal with not having a UT). Ideally, you may want to think about number of cities to best take advantage of the ability, but (with the new restriction on creating settlers) I doubt that it's even possible to spam cities fast enough for it to become a meaningful disadvantage, and it certainly wouldn't be something that happens unless you're specifically trying to do it as a proof-of-concept.

 

[King Jason]

Being pedantic about which word in English was used doesn't really make something a misconception. And especially when a lot of people don't even have English as first language on these boards.

If you must insist on not saying "restrict" anywhere you could just replace that with "severely limits in order to play a competitive or successful game" which is accurate and everybody else would take to mean the same thing.

I enjoy your claim that I was being pendatic when, even under you clarified and thus now universally understood meaning of the phrase, which was the original meaning, I believe the statement to be false.

If you must insist on not saying "restrict" anywhere you could just replace that with "severely limits in order to play a competitive or successful game" which is accurate and everybody else would take to mean the same thing.

No it isn't. I said it doesn't restrict a player to a playstyle; such as "Any time India plays a game, it should have a small empire" Which is the gist of the strategy put forth and the comment strategy most people instantly interpret from the UA. Which is, as I said, a false interpretation.

The only strategy that is limited or hindered in any way is the concept of REXing. Which is only truly limited if india get's a bad roll on it's surrounding terrain and luxury resources.

However, due to the nature of happiness constraints in the first place, early REX is going to be quite difficult anyway... Since, unmodified, a civ with a base of 10 happy to start could only maintain about 2 cities before it needs more sources of happiness anyway. This constraint is no harsher for India. Though they would have less pop to work with.

The main change I see is that the value of growth in the capital, primarily, is much greater for india than other civs. But as technologies and policies unlock ways to obtain more sources of happiness through outward growth (such as the ability to claim luxuries), India will probably be able to expand at an equal rate as other civs with the excess.

What's important to note is that every 4 population per city, India is on equal footing with all other civs. So if someone grew their capital to size 7 and then built their second city... Hit on their Happiness would be no different than a regular civ.

Ultimately though, growth is very imporant for India, as vertical growth allows India to offset the costs of horizontal growth.