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Great article. My favorite part was learning a new word: grognard! Makes me sad that I only got into the series at Civ5, which I enjoyed every bit of except fo

by weerd 9y ago

Great article. My favorite part was learning a new word: grognard! Makes me sad that I only got into the series at Civ5, which I enjoyed every bit of except for the ultra creepy 3D models of the leaders.... totally unnecessary in this kind of game. Also it's ridiculous to see Gandhi pop up and declare war on you. It was a good example of a typically superfluous feature tacked on to an otherwise decent piece of software.

DonaldPShimoda 9y ago
> Also it's ridiculous to see Gandhi pop up and declare war on you. Yeah, but it's a staple of the series now. If anything, I think an installment without a warmongering Gandhi would be disappointing! https://kotaku.com/why-gandhi-is-such-an-asshole-in-civilization-1653818245 https://kotaku.com/why-gandhi-is-such-an-asshole-in-civiliza...
- kimar 9y ago
  Thanks for sharing this! Quote from the article: In the original Civilization, it was because of a bug. Each leader in the game had an “aggression” rating, and Gandhi - to best reflect his real-world persona - was given the lowest score possible, a 1, so low that he’d rarely if ever go out of his way to declare war on someone. Only, there was a problem. When a player adopted democracy in Civilization, their aggression would be automatically reduced by 2. Code being code, if Gandhi went democratic his aggression wouldn’t go to -1, it looped back around to the ludicrously high figure of 255, making him as aggressive as a civilization could possibly be.
  - ericmcer 9y ago
    It kinda sucks that nowadays that would be fixed in the next patch and forgotten about as a minor bug in the games history. There was definitely something more artistic about the old software distribution style. Once your creation was given to the world it was able to take on its own life.
    - DonaldPShimoda 9y ago
      I mean, from a gameplay perspective it's absolutely more reasonable for this bug to have been fixed. That said, the best user experience does not always derive from the perfect game. What the developers have to do is compare the experience for a new user (who knows nothing of Gandhi's warmongering history in the Civilization games) to the experience of someone who is familiar with the series and might even expect such behavior. They clearly couldn't keep the old rule in place — that Gandhi suddenly gains the highest aggression value possible is unexpected for new players. Instead, they simply made Gandhi have a slightly elevated aggression — something that new players can handle ("Oh, haha, it's funny because it's Gandhi I guess") and something that old players will recognize. It's a good middle ground. (Note that they have kept around Gandhi's elevated aggression in more recent incarnations, though they have reduced its effect somewhat.) But, again, from a pure gameplay perspective, the bug should have been fixed.
      - eropple 9y ago
        > Note that they have kept around Gandhi's elevated aggression in more recent incarnations, though they have reduced its effect somewhat Kind-of. Civ 6 makes him sneaky and shitty aggressive rather than just straight-out homicidal. This matches my experiences pretty well: https://kotaku.com/gandhi-is-still-an-asshole-in-civilization-vi-1788710568 https://kotaku.com/gandhi-is-still-an-asshole-in-civilizatio...
        kibwen 9y ago
        In Civ 6 the Gandhi AI will actually never declare war on you, AFAIK. For the instance where a human player is controlling Gandhi and declares war, he has a unique cutscene where he lampshades the absurdity of the situation. The Gandhi AI does have an uncharacteristically large chance of "randomly" spawning with the agenda that makes him revere nuclear weapons, as a throwback to Civ 1.
        eropple 9y ago
        I have had Civ 6 Gandhi declare war on me, but only extremely early in the game. Which suggests that, as the Kotaku article indicates, he'll only do so if he won't be warmongering.
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by weerd 9y ago

DonaldPShimoda 9y ago

> Also it's ridiculous to see Gandhi pop up and declare war on you. Yeah, but it's a staple of the series now. If anything, I think an installment without a warmongering Gandhi would be disappointing! https://kotaku.com/why-gandhi-is-such-an-asshole-in-civilization-1653818245 https://kotaku.com/why-gandhi-is-such-an-asshole-in-civiliza...

kimar 9y ago
Thanks for sharing this! Quote from the article: In the original Civilization, it was because of a bug. Each leader in the game had an “aggression” rating, and Gandhi - to best reflect his real-world persona - was given the lowest score possible, a 1, so low that he’d rarely if ever go out of his way to declare war on someone. Only, there was a problem. When a player adopted democracy in Civilization, their aggression would be automatically reduced by 2. Code being code, if Gandhi went democratic his aggression wouldn’t go to -1, it looped back around to the ludicrously high figure of 255, making him as aggressive as a civilization could possibly be.
- ericmcer 9y ago
  It kinda sucks that nowadays that would be fixed in the next patch and forgotten about as a minor bug in the games history. There was definitely something more artistic about the old software distribution style. Once your creation was given to the world it was able to take on its own life.
  - DonaldPShimoda 9y ago
    I mean, from a gameplay perspective it's absolutely more reasonable for this bug to have been fixed. That said, the best user experience does not always derive from the perfect game. What the developers have to do is compare the experience for a new user (who knows nothing of Gandhi's warmongering history in the Civilization games) to the experience of someone who is familiar with the series and might even expect such behavior. They clearly couldn't keep the old rule in place — that Gandhi suddenly gains the highest aggression value possible is unexpected for new players. Instead, they simply made Gandhi have a slightly elevated aggression — something that new players can handle ("Oh, haha, it's funny because it's Gandhi I guess") and something that old players will recognize. It's a good middle ground. (Note that they have kept around Gandhi's elevated aggression in more recent incarnations, though they have reduced its effect somewhat.) But, again, from a pure gameplay perspective, the bug should have been fixed.
    - eropple 9y ago
      > Note that they have kept around Gandhi's elevated aggression in more recent incarnations, though they have reduced its effect somewhat Kind-of. Civ 6 makes him sneaky and shitty aggressive rather than just straight-out homicidal. This matches my experiences pretty well: https://kotaku.com/gandhi-is-still-an-asshole-in-civilization-vi-1788710568 https://kotaku.com/gandhi-is-still-an-asshole-in-civilizatio...
      - kibwen 9y ago
        In Civ 6 the Gandhi AI will actually never declare war on you, AFAIK. For the instance where a human player is controlling Gandhi and declares war, he has a unique cutscene where he lampshades the absurdity of the situation. The Gandhi AI does have an uncharacteristically large chance of "randomly" spawning with the agenda that makes him revere nuclear weapons, as a throwback to Civ 1.
        eropple 9y ago
        I have had Civ 6 Gandhi declare war on me, but only extremely early in the game. Which suggests that, as the Kotaku article indicates, he'll only do so if he won't be warmongering.

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