They missed something

ShakaKhan

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Jan 5, 2015
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I got the impression that the most recent release of the New Leader Pass was the final release of that expansion and likely of this game, and feel that they missed a fun opportunity which would punctuate the game by bringing the series full circle.

With the history of the civilization series being what it has been, there have been great innovations and opportunity for different gameplay introduced in each installment of the game. But there is one feature... one bug... one mishap that has garnered more notoriety to this franchise than any other element of the game. It is simultaneously beloved and hated by the players, the strongest association that gamers who don't play this game have to it, and it's fame has made it a recognizable term to people who aren't even in the gaming community. A meme that predates memes, I'm of course referring to Nuclear Gandhi.

For anyone unfamiliar, the unsubstantiated urban legend is that in the original game (some argue the second game), each leader had a parameter that influenced/controlled their aggression level that was assigned a value between 1-10 (some say 1-12.) Mahatma Gandhi had the lowest possible aggression rating of 1. When the AI changed it's government to democracy late in the game (which was preferred by more peaceful nations like India) it's aggression level would decrease by 2, resulting in Gandhi's aggression rating being -1. But that value was stored as an 8-bit unsigned integer variable that could only range from 0-255 (two to the eighth power minus one) and couldn't be negative, so it changed his aggression rating to 255. Note that this wasn't just the max level but twenty-five times the normal max level. Also note that the tech tree had the advent of democracy relatively close to the advent of nuclear weapons. Consequently, AI Gandhi's India would radically change from the least threatening pacifist in the game to indiscriminately declaring war and dropping nukes on anyone and everyone in range. Up until the release of Civ5, most felt that Gandhi was still programmed to be a nuclear menace but the developers insist this was a misconception. But at the release of Civ5, it became official that the developers (particularly Jon Shafer) intentionally set the AI programming for Gandhi to have values of "make nukes" and "use nukes" at the maximum level. Now in Civ6 with its secret agenda mechanic, Gandhi has a 1st level agenda of "peacekeeper" but (supposedly) has a much higher chance of having one of his secret agendas be "nuke happy."

What fascinates me the most about this meme isn't the hysterical portrayal of a man who's name is synonymous with peace, who protested through civil disobedience, being characterized as the man who has become death and destroyer of worlds, it's the radical Superman-3-esque late game change from ultimate pacifist to global killer. It was almost as if there were two different people, or better stated an Alternate Persona... And huh, those are a thing now.

So that's what I want/wanted to see and was kind of expecting it. The original Gandhi would be renamed "Pacifist Gandhi" or something similar and remained the same (maybe a bit of a buff? That +5 faith per met civ that has founded a religion isn't much and Alexander is immune to war weariness. As some leaders have unique units that are specific to them instead of their nation, I'd love to see Pacifist Gandhi have a unique civilian unit that helps increase his yields (for balance) and increases the penalty for being at war with him (for historically-related relevance), which also calls back to a previous iteration of the game, Civ4 India having the only unique civilian unit.) And then we have the alternate persona, Thermonuclear Gandhi.

Thermonuclear Gandhi (or if the devs can have a sense of humor about themselves, just go ahead and call him "Bugged Gandhi") has an ability "Oppenheimer's Fear" which allows Gandhi the ability to make nukes faster and in larger numbers - I propose he can faith-purchase nukes for X faith (500? 1000? 2500? escalating cost?) and to remove the restriction of the amount of nukes you have being limited to the amount of uranium in your lands, as well as the steep maintenance cost by giving him the new caveat that started with Byzantium and now shared by Lincoln - "nukes purchased through faith have no maintenance cost or resource consumption." His agenda is obviously that he makes nukes, but more importantly that he "likes civs who USE nukes (not "have" but "use" nukes) and dislikes civs that have nuclear weapons stored and not being used. Possibly the best part is his leader quotes, which I recommend having done in a Canadian or American accent and in English as this persona was created in North America.

Agenda Approval - "Ah yes. Let's watch the world burn!"
Agenda Disapproval - "Come on! You know you want to."
Attacked - "So you fight with blades and guns? Here, let me show you something."
DoWing - "If we don't end this quickly, you're gonna need a bigger boat."
Defeated - "That's okay. I have a feeling we're all going to be together again soon."
Greeting - "India extends her hospitality to you. Don't mind the Geiger counter."
 
I don't see a point in a separate nuke Gandhi persona considering he's 75% likely to have the Nuke Happy hidden agenda in the first place.
 
I don't see a point in a separate nuke Gandhi persona considering he's 75% likely to have the Nuke Happy hidden agenda in the first place.
Except that the leader agenda mechanic has absolutely no effect when the player is playing as that leader, unless they opt to for role playing purposes. When choosing which civ to play, I weigh out their leader abilities, civ ability, unique unit and unique infrastructure and disregard the leader agenda. And with one of the biggest gripes about the Leader Pass being that its not creative and uninspired and deservedly so (Wu Zetian is a less interesting BQ Catherine, Harald is a poor man's Matthias, Elizabeth is a downgraded Joao, Lincoln's IZ unit printer is derivative of Byzantium's unit printing Hippodromes, and Tokugawa/Yongle have the same yield bonus with different sources of multipliers), however no civ has, or to my recollection has ever had, a bonus to building, using, or maintaining nukes.

Plus there's the (reasonable) difficulty in acquiring and using nukes. It requires one of the most advanced technologies, is the only non-religious unit that requires a mini-wonder to be completed in addition to unlocking the technology, requires one of the scarcest resources in the game and consumes one copy of that resource until activated, and has the highest maintenance cost of any unit, all for a single use effect. But with the graphic display being so satisfying, it would be a welcome addition to have a civ that was a nuke specialist. Labeling any other person in history as "the nuker" would result in backlash from supporters of that person, whoever it may be, but the odd history of this game started by Tunafish's rage-meme makes it comically appropriate for Gandhi to be Mr. Nukem.

And that's just the gameplay mechanics side of the argument. There's also the fact that people play video games because you can do things you can't (or really really shouldn't) do IRL: people play Grand Theft Auto because you can't walk down the street shooting people in the face. As for civvers, we like to play a game where we rule an empire and interact with other rulers, and when they piss us off we want to drop nukes on them. As it's a loose correlation to real-world diplomacy, the act of dropping nukes on other empires has catastrophic real world consequences that we hope not to see. And again, with civs having bonuses towards faith or happiness or production or just about every other element of the game, no civ has or has ever had a bonus to nuclear warfare. And sure, any civ can build a nuke and launching it is always an option, but we've never had one with bonuses that help them nuke or benefit from nuking.
 
Except that the leader agenda mechanic has absolutely no effect when the player is playing as that leader, unless they opt to for role playing purposes. When choosing which civ to play, I weigh out their leader abilities, civ ability, unique unit and unique infrastructure and disregard the leader agenda. And with one of the biggest gripes about the Leader Pass being that its not creative and uninspired and deservedly so (Wu Zetian is a less interesting BQ Catherine, Harald is a poor man's Matthias, Elizabeth is a downgraded Joao, Lincoln's IZ unit printer is derivative of Byzantium's unit printing Hippodromes, and Tokugawa/Yongle have the same yield bonus with different sources of multipliers), however no civ has, or to my recollection has ever had, a bonus to building, using, or maintaining nukes.
Actually, Wu Zetian is an upgraded Black Queen Catherine. :p

Still I don't see any reasonable rationale to pick this Gandhi, even over normal Gandhi. He wouldn't even have any bonuses until you reach the Atomic Age, unless you want him to unlock uranium and Manhattan Project earlier. Besides, if you want to choose a leader or civ to use nukes why not use a more historically accurate leader for America or Russia? Not that I personally care for that either.
 
Does the AI even use nukes in CIV VI? I've never seen it happen once.
I got nuked a couple times in a game but the way it happened made me think it was a bug since the AI kept nuking the same city.
 
I've seen the same city repeatedly get nuked in Civ 5 (strangely enough, one I captured from them). And never in Civ 6, although I've only played like 10-12 games to the end.
Not sure how the AIs programming really works.
 
it would be amusing if they had done that.

I do like to save Ghandi for last, and nuke every single one of his cities (well, the whole planets, but him in particular),
the turn before I comple the SV :)

If he's too close at start, well... he becomes part of my empire, and resistance is futile and fatal.
:D
 
Simply another case of having gone six generation of Civ VI with no reinvention of how to achieve victory. People finish too early when they learn the path to victories involve repeating the same acts over and over. Simply spam the needed districts, spam the needed city projects,, spam troops to attack. It might be nice to incorporate some leader or civ goals that have to be accomplished. Can't even win a dom victory if they aren't achieved.
 
Nuclear Gandhi is sort of fun as a meme, but I don't think it's something that should be explicitly drawn attention to and added upon. That he is more likely to have the Nuke Happy agenda is a perfect nod to give him that meme of an ability, but not like overtly putting it out in the open where he has that all the time, or that it shows up every time you meet him. Although even that gets a little cringe - if he's back in 7, I would arguably rather his ability explicitly forbid him from using nukes, and maybe you play with the text "It would be a serious error in programming for me to ever consider using a nuclear weapon" or something like that. Similar to them having Julius Caesar list Brutus amongst his friends, it references something without being like over the top about it.
 
Nuclear Gandhi is sort of fun as a meme, but I don't think it's something that should be explicitly drawn attention to and added upon. That he is more likely to have the Nuke Happy agenda is a perfect nod to give him that meme of an ability, but not like overtly putting it out in the open where he has that all the time, or that it shows up every time you meet him. Although even that gets a little cringe - if he's back in 7, I would arguably rather his ability explicitly forbid him from using nukes, and maybe you play with the text "It would be a serious error in programming for me to ever consider using a nuclear weapon" or something like that. Similar to them having Julius Caesar list Brutus amongst his friends, it references something without being like over the top about it.
He also currently says "Having a weapon is very different from actually using it" which I also feel like it's a subtle reference to storing nuclear weapons, yet it's his Peacekeeper agenda approval line.
 
Nuclear Gandhi is sort of fun as a meme, but I don't think it's something that should be explicitly drawn attention to and added upon. That he is more likely to have the Nuke Happy agenda is a perfect nod to give him that meme of an ability, but not like overtly putting it out in the open where he has that all the time, or that it shows up every time you meet him. Although even that gets a little cringe - if he's back in 7, I would arguably rather his ability explicitly forbid him from using nukes, and maybe you play with the text "It would be a serious error in programming for me to ever consider using a nuclear weapon" or something like that. Similar to them having Julius Caesar list Brutus amongst his friends, it references something without being like over the top about it.
Of course, the REAL leader of India whose last name was Gandhi (but unrelated by blood or marriage to the Mahatma) whose words were REALLY backed by Nuclear Weapons whose appeared in a Civ iteration, officially, was Indira Gandhi in Civ2. Note, though, since it has been pointed out that recently-dead leaders are a problem, Indira Gandhi is the civ leader to OFFICIALLY appear in a Civ iteration whose date of death is most recent...
 
True; Indira Gandhi died in 1984. Mao appeared as the leader of China in Civ3 and Civ4, but he died in 1976. De Gaulle appeared in Civ4, though he died in 1970. Churchill appeared in Civ4, after dying in 1965. Haile Selassie appeared in Civ5, though he died in 1975.
 
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