Warning on India

timerover51

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This is a warning for all players of all of the Civilization 3 editions: Basic/Vanilla, Play the World, and Conquests. India has a built-in feature to be highly aggressive, especially with nukes. Changing the aggression setting will not do a thing. In India is in the game, Gandhi will be likely to start wars without notice. This was confirmed by Sid Meier that is was intentionally designed into the game.

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!
 
Yeah, I've noticed that India is kind of hyper-aggressive for a non-militaristic civilization (commercial/religious). At least the Aztecs (also hyper-aggressive) are militaristic/agricultural.
 
Yeah, I've noticed that India is kind of hyper-aggressive for a non-militaristic civilization (commercial/religious). At least the Aztecs (also hyper-aggressive) are militaristic/agricultural.
I think that pretty much everyone figures the Aztecs to be aggressive, but the Indians are not thought of that way, at least in the present day.
 
Actually in Civilization III the Indians are the least aggressive possible. The archetype of nuking Indians started accidentally in Civilization I because of an integer overflow (the Indians were so peaceful, that, when adding or subtracting a random amount of 'how aggressive/peaceful is a civilisation' to the default value, could cause the Indians to go beyond a certain threshold which put them all the way back around at the top of 'most aggressive'). Civilization V made Gandhi more likely to build and use nuclear weapons (but he was not made more aggressive), and Civilization VI made Gandhi have an agenda to that end too.

The archetype of warlike Aztecs only started in Civilization IV. In Civilization III, the Aztecs had an aggression value just below the maximum (four out of five), like many other civilisations, and it is the Germans that have the maximum aggression value. In Civilization II, the Aztec AI also isn't coded to be more warlike, I believe, and I do not know how Civilization I handles the AI personality for the Aztecs.
 
The archetype of nuking Indians started accidentally in Civilization I because of an integer overflow (the Indians were so peaceful, that, when adding or subtracting a random amount of 'how aggressive/peaceful is a civilisation' to the default value, could cause the Indians to go beyond a certain threshold which put them all the way back around at the top of 'most aggressive').
Maybe not:
In his biography, Meier addresses the bug and the logic behind how it occurs. The designer bluntly says that the rumor of the negative stat is not true, but made sure to confirm that Gandhi's behavior is indeed a bug. Meier states that why Gandhi is so prone to war is just "one of those mysteries that it's almost fun to keep mysterious." While this confirmation from Meier is likely the ending for the gaming anecdote, it isn't exactly surprising. Last year Kevin Schultz, a marketing manager at Firaxis Games, speculated the validity of the bug, opening up questions for players to start exploring the rumor.

 
In Civ3, I haven't seen any indication that India is aggressive; the bug in Civ1 is not present in Civ3, or at least I haven't seen any evidence of it in 20 years.

Based on the gamerant.com excerpt, I think Sid is just being coy about how the bug works, if anything trying to perpetuate the legend - "it's almost fun to keep mysterious." The traditional mathematical underflow explanation makes a lot of sense, and is consistent with his statement that "the negative stat is not true". They way it would work is that the aggression is an 8-bit unsigned integer, with possible values from 0 through 255 (inclusive). The aggression levels were likely either 0-4 or 1-5 by default, and in various places in the code there were checks of aggression, such as:

Code:
if (civ.aggression > 3)
    build nuke
end if

Or

Code:
chanceOfBuildingNuke = 2 * civ.aggression
chanceOfDeclaringWar = 3 * civ.aggression

These would be straightforward ways to make an aggressive civ be more likely to declare war or build a nuke, and to have a minimum aggression level required for building nukes.

If there were modifiers that lowered aggression levels based on player actions or other happenings in the game, the original 0-4 or 1-5 range could be exceeded. Let's say you refused a tribute demand from a civ with aggression 5, maybe that bumps their aggression up to 6 and makes them more likely to declare war.

Conversely, if Gandhi was the lowest-aggression civ with a rating of 0 on a 0-4 scale, and making peace causes aggression to (perhaps temporarily) drop by 2, then his aggression would go to -2, but because the value can only be in the range 0-255, underflow happens, and his aggression gets set to 254.

At this point he would be above any threshold for building nukes, and if there were blocks like the second code block above where aggression is a multiplier on certain actions, his likelihood of taking those actions would be off the charts.

The negative stat is indeed not true, the bug is because the stat is a much higher positive value than anyone ever anticipated.

This is also the sort of bug that would be easy to create as a programmer. The people writing the code that uses aggression to impact AI behavior assume it's in a 0-4 or 1-5 range, and the people writing the code that modifies the aggression forget that it's a signed byte and not an unsigned one (which allows negatives). What's more surprising is that it wasn't caught in QA testing, but it may have been a last-minute change, and it might take a few games to notice the change, especially since it doesn't mean Gandhi conquers the world every time, he might wind up being conquered himself far more often.

Sid noticeably didn't put forward any alternative explanation, so by Occam's razor I'm going to say most likely the traditional explanation is correct, and it's just a good way to keep people talking about it to claim that isn't the case and cite a minor technical oversight (the existence of negative values) in some explanations of it.
 
Quintillus, my experience with India is that if they are in the game, and I come in contact with them, Gandhi declares war unless I have a big military advantage, and he might even then. That is regardless of how far away I might be. Therefore, I beg to differ with you. If you have not had problems with India, I would consider you fortunate.
 
I do suspect that is confirmation bias, unless you suspect that there is a hidden function in the game's engine that checks on the name India or Gandhi or such? Because in the editor, the Indians are set to be peaceful. You could test this, I suppose, by creating a completely new civilisation but calling it India led by Gandhi, and see if your experience is the same.
 
Quintillus, my experience with India is that if they are in the game, and I come in contact with them, Gandhi declares war unless I have a big military advantage, and he might even then. That is regardless of how far away I might be. Therefore, I beg to differ with you. If you have not had problems with India, I would consider you fortunate.
When was the last time you played any of the versions you mentioned without modding or altering the rules?
 
India has been a headache since I started playing the game back somewhere on the Atari version of the basic game. That was before I ever started doing any editing to the game. It has continued to be a headache. This include game scenarios produced by other individuals.

I fail to see why editing the yields of natural resources and terrain, and changing unit values, would have any affect on India's hostility factor. I do not add units, nor buildings, although I do change what the buildings, mainly Wonders do, and how long they last. I also play the game for fun, not to see if I can beat the computer at higher and higher levels. I know that the game is set up to cheat periodically, and that the computer civilizations know where every future resource is going to be. I simply assume that if I have India in the game, I will be at war sooner rather than later, and plan accordingly. If on one of my archipelago maps, India gets an island all to itself, preferably separated by a lot of Ocean from any other player, to keep from trading Technologies. Then Gandhi can stew in his own juices for a while.
 
If on one of my archipelago maps, India gets an island all to itself, preferably separated by a lot of Ocean from any other player, to keep from trading Technologies. Then Gandhi can stew in his own juices for a while.
Because of the way the game is programmed, that may actually make Gandhi more aggressive! :lol:

Any AI-controlled Civ3 tribe isolated on an inaccessible island (i.e. with no prospect of fighting any wars) will still build (attack-)units — and will continue to do so even after they have gone broke from unit-maintenance and are being forced to demolish buildings/ disband one unit per turn. This is increasingly noticeable with increasing difficulty levels.

So when they finally make contact with the outside world, they may/will have amassed a very large stack of unused (likely mostly obsolete) units compared to the number of towns they've founded, leading them to "think" that they have a military advantage over their contact(s), which will in and of itself tend to make that tribe (much) more belligerent.
 
Because of the way the game is programmed, that may actually make Gandhi more aggressive! :lol:

Any AI-controlled Civ3 tribe isolated on an inaccessible island (i.e. with no prospect of fighting any wars) will still build (attack-)units — and will continue to do so even after they have gone broke from unit-maintenance and are being forced to demolish buildings/ disband one unit per turn. This is increasingly noticeable with increasing difficulty levels.

So when they finally make contact with the outside world, they may/will have amassed a very large stack of unused (likely mostly obsolete) units compared to the number of towns they've founded, leading them to "think" that they have a military advantage over their contact(s), which will in and of itself tend to make that tribe (much) more belligerent.
Well, as long as he has no Iron or Elephants to work with, the odds are in my favor, assuming that I oblige him by landing on his island. Transporting a landing force is a bit tedious.
 
Because of the way the game is programmed, that may actually make Gandhi more aggressive! :lol:

Any AI-controlled Civ3 tribe isolated on an inaccessible island (i.e. with no prospect of fighting any wars) will still build (attack-)units — and will continue to do so even after they have gone broke from unit-maintenance and are being forced to demolish buildings/ disband one unit per turn. This is increasingly noticeable with increasing difficulty levels.

So when they finally make contact with the outside world, they may/will have amassed a very large stack of unused (likely mostly obsolete) units compared to the number of towns they've founded, leading them to "think" that they have a military advantage over their contact(s), which will in and of itself tend to make that tribe (much) more belligerent.
And how. In a failed Demigod attempt years ago on an uncharacteristically Large Map I tried picking up some real estate on the cheap by invading a moderately sized isolated island with Cavs, Cannon and Muskets. Got my butt handed to me by swarms of Ancient and early Middle Age units. Only recourse was to salvage some survivors. A most chastening experience..
 
I usually find Ghandi in Civ3 a softy and often try and build alliances with him because he seems less inclined to break them. Again, subjectively from my experience Germany mentioned above seems the most aggro along with the Hittites (who are almost suicidal in their bloodlust). I really miss the old Civ1 seemingky max hostility of Stalin and Khan and so when I resume playing I'll ramp up the difficulty on the latter (I don't like if Catherine the Great was a warmonger).

If there was one criticism I'd make of Civ3 it would be that the Civs don't seem distinct enough in terms of levels of aggression. Only the Hittites, who will declare war and break peace treaties from positions of weakness, ever struck me as remotely distinct.
 
I fail to see why editing the yields of natural resources and terrain, and changing unit values, would have any affect on India's hostility factor.

Well, as long as he has no Iron or Elephants to work with, the odds are in my favor, assuming that I oblige him by landing on his island.

So you modded the game so that elephants were needed to build war elephants? But, then if Gandhi doesn't have elephants, he'll have to go to acquire those elephants, which could be the reason for war. You've also suggested to keep iron and elephants away from India, which I guess implies that you don't trade with India much or gift them resources or gold or maps. If the AIs have a worse attitude towards you, they become more likely to declare war.

That said, in the unmodded game, war elephants have an extra hitpoint, so India can easily have a greater strength than many other tribes. But, that time period isn't the entire game, so making any inference about India as a whole would be lacking.
 
So you modded the game so that elephants were needed to build war elephants? But, then if Gandhi doesn't have elephants, he'll have to go to acquire those elephants, which could be the reason for war. You've also suggested to keep iron and elephants away from India, which I guess implies that you don't trade with India much or gift them resources or gold or maps. If the AIs have a worse attitude towards you, they become more likely to declare war.

That said, in the unmodded game, war elephants have an extra hitpoint, so India can easily have a greater strength than many other tribes. But, that time period isn't the entire game, so making any inference about India as a whole would be lacking.
In the unmodified game, Knights require both Horses and Iron in order to be built. War elephants, on the other hand, do not have any requirements for resources. That never impressed me as correct, so I changed it. You are correct that I do not trade with the AI a lot except for maps.
 
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