How does Gilgamesh's LUA actually work?

[MACKA0ili]

How does it work? I haven't been able to get a hold of the the game myself, but so far Gilgamesh's ability has been written off by a lot of people and, going by the description on the leader selection screen, rightfully so.

However, watching some playthroughs that include Sumer, I've noticed that their units are constantly recieving XP from this ability even when they have no alliances. This usually gets them some veteran units by the classical era without ever going to war.

So how does it really work then? To me it looks like all city states, suzerain or not, share xp with Gilgamesh. Also, any barbarian xp is shared whether it is ny a city state or other civilization. Is this accurate, or am I just seeing things?

 

[MagicCuboid]

Well, I haven't played as Gilgamesh yet, but I have been neighbors with him twice and observed... So far your observations are correct - he appears to get experience from ANY combat within range - including against him! I've killed War Carts only to give promotions to other War Carts.

So, I believe what his unique ability really means is that not only does he get the experience bonus from combat, but his ally ALSO gets the experience bonus from any combat. This, combined with his War-Cart mobility and goody hut Barb camps makes him quite powerful in the early eras. He doesn't even have to focus on non-war-related Eurekas or Inspirations really, because he can just kill barbarians for science and gold. Furthermore he gets no war penalties in the ancient era so, so the "Sumeria Vulture" strat of picking off neighbors' settlers and workers is pretty viable. He just loses steam by mid-game, is all.

 

[Furycrab]

Well, I haven't played as Gilgamesh yet, but I have been neighbors with him twice and observed... So far your observations are correct - he appears to get experience from ANY combat within range - including against him! I've killed War Carts only to give promotions to other War Carts.

So, I believe what his unique ability really means is that not only does he get the experience bonus from combat, but his ally ALSO gets the experience bonus from any combat. This, combined with his War-Cart mobility and goody hut Barb camps makes him quite powerful in the early eras. He doesn't even have to focus on non-war-related Eurekas or Inspirations really, because he can just kill barbarians for science and gold. Furthermore he gets no war penalties in the ancient era so, so the "Sumeria Vulture" strat of picking off neighbors' settlers and workers is pretty viable. He just loses steam by mid-game, is all.

The hammers and science you save from both goody hut smashing and not needing slingers to deal with barbs is real though. Should be easy to snowball into late game.

I've only really played one game so far with them, but you unlock mercenaries and Stirups and you can just keep being this mounted nightmare in the mid game. The knights don't quite deal as well with Pikes, but they made getting pikes really annoying in this game. (Dead end tech that also requires you to kill something with a spearmen, but spears don't really work against the war-cart and archers aren't that much better if you get Barding first upgrade)

 

[Kimurae]

I've been playing him a few times, next time I play as him I plan to try focusing early on Ziggurauts, Settlers, and having a Holy Site and a Comercial District as my first two districts and grabbing Jesuit Education.

Reason is, it seems like LUA, Ziggurauts and War-Carts allow you to focus on other things at first, build up a good economy, and then Build a Campus and/or Theatre district and dump faith and gold into it.

 

[cephalo]

I find the LUA to be utterly worthless. First of all, it never kicks in. Finding allies is very difficult, time consuming and expensive. Even if you find yourself with an ally, you might be able to go to war for free, but as soon as you take a city you end up with a massive warmongering penalty anyway. So you can go to war, but you can't gain anything from it.

 

[MACKA0ili]

I find the LUA to be utterly worthless. First of all, it never kicks in. Finding allies is very difficult, time consuming and expensive. Even if you find yourself with an ally, you might be able to go to war for free, but as soon as you take a city you end up with a massive warmongering penalty anyway. So you can go to war, but you can't gain anything from it.

I thought so too, but every video I see with Gilgamesh has their units receiving xp without having any alliances up. It looks like there is some hidden functionality to it; I would test this myself, but I can't get the game quite yet. The negated warmongering penalties and levying are pretty situational, but, if this is how its supposed to work, it looks like the shared rewards are better than the leader info describes.

 

[RubbeRNL]

Maybe a city state you are suzerain of counts as an alliance ?

 

[Lord Yanaek]

I'm sure everyone is allied against barbarians so whenever someone kills a barb and uncle Gill has some units nearby he gets the XP too. Maybe there is more, but this i have directly observed. Also even when i had units capped against barb XP (so i would only get 1 XP if i attacked), waiting for someone else to attack gave me full XP.

 

[DonPato]

From what I can tell, receiving XP from "allies" seems to mean "anybody Gilg isn't at war with". There was even a time during my playthrough with him where city states that I hadn't met yet were fighting barbs in the FOW and I was getting XP from them.

 

[Edibi]

Gilga's ability is messed up. I was in a war with him and he gained XP from the barbarians that I was killing. The range is quite high as well, 6 tiles I believe. Found it very weird that his units were getting XP when I was at war with him. Would create an interesting exploit where you just take your units to wars between other nations and leech xp without having to participate in the war! I suspect it will be patched.

 

[lamaros]

When the AI plays him they go nuts for science, like 100+ science by turn 100 very often. If they could actually fight he would be a monster.