Large empires tech way too fast, and Ghandi needs help.

[andrewlt]

Yes, each city gives +1 unhappiness and each point of population gives +1 as well. That means at 2 citizens for a city, Gandhi starts breaking even. He gets less unhappiness from then on.

Assuming the same thing happens to the pre-courthouse annexed city, Gandhi breaks even at size 6, I believe.

 

[effexop]

Thank you for just describing in painful detail what happens to me EVERY FUC@KING TIME I play this game. 1 computer is able to devour all the USELESS others until it has such a absurd tech lead that it gets artillery. Not only is artillery a singular death sentence but the comps can INSTANTLY purchase them when you try to invade. The 1 super civ always has a good 10k sitting in their bloated bank accounts to artillery purchases are pretty easy.

From what I've been reading the only reliable way to win this game is to take advantage of the computers retardation early game and follow a military path to victory every time. Forget diplomacy as you cant win against the mega monster that pops up from the AI being too stupid to defend themselves properly.

This is a recurrent pattern. If you are on pangea you have to act quick, when you see that an AI is eating all the others, prepare to fight it up, or it will become

invincible with artillery. Artillery is the most OP thing the AI can have, because not only it has 3 range, but also indirect fire. Find a time where it is still waging war with someone and strike quick. I was able to do this against the super iroquois who had 2/3 of the map, while i was trying for culture victory. Got some idle Great scientists, bulbteched replaceable parts, and stormed his rifles with infantry. After some bloody fights where hundreds of waves of rifleman charged into my columns of infantry, the AI collapsed, and left all their cities undefedend, with an occasional unit appearing just to get murdered by my ranged units. I took all of its territory, and liberated so many City states and civs that I went for a diplo victory instead.

On continents it might be harder to do this, but always try and check the strongest ai.

 

[Impala]

Ghandi is my favorite to use. I have no clue what you are talking about. He's awesome!

 

[cephalo]

Wait a minute, I just built the forbidden palace, and my unhappiness due to city number went from 20 to 15.(5 cities currently) That is not the advertised 50% reduction. I don't get how some of you are getting rid of the city unhappiness completely.

(this is a new game, I have my own island this time!)

 

[Thalassicus]

So if it's 1 per city, and 1 per population, then with 10 cities of average size 15, Ghandi's traits provide a net of 55! Is this right? I'm definitely going to play him for my next domination game. I had about that mix of cities and population on my continent in my last game.

The Bollywood achievement and wording of the trait make it seem like he's a small-empire guy, but it appears he's neither a small nor large empire focus, just big happiness bonus.

 

[the343danny]

Yeah its possible. I had an immortal game with him and luckily landed right in South America isolated only with city states nearby. I only used 3 cities, and won the game. Though honestly I was lucky because right below Panama was a mountain and right above it was a city state which never got conquered, so I was able to never go to war, and only built 2 scouts in the entire game + 3 workers as my units. You can go for the culture victory which I did or the diplo victory which I couldve gone and probably wouldve let me win like 50 turns earlier but I wanted culture.

My happiness was in the 90s thanks to my UA only with 1 resource trade with Persia. Delhi was such a monster (at 38 population IIRC) that even though my other cities were both 23, I had the worlds highest population, despite having a Germany with 3/4 of the old world.

 

[King of Spades]

Wait a minute, I just built the forbidden palace, and my unhappiness due to city number went from 20 to 15.(5 cities currently) That is not the advertised 50% reduction.

Well, the reduction applies to unhappiness from number of cities, so if you have 5 cities, you should have 10 unhappy because of the cities -50%, plus 10 from your population.

 

[Cyberian]

Wait a minute, I just built the forbidden palace, and my unhappiness due to city number went from 20 to 15.(5 cities currently) That is not the advertised 50% reduction. I don't get how some of you are getting rid of the city unhappiness completely.

(this is a new game, I have my own island this time!)

You were playing as Ghandi right?

Because in my game (if I remember it correctly) My Unhappiness from number of cities dropped to Half once I got the forbidden palace and dropped to Zero with order tech.

So I bet Its the following:

Base Unhappiness per City
-50% Forbidden Palace
-50% Planned Economy
+100% India

So Ghandi with both traits still has the normal unhappiness applied. As most realized later empires have 60-95% of their unhappiness from population anyway so Indias UA is really good but you have to be careful how you do early expansion.

 

[bhavv]

Population unhappiness is usually greater than number of cities unhappiness, so India does have an advantage.

 

[Ahriman]

Wait a minute, I just built the forbidden palace, and my unhappiness due to city number went from 20 to 15.(5 cities currently) That is not the advertised 50% reduction. I don't get how some of you are getting rid of the city unhappiness completely.

(this is a new game, I have my own island this time!)

I think some bonuses are additive, some are multiplicative. And its not clear which are which.

My guess is that with 5 cities, you have:

(5*2)*(1+(1-0.5)) = 15
ie with -50% you go from a net of 200% down to a net of 50%.

Most are multiplicative though. So I'm guessing that two bonuses which both reduced unhappiness from cities by 50% then you'd end up with 25% net effect (ie 0.5 unhappiness per city).

 

[Morthis]

I've found India to have a massive advantage in most games. By the end of my last game I had something like 28 from number of cities (actually half from forbidden palace, but 28 base) and 50 from population. That's a free 36 , a huge bonus. I was able to keep my empire happy without the need for happiness buildings at all.

My strategy with Gandhi has been to grab a couple of maritime city states as allies. This encourages the cities to grow large, playing to Gandhi's strength, allowing the cities to produce more hammers/gold, and of course getting free luxury resources as well for more .

 

[DuseCutter]

So far I'm doing fine on Prince with four cities as the Aztecs. I'm going for a cultural victory and I think I'm on pace to win it but I'm not sure. I'm at perpetual war with Ceasar on my Eastern border since he's trying to swallow up the continent. I've liberated one City-State but I don't have enough cash to keep them allied anymore. It's kind of fun to just be sitting there at war for ages gaining culture as I destroy his units. If I wasn't at war I think it would be pretty boring. I feel like victory is in the balance which is fun.

Luckily, Russia and Greece are pretty evenly matched on my western border so I've only had to defend one side. I note the comments about artillery and will be beelining there as soon as I can get to the other continent. I need trading partners so I can grow. My land is mostly plains so it is hard to grow and my happiness cap is so low I can't grow anyway even if I wanted to.

I've been able to defend my empire pretty well with roads and a handful of units. If the AI was smarter I'd be toast for sure. I'm walking the line. For fun I culture bombed near one of his cities just to make sure he stays good and mad. I need culture from his unit's deaths. Next I will liberate one of his culture based CS and sue for peace. 10 turns later I'll beat on him again.

So yes, I think it is possible to win with a small empire. And as for Ghandi... both times I've played he's only had one city and it was conquered both times. So most likely his trait is great in a player's hand but so far he's stunk as the AI. Small sample sizes not-withstanding.

 

[budweiser]

Playing Prince standard continents. I chose India for a more 'relaxing' game.

Founded 4 total cities spaced about 6 tiles apart right off quick to claim land. Ended up right next door to Rome. Aggressively purchased tiles toward Caesar to claim my 3 tile city radius and deny him; then said sorry all the time. Even bombed him twice. Made allies with 2 seafarers as mentioned above. Founded 1 more city to claim marble. I found you can work the Rock of Gibraltar tile.

Ceaser took all of Americas land.

Around 1530AD, 5 of my knights attacked Ceaser and charged Rome taking it with out seige. Then charged a second city. For the price of 1 Knight, I took out the Roman civ. He made peace, gave me about 6 Amercain cities. Now happiness is at -108! I chose to raise the cities and saved the game. Not sure what will happen now.

One more thing. Monty is my other neighbor. He was attacking one of my allied city states and I was able to make him back down. I demanded and then moved 4 War Elephants to the scene of conflict. Even though he had about twice the unit count in th earea that I could see, he quickly gave in and stopped the attack before I had to declare war.

 

[cephalo]

Ok, I have a quick strategy question. I want to go for a cultural victory. I have an island with 5 cities and have so far hidden from the world until the renaissance era. My military should be able to repel any attacks, I expect to get artillery two techs away.

Now that I've begun to explore a bit, I found a nearby uninhabited island with lots of food and ivory which I don't currently have. It's so tempting to settle on, but will that actually harm my chances for a cultural victory?

 

[DuseCutter]

Ok, I have a quick strategy question. I want to go for a cultural victory. I have an island with 5 cities and have so far hidden from the world until the renaissance era. My military should be able to repel any attacks, I expect to get artillery two techs away.

Now that I've begun to explore a bit, I found a nearby uninhabited island with lots of food and ivory which I don't currently have. It's so tempting to settle on, but will that actually harm my chances for a cultural victory?

It will raise the required culture you need to get the next social policy. I don't know if it hurts your chances, but it will take you more turns to win.

 

[budweiser]

Last night I was playing as Siam an Emperor Game, Normal Speed, Large Map, Small Continents 15 Civs (3 more than default).By the end I had 4 cities and another 4 cities. Arabia had swallowed up France, Greece, Germany and Rome and I didn't count but had at least 40 cities. When I mapped out its continent it had only half as many cities and almost a whole era tech lead on me but as it finished off its continent me and my 4 cities over took him in tech. His army was massive but he had no navy and managed to fend him off when he tried to invade me using a mixture of frigates and elephants.

I ended up winning a diplomatic victory and had only 2 more SP to get to unlock Utopia. He had not started the Apollo Program when I won the game. Thats because small cities = more SP = more science AND more gold = even more science. If I can tech 3 eras when someone 5x as large as me can barely tech 2; the OP is simply wrong.

edit: I wasn't even trying to tech hard as I was concentrating on a culture victory and only ended up going for a diplomatic one because it was slightly faster. I had not unlocked any of Rationalism, and if I had I could easily have had another era or two more than him.

Did you consider liberating some of the conquerd nations and giving back the cities? How feasible would that have been?