Not Understanding The Strategic Advantage of Using India (Gandhi) As a Civ

[dexters]

India is a hard Civ to play because the UA doesn't really show its strength until you get deep in the tech tree.
They also have a fairly ho-hum UB and I think the UU slot should have been another building or tile improvement.

It is a decent one to play once you're used to limiting yourself to 4 or fewer cities for OCC and cultural wins.

Like most tall strats though, you need good terrain and CS bonuses to power you through most games.

 

[JohnYoga]

With India, every city with a low population hurts your happiness, while every city with a large population gives you more happiness. I generally like big empires myself, but with India, you need to hold back, because 10 cities with 5 pop will give you more unhappiness than 5 cities with 10 pop, when compared to any other civ.

That's also why it's a good war UA. When you take a city, you'll get more unhappiness from the city being in your empire, but you'll get less due to the pop, and when you take cities mid to late game, they can often make an immediate impact to your empire, if you can swallow the happiness problems that can come with it, and India can better than anyone else.

Yet another great piece of insight that I can use, Rooftrellen.

Thank you, and thanks to the others who have responded to this thread. I used to play Co-op with my sister, brother-in-law and Dad for hours on end (Civ 4, then, the expansions). We stopped playing MP after at least 10 games went out of sych on us in the late game. Maybe for another thread: I hope the late game out of sync errors from MP has been solved with Civ V.

Regards,

Marc

 

[Cannes]

If this ability was -75% unhappy per citizen and +25% unhappy for each city then it would be nicer.

Read incredibly OP

I easily get +500 happiness per turn playing as India on huge maps, with big empires. Their traits are a very very powerful happiness boost.

 

[Irkalla]

If this ability was -75% unhappy per citizen and +25% unhappy for each city then it would be nicer.

Because getting a city to size 7 is HARD.

 

[DevilHell]

With India, the start is really hard, but you can go warmonger later on, for example, in the renaissance or in the industrial, specially when you play emperor, immortal or even deity levels, because, the AIs have huge growth bonuses, and so, there are cities with 30 or 40 or 50 pop, that if you capture would be generating 31 unhappiness, whilst if you were another civ you would be generating 53, so there's the advantage..

 

[nokmirt]

Hello Folks,

As stated here: http://www.civfanatics.com/civ5/civilizations

Gandhi/India has the following bias:

Population Growth: Unhappiness from number of Cities doubled, Unhappiness from number of Citizens halved.

This is the only civilization which has a negative bias to using it.

Am I misunderstanding this bias?

Regards,

Marc

I looked at that the other day when I drew him as a random civ. My first thought was am I going to have to stick to 4 cities the whole game? This just did not look fun at all. Civ has always been about creating vast empires. They should make that a possibility for every civ in the game.

Looking at some other posts though, maybe they are interesting to play as. You need to grow you initial cities fast, so decent growth city locations are essential. I expect you'll be doing a lot of city razing, and expanding only to high pop cities.

 

[anandus]

I looked at that the other day when I drew him as a random civ. My first thought was am I going to have to stick to 4 cities the whole game? This just did not look fun at all. Civ has always been about creating vast empires.

I think not even in one in ten of my games I have more than four cities

 

[Alpedar]

1)
India is super powerfull on huge maps, because on large and huge maps, per city is lowered. (IIRC to 1.6 from 2, for ghandhi its 3.2 from 4, so he gains 0.4 more than others)

2)
With city size 5 india have 4+2.5 = 6.5 others have 2+5=7, so breaking point is actually city size 5

From religion its not so hard to gain at least 3 hap. per city (and max possible 6, but lets not assume everything works perfect) and to be pesimistic, lets assume thay are all local.

with colosseum +2 and theather +3 its total 8 local city at 8 pop uses all 8 local hapiness and costs 4+8*0.5 = 8 unhapiness.

social policies: Aristocracy (+1 with pop 10) allows for 2 more pop

Mertocracy is game changer, because it gives +1 AND reduces per pop to 0.45 so city with size 8 gives 7.6 rounded down to 7 unhap andwith that +1 it means city with size 8 provide net +2 happiness using generaly usefull policy tree.

For good measure add Aristocracy (we want wonders) and Right side of Honor tree (and when at at, add left side too) and india swims in happiness, so it can go wide and tall at once.

Only problem is, land is already grabbed by the time india is ready to expand.

In this analysys I ignored stoneworks, circus and luxury. These allow for even bigger cities and more importantly, to overcome early stages (before theather)

So India is hard early and gets stronger later.

 

[nokmirt]

I think not even in one in ten of my games I have more than four cities

Ok then I will try them next game, after I am done with the Celts.

 

[JohnYoga]

Folks,

Thank you, again, for the wonderful discussion. I am learning from your experiences and insights.

It's funny. our family has played Civ (Civ IV) for so long, that I forget how to properly play the game.

Regards,

Marc

 

[Arachnofiend]

I never understood France as a culture civ. I always like them for expanding rapidly while being able to keep up with culture policy costs as I pursue other victories (Science? Domination? Diplo?)

France is not a culture civ. Think of the UA in sort of the same vein as Ethiopia's UB: The Stele (if used the way intended which is certainly not the only way to use it) is there to give Ethiopia a leg up on founding a pantheon, which can be otherwise really difficult to do. That +2 faith is huge in the early game even though it doesn't really have as lasting of an effect as a faith pantheon like Desert Folklore.

Ancien Regime is the same way, only for wide empires. +2 culture per city means nothing once you are past the initial stages of the game but when you are still setting up it means that you will get through Liberty faster than any of the other wide civs in the game.