Tips for playing India
- Thread starter mike3640
- Start date
adwcta
King
go 3 cities, then, if there's still a good spot left, get a 4th city. basically, you should be expanding as India whenever you have the happiness and the space. more tall cities = better, and India's UB essentially gives you a free great work each time you make a new city. that being said, there's also no need to focus on expanding past the beginning stages, and I wouldn't do it if it may upset your neighbors. getting and keeping swords to ploughshares going is far more important. you'll have a ton of grasslands, so any +% growth is much better than straight up +food (which you can supplement with trade routes in any case).
unique ability affects puppets the same way.
unique ability affects puppets the same way.
India is meant to be played tall, so I would prioritize Tradition, growth and peaceful victory types, number of cities 3-4. You should have great science and lots of specialist and great people, maybe build a lot of academies. Place some forts on borders, build defensive buildings (their UB is defensive and gives +2 tourism) and wonders. You can raze and pillage enemies if they bother you to get some gold or Great Works.
If you try to go wide, you will get quite a lot of unhappiness for every new city, it is (or at least it was) possible to expand if you have high enough population in new cities to offset the penalty. Not sure anymore, if you feel like experimenting you can try it, otherwise play tall.
If you try to go wide, you will get quite a lot of unhappiness for every new city, it is (or at least it was) possible to expand if you have high enough population in new cities to offset the penalty. Not sure anymore, if you feel like experimenting you can try it, otherwise play tall.
India gets 7 happiness for every city it founds as opposed to 4 for normal Civs. Happiness for normal cities (not the capital) equalizes at size 6. However, this is actually not the full picture.
For every two pop over 6, India gets 1 extra happiness. In addition, India always gets a 1 every 2 size bonus in the capital, or 1/4 advantage compared to other Civs if both have Monarchy.
What does this all mean?
Well, this essentially means that an India founding a 4th city when its cities are 10, 8, and 6 is at happiness parity with a normal Civ. This sort of city size should be trvial to get quickly, and desirable for any Civ. Past this point, India should always be at a happiness advantage, unless you spam a ridiculous number of trash cities for some reason (don't do that).
At core city sizes 20, 16, and 16, India should be at +13 happiness relative to normal Civs, allowing happiness parity for 4 additional cities, assuming they are all size 1.
So. The way to leverage this is to grow, grow, grow your cities, and space them wide, with an emphasis on gaining tiles to work.
Once your happiness is booming, it can be advantageous for India to actually war to gain more lands and more large cities. In that sense, it's a warlike civ for the latter part of the game.
For every two pop over 6, India gets 1 extra happiness. In addition, India always gets a 1 every 2 size bonus in the capital, or 1/4 advantage compared to other Civs if both have Monarchy.
What does this all mean?
Well, this essentially means that an India founding a 4th city when its cities are 10, 8, and 6 is at happiness parity with a normal Civ. This sort of city size should be trvial to get quickly, and desirable for any Civ. Past this point, India should always be at a happiness advantage, unless you spam a ridiculous number of trash cities for some reason (don't do that).
At core city sizes 20, 16, and 16, India should be at +13 happiness relative to normal Civs, allowing happiness parity for 4 additional cities, assuming they are all size 1.
So. The way to leverage this is to grow, grow, grow your cities, and space them wide, with an emphasis on gaining tiles to work.
Once your happiness is booming, it can be advantageous for India to actually war to gain more lands and more large cities. In that sense, it's a warlike civ for the latter part of the game.
And here I thought the best way to play India was to not play them at all.
Way to pillage an era obsoleted horse.
3-5 cities (depending on quality of starting spots), don't expand too early, and you shouldn't have to worry about happiness the whole game. Settle on grassland/jungle with rivers, wheat, bananas etc as much as possible to aid growth, though obviously you'll also need some hill tiles and luxuries for production and happiness respectively.
Full Tradition is a no-brainer, Freedom also pretty much. Avoid war if you can help it, unless there's a specific situation early on you feel you may be able to take advantage of with your War Elephants combined with Cats/CBs. I'd suggest war only if there a specific area of juicy looking grasslands that you'd like to grab from a neighbour - obviously you'll want as fertile an area to live in as possible. Puppet cities aren't ideal as you really want to focus your cities for growth as much as you can.
Tech-wise Civil Service becomes one of your most important tech beelines for the farm food bonus, assuming you've found some nice fresh water lands.
Not sure if you're playing the expansions, but if on BNW I'd suggest you dip into Piety early if you want a religion (as you'll want Tithe ideally to help solve any money worries), then it's Aesthetics all the way for a Culture victory. I tend to hold off building Walls and Mughal Forts in my cities until I get Flight (for the MF Tourism bonuses) then spam them everywhere as it typically only takes 3-4 turns to get them both up.
I like India a lot in BNW, never really understood the general ill-feeling towards them from the forums TBH. Last game (King) I had 5 cities with pops between 20 and 45 each and ended up with 30-40 happiness without trying, without the UA this would have had me constantly struggling with unhappiness.
Full Tradition is a no-brainer, Freedom also pretty much. Avoid war if you can help it, unless there's a specific situation early on you feel you may be able to take advantage of with your War Elephants combined with Cats/CBs. I'd suggest war only if there a specific area of juicy looking grasslands that you'd like to grab from a neighbour - obviously you'll want as fertile an area to live in as possible. Puppet cities aren't ideal as you really want to focus your cities for growth as much as you can.
Tech-wise Civil Service becomes one of your most important tech beelines for the farm food bonus, assuming you've found some nice fresh water lands.
Not sure if you're playing the expansions, but if on BNW I'd suggest you dip into Piety early if you want a religion (as you'll want Tithe ideally to help solve any money worries), then it's Aesthetics all the way for a Culture victory. I tend to hold off building Walls and Mughal Forts in my cities until I get Flight (for the MF Tourism bonuses) then spam them everywhere as it typically only takes 3-4 turns to get them both up.
I like India a lot in BNW, never really understood the general ill-feeling towards them from the forums TBH. Last game (King) I had 5 cities with pops between 20 and 45 each and ended up with 30-40 happiness without trying, without the UA this would have had me constantly struggling with unhappiness.
India is supposed to be played wide not tall. Get 4 cities and NC up. Work through Tradition and maybe Piety if you want a religion. Then go mad with your expansion. Focus on happiness buildings to cope with the hit for founding new cities and once you have done that nothing will stop you. Prioritise aqueducts and workers and you'll have loads of huge cities.
Monthar
Deity
MadDjinn explains the UA very well in the first video of his new LP. Here's the thread which has the link to the video in it.http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=506108
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