Trying Ghandi on Immortal - Looking for advice

[MykC]

Hello,

I just completed a game with Babylon on Immortal and decided to try Ghandi. I thought Ghandi would be good because of his trait although his UU (unique unit) and UB (unique building) are garbage.

Outside of getting the Forbidden Palace and the policy in order. If there any thing different I need to do with Ghandi than any other leader doing a rifle/artillery rush?

I should say that I am taking policies as soon as I get them in preparation for the patch and I start with 4 point in honor. I'm not sure where to go next though, complete honor, two points in patronage or a point in freedom.

 

[Paeanblack]

The net effect of Gandhi's UA is that he can purchase happiness with gpt and/or hammers.

To take full advantage of Gandhi's UA, you need food. All else being equal, this means that each city gets at least one farm instead of a tp/mine. You invest those lost gold/hammers, and down the road, you will get more science, hammers, and gold in return.

Ideally, you'd like to have double the population in each city and be done with the UA, but it's not that simple. The exponential food requirements make that far too expensive, so you need to spend your excess happiness settling more cities than you would with another civ...yes India is all about the horizontal growth.

The biggest challenge with India is timing. Because food is worth more to you than to other civs, you incur a bigger penalty with negative happiness. You want to make sure that you are food-neutral when unhappy and working all of your farms when happy. Microing your tiles really pays off with India. This also means your cities need lots of tile options, so you need more workers than other civs or conquer the Pyramids early.


The UU is one of the best in the game. 3 moves, 8 strength at range, NO RESOURCES!, and you can build them while researching Horseback Riding. They are effectively the fastest land unit in the game at the time. Moving long-distance across mixed terrain, they will outrun both scouts and chariots, and they don't need to be cautious with the barbarians.

War Elephants can actually keep up with a Horseman rush and having two of them means you can take out any spears without having to burn an insta-heal on one of the Horsemen. Because they are ranged units that don't need to flee from melee threats, War Elephants gain experience extremely rapidly. You can use them in more combats and they stay relevant longer. Two promoted War Elephants can kill a Longswordsman or a Knight in the open. You don't need to scrap them until Rifles are running around.

 

[neilkaz]

WOW, the post here and also in this thread http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=401638 make it very clear to me that I have less than no clue how to play Ghandi.

 

[Sneaks]

The UU is extremely wonderful in the early game, and combined with your horses, you pretty much get to pretend you are Genghis Khan until rifles. Everything Paean said is more or less spot on. Also, unlike playing as most other civs in ICS, when you are India, you really do not have to worry about letting those first waves of cities grow a bit higher than you usually would. If you have a moment where you are wondering why your GPT seems higher than it usually would be with other civs, the trade route pop thing will be the pleasant surprise.