Gandhi's UA is it good or bad?

So is it good or bad?

 

Well, this topic totally hasn't been discussed to death already, so hey, why not make another thread about it?

Like all UAs, it depends - in this case, whether your empire is "wide" or "tall". Wide = bad, tall = good. But IMO I think it's kind of bland.

 

Actually, because of how his UA is designed, it actually gets stronger in wide empires than tall empires. It's supposed to make tall empires make more sense by doubling the per-city unhappiness from 3 to 6 and halving per-pop unhappiness, but even though unhappiness per pop is halved, happiness gained from buildings is not. So, Colosseums and such are effectively twice as good, being able to placate 4 population apiece instead of just 2... except you only NEED 2 population apiece to get the full benefit! Naturally, this makes having more cities beneficial, as you can build more happiness buildings.

It is rather bland, though, especially since it doesn't actually help you achieve your goal, it just makes you better once you reach it. Happiness buildings are also rather expensive.

 

It's fine, people just don't do the math very well. To get some idea what it'll do for you, play a game or two as a different civ and check your sources of Unhappiness at various points in time. See how much is from population and how much from city count.

Basically it's a wash early game - the double happiness cost per city tends to balance out against the rapid population expansion of the extra citizen growth. As the game goes on it trends towards a lot more Happiness - you can use that how you will. It often means tall Gandhi gets taller or wide Gandhi wide can get each city bigger. The only time it's not a positive is if you're going very wide, bordering on city spam, or if you're conquering a lot of cities.

More happiness roughly equals more citizens, which means more science. The only kicker is that there's better science civs out there, and the UB and UU are pretty meh in my books.

 

It really hurts for early expansion,
(new city pop 2 = 7 unhappiness for Gandhi, 5 unhappiness for everyone else)

It is great later in the game (or while you just have your Capital)

It gets better for large maps (less per city unhappiness anyways)

 

Your expansion early will suck. But in BNW, you don't have to expand early to have room for 4 solid cities.
It works really well with their grassland start though. I've grown a capital in 300 turns to have used all my available tiles and specialist slots on a land start. That's a lot of science with NC.

Also, as others have said... It's better to conquer cities than to settle them. Puppets also prioritize walls and castles, so your UB will be built.

 

Undebatly the UA is good for every well played game.

The thing is that it got a penalaty a very uncommon thing for an UA, you pay 2 times as much happines for each city you control which is but a static number compared to its benifint, getting 1/2 unhappines from population.

Basicly the penalaty will slow down how fast you can expand, but not by to much and you still can purcash a land area if you want to be able to get alot of cities.
However you will not have to invest as much to keep your population happy which is more of a problem for big empires.

 

I don't know about bad, but it's certainly useless.

In the early game, having no UA at all would be better than having Gandhi's UA. In the later game, when the UA really becomes more prominent, you already have a variety of non-luxury sources for happiness (Buildings, Religion, Policies/Ideology, et cetera), so happiness really isn't an issue. Even playing wide, or capturing a few cities, I've never had any late-game problems with happiness, so Gandhi's UA is like not having a UA at all, really.

 

The UA kicks in at 6 pop (12 in capital if going tradition), meaning you get net happiness at that point .

You really don't have 12 pop in your capital and 6 pop in your other cities until ideology?

Come on. Its far from useless.

 

I've played Gandhi in civ5 and civ4 for over probably 50-100 hrs.

Difficulty Level: Immortal and some Diety.

It is a really difficult UA to get used to. Basically my pattern is two harvest two luxuries and build a second city. Then harvest another luxury and build a third. Then harvest the 4th distinct luxury and send all trade routes to be internal. Thats when you will get everything up and running like guilds, NC, markets etc. Building the 4th city and onwards is where one might need to fight or buy a lot of tiles or etc.

BASIC: THE UA BLOW for the first 100 turns. Then its all smiles!! )

Its really hard to get used to for the first 100 turns. But after T100 (when u have settled ur first 3-5 cities) its really awesome because colosseums dont just relive uhappiness - they GENERATE extra global happiness. So does a circus. A stone works. Buildings that are cheap/free make life great.

Funny tricks:

Only nation where Building the CN TOWER - get like +5 happiness. Can only do that with gandhi

Building Circus Maximus in capital - thats 5 free happiness local which converts to global.

DEFINITELY GET MONARCHY - too amazing with UA for the capital. It becomes where for every 4 citizens - theres one unhappiness. So for a 16 pop capital thats only 4 unhappiness (someone check me on this.)

Building Notre Dame is godly for India. +10 means a lot more cities can happen.

Every happiness building cathedral, pagodas or mosques yield essentially double profit for the civ.

BEST PART about UA - your happiness stabilizes for turns 150-350. As all of cities grow enormously ur happiness will stabilize and stay at around 20-30. More golden ages and defense against ideology pressure. Also conquering late game with India is broken - no need to slow down.

If I am going to attack people with GDRs and stealth bombers - just get to 50 happiness global and never look back.

 

CN tower, Notre Dame, and Circus Maximus (and all other Wonders) are Already Global happiness.

 

It used to suck preBNW when you couldn't grow any faster than another civ but the ITRs make it a pretty nice UA. The days of wide short empires are over. Every city you found should be developed well past 6pop asap so every city should be benefitting from the UA.

Coastal starts are the best so you can do sea routes to Delhi. I'm to the point where if I can't get Delhi on the coast I'll just reroll.

 

This is short term thinking. Land Delhi in the middle of grass grows a bit slower in the mid-game, but ends up much much bigger than coastal Delhi. This leverages the NC in very good ways. Try it sometime, just use land itrs. Don't reroll.

 

Think so? I guess it depends on whether or not there's fish in range too, I suppose, but you may be right.

 

The trick is to play on a large/huge map, where the double per-city unhappiness pays off a lot sooner.

 

Tested it pre-fall patch. Ran out of workable tiles and specialist slots well before turn 300. Had a windmill, all guilds. Trade posted everything I could.

Great NC leverage and good endgame trade city because AI will continue to use land caravans.

 

it's bad in early game, because you have to get more happiness sources than usual before expanding. It'll pay off around renaissance, you'll still have +10 where you usually have -1 happiness before zoos are up.