Zigzagzigal's Guides - India (GS)

India can support large cities with ease, spread their religion efficiently, or even engage in elephant warfare. Here, I detail Indian strategies and counter-strategies - for both Gandhi and Chandragupta.

Introduction

Following this guide requires the Gathering Storm expansion.

It also assumes you have all other Civ 6 content, listed below, though it is not necessary to have these to utilise the key strategies of each civ.

• Pre-Rise and Fall content packs
  
  • Vikings, Poland, Australia, Persia/Macedon, Nubia, Khmer/Indonesia
• Rise and Fall Expansion
  
• New Frontier content packs
  
  • Maya/Grand Colombia, Ethiopia, Byzantium/Gauls, Babylon, Vietnam/Kublai Khan, Portugal

These content packs include exclusive civs, city-states, districts, buildings, wonders, natural wonders, resources, and a disaster, but not core game mechanics - all you need is the base game and the Gathering Storm expansion for those.

Who should govern? The conquerers - those who use force and threat to impose their will upon the world? The tyrants - those who control their lands with an iron fist and no-one but themselves to guide them? The colonists - which see the rich world as a blank canvas, using the pretense of civilization to convert distant lands into their personal factories? Or perhaps the future belongs to the peace-makers; those who face the devastation of war and at last decide to turn the other way.

How to use this guide

This guide is divided into multiple sections explaining how best to use and play against this specific civ.

• The Outline details the mechanics of how the civilization's unique features work and what their start bias is if they have one.
  
• The Victory Skew section describes to what extent the civ (and its individual leaders where applicable) is inclined towards particular victory routes. This is not a rating of its power, but an indicator of the most appropriate route to victory.
  
• Multiple sections for Uniques explain in detail how to use each special bonus of the civilization.
  
• Administration describes some of the most synergistic governments, government buildings, policy cards, age bonuses, pantheons, religious beliefs, wonders, city-states and Great People for the civ. Only the ones with the most synergy with the civ's uniques are mentioned - these are not necessarily the "best" choices when playing as the civ for a given victory route.
  
• Finally, the Counter-Strategies discusses how best to play against the civ, including a consideration of leader agendas if the civ is controlled by a computer.

Note that all costs (production, science, etc.) mentioned within the guide assume a game played on the normal speed settings. To modify these values for other game speeds:

• Online: Divide by 2
  
• Quick: Divide by 1.5
  
• Epic: Multiply by 1.5
  
• Marathon: Multiply by 3

Glossary

Terminology used in this guide and not in-game is explained here.

AoE (Area of Effect) - Bonuses or penalties that affect multiple tiles in a set radius. Positive examples include Factories (which offer production to cities within a 6 tile radius unless they're within range of another building of the same type) and a negative example is nuclear weapons, which cause devastation over a wide radius.

Beelining - Obtaining a technology or civic quickly by only researching it and its prerequisites. Some deviation is allowed in the event that taking a technology or civic off the main track provides some kind of advantage that makes up for that (either a source of extra science/culture or access to something necessary for a eureka or inspiration boost)

CA (Civ Ability) - The unique ability of a civilization, shared by all its leaders.

Compact empires - Civs with cities close together (typically 3-4 tile gaps between city centres). This is useful if you want to make use of districts that gain adjacency bonuses from other districts, or to maximise the potential of area-of-effect bonuses later in the game.

Dispersed empires - Civs with cities that are spread out (typically 5-6 tile gaps between city centres). Civs with unique tile improvements generally favour a more dispersed empire in order to make use of them, as do civs focused on wonder construction.

GPP - Short for Great Person Points. Districts, buildings and wonders generate these points and with enough you can claim a Great Person of the corresponding type.

GWAM - Collective name for Great Writers, Artists and Musicians. All of them can produce Great Works that offer tourism and culture, making them important to anyone seeking a cultural victory.

LA (Leader Ability) - The unique ability of a specific leader. Usually but not always, they tend to be more specific in scope than civ abilities. Some leader abilities come with an associated unique unit or infrastucture.

Prebuilding - Training a unit with the intention of upgrading it to a desired unit later. An example is building Slingers and upgrading them once Archery is unlocked.

Sniping - Targeting a specific city for capture directly, ignoring other enemy cities along the way. Typically used in the context of "capital sniping" - taking a civ's original capital as quickly as possible to contribute towards domination victory without leading to a drawn-out war.

Start bias - The kind of terrain, terrain feature or resource a civilization is more likely to start near. This is typically used for civilizations that have early bonuses dependent on a particular terrain type. There are five tiers of start bias; civs with a tier 1 start bias are placed before civs of tier 2 and so on, increasing their odds of receiving a favourable starting location.

Super-uniques - Unique units that do not replace any others. Examples include India's Varu and Mongolia's Keshigs.

Tall empires - Empires that emphasise city development over expansion, usually resulting in fewer, but bigger, cities.

Uniques - Collective name for civ abilities, leader abilities, unique units, unique buildings, unique districts and unique improvements.

UA (Unique Ability) - A collective name for leader abilities and civ abilities.

UB (Unique Building) - A special building which may only be constructed in the cities of a single civilization, which replaces a normal building and offers a special advantage on top.

UD (Unique District) - A special district which may only be constructed in the cities of a single civilization, which replaces a normal district, costs half as much to build and offers some unique advantages on top.

UI (Unique Improvement) - A special improvement that can only be built by the Builders of a single civilization. "UI" always refers to unique improvements in my guides and not to "user interface" or "unique infrastructure".

UU (Unique Unit) - A special unit that may only be trained by a single civilization, and in some cases only when that civilization is led by a specific leader.

Wide empires - Empires that emphasise expansion over city development, usually resulting in more, but smaller, cities.

Outline (Part 1/2)

Start Bias

India has no start bias.

Civilization Ability: Dharma

• May use the follower beliefs of all religions present in a city, regardless of the religion's founder.
  
• Cities gain +1 amenity for each different religion present within them.
  
• All Missionaries gain +2 spread-religion charges.
  
• Outgoing trade routes produce +100% religious pressure.
  
  • This affects both the city that sends the route, and the city that receives it.

Chandragupta Maurya's Leader Ability: Arthashastra

• The War of Territorial Expansion casus belli is available with the classical-era Military Training civic, instead of requiring the modern-era Mobilisation civic.
  
  • As always, you still need to either wait five turns after denouncing a civ, or be the target of a denouncement in order to use the casus belli.
• For the first 10 turns after declaring a War of Territorial Expansion, all units gain +2 movement, and all military and religious units gain +5 strength.

Gandhi's Leader Ability: Satyagraha

• Gain +5 faith for every civ that has been met, has founded a religion and is at peace.
  
  • This includes Gandhi's India itself, so having a religion and being at peace guarantees a +5 faith bonus.
• Civs fighting against Gandhi suffer double war weariness.

Outline (Part 2/2)

Unique Unit: Varu

A classical-era heavy cavalry unit which doesn't replace anything

Research	Obsoletion	Upgrades from	Upgrades to	Cost	Resource	Maintenance
Horseback Riding Technology Classical era	Ballistics ** Technology Industrial era	None	Cuirassier (430 20 )	120 or 480 or 240 *	None	2

*Purchasing units with faith requires the Grand Master's Chapel government building, which requires either the medieval-era Divine Right or renaissance-era Exploration civics.

**If you have insufficient iron, you may continue to train Varu even after researching Ballistics.

Strength	Ranged Strength	Moves	Range	Sight	Negative Attributes	Positive Attributes
40	N/A	2	N/A	3	Deals -85% damage to city walls and urban defences	Ignores Zone of Control -5 and -5 to adjacent enemy units

Notable features

Compared to Horsemen, Varu have the following negative differences:

• Costs 120 production/480 gold/240 faith, up from 80/320/160 (+50%)
  
• 2 movement points, down from 4.

The following neutral differences:

• Classed as heavy cavalry rather than light cavalry
  
• Upgrades to Cuirassiers rather than Coursers.

And the following positive differences:

• No strategic resource cost.
  
• 40 strength, up from 36
  
• Sight range of 3, up from 2.
  
• Reduces the strength of adjacent enemy units by 5
  
  • This does not stack if multiple Varu are adjacent to an enemy unit.
    
  • This does function on enemy adjacent naval units.
    
  • This does not function against cities and encampment districts.

Unique Improvement: Stepwell

Research	Terrain requirement	Constructed by	Pillage yield
Irrigation Technology Ancient era	Flat featureless land in your own territory and not adjacent to another Stepwell	Builder	Pillager heals 50 health

Defensive bonus	Direct yield	Adjacency yields	Miscellaneous bonus	Maximum possible yield
None	1 1	1 if adjacent to a farm 1 if adjacent to a Holy Site	This city's tiles will not lose food from droughts.	2 1 1 *

*Note that the housing yield does not require the improvement to be worked.

Enhancements

Research	Direct bonus	Adjacency bonus	Miscellaneous bonus	New maximum yield*
Feudalism Civic Medieval era	1	None	None	2 2 1 **
Sanitation Technology Industrial Era	1	None	None	2 2 2 **
Professional Sports Civic Atomic Era	1	None	None	3 2 2 **

*This assumes you already have the enhancements of earlier eras.

*Note that the housing yield does not require the improvement to be worked.

Victory Skew

In this section, the civ is subjectively graded based on how much it leans towards a specific victory type - not how powerful it is. Scores of 3 or more mean the civ has at least a minor advantage towards the victory route.

Leader	Culture	Diplomacy	Domination	Religion	Science
Chandragupta	5/10 (Decent)	3/10 (Acceptable)	9/10 (Ideal)	9/10 (Ideal)	4/10 (Acceptable)
Gandhi	5/10 (Decent)	4/10 (Acceptable)	6/10 (Decent)	10/10 (Ideal)	4/10 (Acceptable)

Culture is a fine backup victory route for India if religious victory doesn't work out. Faith can contribute to your cultural goals via National Parks and Rock Bands as well as relics via Martyr Apostles, or even cultural buildings from the Jesuit Education follower belief. Stepwells will provide plenty of housing to help your cities grow large early, which is great for building wonders. Gandhi generates more faith, but Chandragupta will be more effective at capturing wonders from other civs.

Diplomacy isn't an especially effective route. Growing large cities can keep your production high, making it easier to meet the requirements of city-state quests. Gandhi has a slight edge here as causing foes to suffer doubled war weariness makes him less likely to be the target of wars, making it easier to keep good relations with a range of civs.

Domination victory is ideal for Chandragupta, and even Gandhi can perform reasonably well at it. Varu are strong for their time, and Chandragupta's speed and strength bonuses can make them even better than Knights for a lower cost and a lesser technology requirement. Bonus amenities from religions present in your cities helps handle war weariness.

Religious victory is the strongest victory route for Gandhi, and Chandragupta is almost as strong at it. Gandhi's leader ability can create a good sum of faith early on, while Chandragupta can exploit his leader ability to make religious units briefly faster and stronger. You can declare war on one civ while sending religious units in another direction. Stepwells can provide additional faith as well, and faster religious spread from trade routes is fairly helpful. But what really gives India a huge advantage in the religious game is the bonus +2 spread-religion charges for Missionaries, making faith go a lot further than it does for other civs.

Scientific victories, like culture, can be used as a backup victory path, although a strong faith output doesn't help as much there as it does for cultural victories. Stepwells can help grow large cities to help with space project construction, and excess faith can be used in conjunction with the Jesuit Education belief to construct science buildings, but that's a relatively small advantage.

Civilization Ability: Dharma (Part 1/4)

No need to be the majority religion to use my belief!

Introduction

India gets a lot out of religion, regardless of whether or not you're aiming for a religious victory. If your religion is strong, you can spread it far and wide at an efficient faith cost. If your religion is weak, you can still gain some of the benefits. And either way, your people will have plenty of amenities to use how they wish.

There's plenty of mechanics involved in India's civ ability, so this section will be broken down into the following subsections:

• Starting Out - Suggested ways to start the game so you can make use of your civ ability as soon as possible.
  
• Multiple Religion Bonuses - Discusses both the ability to use multiple follower beliefs and the extra amenities from having multiple religions present.
  
• Extra Missionary Charges
  
• Trade Route Religious Spread
  
• Summary

Starting Out

India's civ ability is at its strongest if you can found a religion of your own - though this is complicated by the fact India comes with no bonuses to Great Prophet Points.

To secure a religion, you typically need a couple of Holy Sites with Shrines. In a tight race for Great Prophets (or if you have little production to spare), consider using the Divine Spark or Religious Settlements pantheons to speed up early development. They offer bonus Great Prophet Points and a bonus Settler respectively.

Balancing expansion, defence, general development and Holy Site construction can be a tricky task, but thankfully India has a couple of advantages that make this balance easier. The Stepwell unique improvement offers a strong housing yield as well as decent food, allowing it to cheaply substitute for building Granaries in your cities. The Varu unique unit will help keep your cities defended from threats and is relatively fast to research.

That being said, Chandragupta has to also consider culture accumulation and possibly building up a couple of Encampment districts if he is to make the most of his leader ability. As such if you intend to found your own religion you should either limit yourself to the bare minimum religious infrastructure required to found one, or take religious bonuses like Choral Music which offer extra culture. Gandhi lacks this problem.

Multiple Religion Bonuses

Two religions, two amenities!

With even the slightest religious presence, India will see an extra amenity in their cities - enough to handle two extra points of population - or in other words, match the housing provided by two Stepwells. With more than one religion present in India's cities, you can get a considerably better bonus - not only will you have a second amenity, but you'll be able to use the follower belief bonuses of both religions!

India's civ ability essentially lets you get bonus religious beliefs in your religion so long as you balance the number of followers right. The maximum potential you can gain out of this ability both in terms of this and the amenity boost increases on larger map sizes where more religions can be founded. The maximum number of religions for each map size is as follows:

• Duel: 2
  
• Tiny: 3
  
• Small: 4
  
• Standard: 5
  
• Large: 6
  
• Huge: 7

Theoretically, on a huge-size map, you could have a city with your pantheon, a founder belief, an enhancer belief, seven follower beliefs, a worship belief and a +7 amenity bonus! That city would have to be at least size 8 (and more likely a fair bit bigger to account for religious pressure pushing out smaller faiths), but thankfully, the Stepwell improvement along with the amenity boost can help your cities to grow bigger, sooner, so getting multiple religions present in a city won't be as hard as it is for many civs.

Civilization Ability: Dharma (Part 2/4)

There are nine different follower beliefs in the game. Here are all of them, in alphabetical order:

Belief Name	Effect	Notes
Choral Music	Shrines provide +2 culture and Temples provide +4 culture	Helpful for getting through civics, and can help speed up city tile acquisition as well as defend against cultural civs. For a religious game, this helps you get to Reformed Church (and therefore the Theocracy government) sooner. For a domination game, this should help you on your way to Nationalism and Mobilisation for forming corps and armies. For Chandragupta specifically, getting this bonus early could help you reach the Military Training civic faster for Wars of Territorial Expansion.
Divine Inspiration	All world wonders in this city provide +4 faith	A rather nice belief to pick up if you've been using your large, Stepwell-enhanced cities to throw together a few wonders, or have captured some in Varu wars.
Feed the World	Shrines and Temples each provide provide +3 food and +2 housing	This complements Stepwells nicely along with your bonus amenities to help grow larger cities.
Jesuit Education	May purchase Campus and Theatre Square district buildings with faith	The cost in faith is double that of the production cost, or half that of the gold cost. This isn't especially strong for a religious game as you generally need the faith for other things, but it can help you keep up to date with science and culture in a domination game.
Reliquaries	Relics have triple yields of faith and tourism	A fairly situational bonus. Unless you can obtain the Mont St. Michel wonder, sources of relics are pretty random. If you have the wonder, though, this belief is potentially stronger than Divine Inspiration with a tourism boost on top. Because it takes some time to get going, this is probably a belief you want to get from another civ's religion rather than your own.
Religious Community	International trade routes provide +1 gold for every Temple and Shrine in the origin city.	Rather handy if you intend to use international trade to support religious spread.
Warrior Monks	Cities with Temples may purchase the special Warrior Monk unit, which has 35 strength, 3 movement points and a set of special promotions including immense strength bonuses and bonuses to religious pressure. Furthermore, Holy Sites create culture bombs when complete.	An interesting belief to have, and can be rather effective in Chandragupta's hands. Warrior Monks have no weaknesses to specific unit types and with enough promotions can stay relevant for longer than Varu. With the Disciples promotion, you can use them to spread a religion by killing units - try placing Varu adjacent to the targets and finishing them off with the Warrior Monks. The culture bomb is mostly useful for saving money buying tiles.
Work Ethic	Holy Sites add production equal to their production bonus.	This bonus is potentially very strong - especially for Chandragupta, who can make good use of bonus production to raise an army faster.
Zen Meditation	+1 amenity in cities with at least two speciality districts	"Speciality districts" refers to any district that counts towards the district limit, plus Spaceports. Given the Indian civ ability can offer plenty of amenities, this extra boost is often a bit redundant. Chandragupta may still appreciate some relief to war weariness.

Civilization Ability: Dharma (Part 3/4)

The impact of India's civ ability varies depending on how strong your religion is. For that reason, I've divided the rest of this subsection into "when your religion is strong", "when your religion is weak" and "when you don't have a religion".

When your religion is strong

If you've spread your religion effectively, it's possible for your religion to be too strong in your own lands. If your religion is strong enough at home to crowd out followers of all other faiths, your civ ability will be useless. The best outcome is for your faith to be consistently in the majority in your cities, while as many other faiths as possible have at least some presence.

There's a few ways you can achieve this:

• Send trade routes from a city of a rival religion to the target city, or vice versa. Both cities will gain pressure from each other's majority religion.
  
• Let units of your own religion die in theological combat while near your cities. Consider carefully if the cost is worth it - you may want to use that faith for other purposes.
  
• Buy religious units in a city not following your religion, and use them to spread a little pressure to your other cities.
  
• Try avoiding placing Apostles or Inquisitors in your own lands to incentivise other civs to spread their religion.

When your religion is weak

If, despite your uniques, your religion is struggling to get off the ground even in your home lands, all is not lost.

Gandhi's passive faith generation means you should still be able to afford some religious units even when your religion is weak. Inquisitors may be necessary as an extreme measure (the passive spread of the strong rival religion should mean it can still re-establish in your cities). You can also set up a colony city far away from your own or other civs' existing cities, send a Missionary over, convert it, build a Holy Site and use it as a secure base for launching future religious units from.

Your own faith's follower beliefs will still be in effect in your own cities so long as your religion has at least one follower in them, but a dominant rival religion will lock you out of founder and worship beliefs. If you can't convert all your cities back to the one true faith, it might be worth targeting just your most important cities.

If you can access the Warrior Monks belief, even if your religion isn't a majority anywhere you can still purchase the units and use the Disciples promotion to add religious pressure for every kill they make. It's true that it means delaying the powerful Exploding Palms promotion, but you can use the ability of Varu to weaken adjacent units to make up the difference.

When you don't have a religion

Not having a religion doesn't mean your game is ruined - faith can still be useful towards cultural victory via Naturalists and the National Parks they create, science via the Jesuit Education follower belief and domination via the Grand Master's Chapel building. It's true that it's quite a setback for Gandhi's India, but thankfully you're not hit as hard as many religion-focused civs are if they lack a faith of their own.

In fact, if you lack a religion, your civ is likely to become a battleground for other civs' religious efforts - which is perfect for this civ ability. You can buy Missionaries in parts of your empire where one religion dominates, and send it somewhere else where it doesn't, ensuring that you can get as many follower beliefs in as many cities as possible. Alternatively, just send a bunch of trade routes to cities of various faiths to help boost your religious diversity.

If you're in a domination game, you can still use this ability as an easy source of amenities as you conquer, covering war weariness.

Extra Missionary Charges

With a little help from the Exodus of the Evangelists Golden Age dedication, I can consistently get Missionaries with 7 religious charges even early in the game!

In the religious game, India might not be able to compete with the sheer faith output of civs like Russia, but instead makes up for it by allowing you to use your faith more efficiently.

The catch is that the Missionary charge bonus only applies to Missionaries, which are vulnerable to attack from rival Inquisitors and Apostles. Even if Missionaries don't die in theological combat, their spread-religion functionality becomes weaker if they are at all injured. As such, you'll want to try and avoid theological combat where possible, use bonuses to theological combat (such as the Theocracy government), or bring along some Apostles to help protect your Missionaries.

The best way of avoiding theological combat is by striking early, before other civs can afford (or have the ability to purchase) Apostles. Gandhi is most effective at this due to his extra early faith bonus compared to Chandragupta. If you can get enough era score in the ancient game era to secure a classical-era Golden Age (building your first Stepwell, training your first Varu unit and destroying Barbarian Encampments near you are good ways) then you can pick up the Exodus of the Evangelists dedication bonus in the classical game era, granting you an enormous advantage both in the quality and quantity of your religious units. If you miss out on it in the classical game era, you can also pick it up in the medieval and renaissance game eras.

Aside from India's civ ability and the Exodus of the Evangelists Golden Age dedication, other boosts to Missionary spread-religion charges include the Mosque worship building and the Hagia Sophia wonder. The Holy Order enhancer belief makes Missionaries (and Apostles) 30% cheaper, allowing you to make your religion-spreading efforts even more efficient.

Getting extra spread-religion charges for Missionaries is also useful if you're trying to spread rival religions in your lands. You can purchase a Missionary in a city following a rival religion, and use one charge each in various cities following your religion, granting you bonus amenities and use of more follower beliefs.

Civilization Ability: Dharma (Part 4/4)

Trade Route Religious Spread

If a city has a majority religion, it will exert a little pressure for that religion via any trade route from or to it. Any trade route India sends out will see this effect doubled both in terms of the pressure applied to the city sending out the route, and the city receiving it.

This bonus is particularly useful when trying to get a diverse range of religions within your own lands. By sending some trade routes to cities of a different majority religion, you can maximise the amount of amenities and follower beliefs you can use.

Alternatively, you can send trade routes from multiple cities following your majority religion to the same city following a rival religion to convert it without the need to spend any faith.

That's the basics covered, but to really understand the difference (or lack thereof) this ability makes, let's look into how religious pressure works.

Cities accumulate religious pressure throughout the game:

• If a city has a majority religion, every time it gains a population point that religion receives +50 pressure. If there is no majority religion, then the pressure is instead added to "no religion" (or pantheon followers if you have founded one).
  
• Cities with a majority religion exert +1 religious pressure per turn of that religion to all other cities within 10 tiles.
  
  • If the city has a Holy Site, it exerts +2 pressure per turn instead of +1.
    
  • If the city is where the religion was founded, it exerts +4 pressure per turn instead of +1.
• Cities with a majority religion exert +0.5 religious pressure per turn to any city that's sending a trade route to it, and +1 religious pressure per turn to any city it's sending a trade route to.
  
  • This is doubled for India to +1 and +2 respectively.
• Using the "Spread Religion" function of Missionaries adds religious pressure equal to double the unit's HP (200 at full health), and reduces the pressure of rival religions (except no religion/pantheon) by 10%.
  
• Using the "Spread Religion" function of Apostles adds religious pressure equal to 2.2 times the unit's HP (220 at full health), and reduces the pressure of rival religions (except no religion/pantheon) by 25%, or 75% with the Proselytizer promotion.
  
• Using the "Remove Heresy" function of Inquisitors removes 75% of the pressure of rival religions (except no religion/pantheon).
  
• If an Apostle or Inquisitor kills another religious unit, all cities within 10 tiles will receive 250 pressure for their religion.
  
• If a religious unit is killed or condemned, all cities within 10 tiles will lose 250 pressure for their religion, unless the religion has the Monastic Isolation enhancer belief.
  
• If you have the Pilgrimage founder belief in your religion, sending envoys to city-states will add 200 pressure for your religion there.

The proportion of citizens that follow each religion (or no religion/pantheon) is equal to the proportion of their total accumulated religious pressure. In other words, if a size 10 city had 100 pressure for no religion, 250 pressure for Hinduism and 150 pressure for Buddhism, it'd have 2 citizens of no religion, 5 following Hinduism and 3 following Buddhism.

In practice, the amount of pressure needed for a citizen to be following a religion can be considerably more than 50. This means that a single trade route without other sources of pressure will typically be insufficient to gain religious followers in a city - even for India. As such, you should ultimately consider this bonus a complement to other sources of spread, and not a key method in its own right.

Summary

• Try to find a balance where your religion is a majority in most of your cities, but rival religions are still present.
  
• International trade routes provide a good way of adding a few followers of rival religions in your own cities - though be sure to stack them to ensure more than a marginal amount of pressure.
  
• Regardless of whether you have a religion or not, build plenty of Holy Sites as many founder beliefs interact with them.
  
• Extra amenities from present religions means India can mostly neglect Entertainment Complexes and amenity bonuses from religious beliefs.
  
• Extra spread-religion charges for Missionaries is most effective early in the game before rivals have Apostles and Inquisitors to counter them.

Chandragupta's Leader Ability: Arthashastra

With the right motivation, elephants can be as fast as horses!

Gandhi seeks a peaceful playstyle, but Chandragupta pushes India on the warpath. Varu combined with Chandragupta's leader ability are as fast as Knights and do even more damage against units. The problem is speed - you need to be able to unlock technologies and civics quickly and get an army trained fast if you want to have the biggest impact you can get.

Initial Growth

In order to use the War of Territorial Expansion casus belli, you need at least two cities within ten tiles of at least two cities of the other civ. This isn't an exceptionally hard requirement, as you should have time to train a couple of Settlers early on that you can position reasonably close to another civ's cities. Avoid settling so close that you'll suffer loyalty penalties, as it's hard to circumvent that early in the game.

You'll also want Monuments built to help bump up your culture output. Military Training (needed for the boosted casus belli) takes longer to get to than Horseback Riding (needed for Varu), so you'll want lots of early culture so you can use it sooner.

Choose your governors carefully - Pingala (the Educator) can offer a welcome boost to culture and science, while Magnus (the Steward) can help you rush the production of Varu by boosting the production you get from cutting down foliage.

Getting to Military Training

There's two ways of getting to the Military Training civic: the fast way, where you beeline it, or the slow way, where you work towards it while also going for Political Philosophy. Launching an attack sooner has a bigger impact, so here's what you need for the faster approach:

• Code of Laws
  
• Craftsmanship (Boost: Improve three tiles. Tricky to get in time as it means training a Builder very early on. You may be better off just hard-researching this civic without the boost.)
  
• Military Tradition (Boost: Destroy a Barbarian Encampment. Not hard - you can use a Slinger or your starting Warrior to do this.)
  
• State Workforce (Boost: Construct any speciality district. An early Encampment can help you generate Great General Points, and a classical-era Great General will make your Varu even better. Still, that's tricky to achieve in time.)
  
• Games and Recreation (Boost: Complete the Construction technology. You're unlikely to get that in time. Just research this without the boost.)
  
• Military Training (Boost: Construct an Encampment. You should try and get the boost - Bronze Working isn't a huge technological detour and you'll want to start generating Great General Points anyway).

While you're doing this, you'll want to pick up the Bronze Working and Horseback Riding technologies. Irrigation (for Stepwells) can wait for now.

Launching the first attack

The War of Territorial Expansion requires you to denounce a civ and wait five turns (or be the target of a denouncement) before you can use it. That can be quite a pain as the other civ can end up turning that around and declaring a formal war on you instead. As such, after you've sent your denouncement, try to keep your Varu close together and close to your opponent. That way, if they try pre-emptively striking, you'll still be in a good position to attack.

With your casus belli used, all your units gain signficantly better mobility and strength for ten turns, starting immediately. This makes Varu fight at essentially 50 strength when attacking units - enough to kill Warriors and Archers in a single hit. The boost to mobility is particularly useful for Varu as they ignore zone of control, letting them easily slip around units, surround them, add flanking bonuses against on the enemy units and kill them.

If you're up against city walls, Catapults will generally be your best bet. Extra movement allows them to move from a safe location and fire in the same turn, which usually isn't possible.

Finishing up wars quickly is important. Take any original capitals, cities necessary for them to maintain loyalty and any cities necessary to get another civ in range of the War of Territorial Expansion casus belli. You don't need to eliminate the civ, and you shouldn't; keeping them alive means you can activate the War of Territorial Expansion on demand at a later date when in the middle of fighting a different foe.

Beyond the first fight

When you're done with a war, denounce your next target immediately and set your units to heal up. You're quite likely to face counter-attacks once people get wary of your warmongering, so you need to be able to act fast and keep going.

Back at your home cities, you'll want to build up an infrastructure to support your conquests. You'll need enough gold to cover maintenance expenses, and plenty of culture and science to be able to still be competitive in war once Varu obsolete. Neatly, the speed bonus from Wars of Territorial Expansion apply on civilian units, so you can save a bit of time developing your cities with Builders.

If you're the target of a war (or worse, an emergency), don't worry. Any civ you kept alive earlier can be targeted by a War of Territorial Expansion. They won't be strong enough to be a threat (unless they have a lot of allies), while your whole military will be able to exploit the speed and strength bonuses. This is also useful when you want to expand into new landmasses.

Where does religion fit in?

It's possible to play Chandragupta via a religious angle, but it means weakening the potential of initial Varu wars. It's tricky to both develop Holy Sites and prepare for early warfare, so it can be better to forgo developing your religion to instead use Stepwell faith to purchase units (with the Grand Master's Chapel).

If you launch an attack early enough, you may be able to capture some Holy Sites and gain enough Great Prophet Points to found a religion from them, without needing to build your own. Era score from training a Varu and constructing a Stepwell can also make it reasonably easy to get a classical-era Golden Age and potentially the Exodus of the Evangelists dedication for an extra four Great Prophet Points per turn.

If you can found a religion, consider taking the Warrior Monks belief. Warrior Monks have a window of usage as broad (if not broader than) Varu, and can spread your religion via combat. Warrior Monks lack a weakness to anti-cavalry units helping them complement Varu reasonably effectively.

If you want a religious victory, invade a civ early on as normal and take most of their cities, so they're too weak to pose a threat. Use your faith to purchase Missionaries, and Apostles to defend them from rival Apostles and Inquisitors if necessary. Declare war on the weak civ using the casus belli, and then you can exploit the religious unit strength and speed for ten turns.

Summary

• Expand to at least three cities and build Monuments so you can prepare for the War of Territorial Expansion casus belli.
  
• Remember after denouncing a civ there's a 5-turn gap before you can use the casus belli.
  
• Don't eliminate civs; it lets you use the casus belli on them later while fighting someone else.

Gandhi's Leader Ability: Satyagraha

While Chandragupta brings India to war, Gandhi pushes for a more peaceful religious playstyle. His leader ability comes in two parts - one us more useful in peace-time, and the other helps deter other civs from invading.

Faith bonus

For every civ you have met that has founded a religion and is not at war with anyone (including yourself), you gain +5 faith. Because you need to meet the civs in the first place, be sure not to neglect exploration; get Cartography reasonably early to let you cross oceans and find new continents.

Like India's civ ability, this bonus becomes more effective on larger map sizes. Here's the maximum faith per turn you can obtain from this ability:

• Duel: 10
  
• Tiny: 15
  
• Small: 20
  
• Standard: 25
  
• Large: 30
  
• Huge: 35

Early on in the game, this is likely to form a substantial portion of your faith output. In conjunction with India's +2 religious-spread charges for Missionaries, you can end up getting a massive head start to your religious game relative to most other religious civs. However, once warmongering civs start conquering, you can lose out considerably. Alternative sources of faith will also begin to be more and more significant.

Wars between civs without religions needn't concern you, but any that involve at least one civ with a religion will directly hurt your faith output. It's especially bad if you have a civ that is strong at both war and religion (Poland and Spain being good examples). Still, it's worth considering that a civ at war will often struggle to do both that and play the religious game - their religious units can be pillaged by the military units of their opponents. A battlefield can make a nice opportunity for a neutral third party to slip in and convert both sides!

If you're at war, you'll lose the +5 faith bonus your own religion is contributing, but Gandhi's other bonus will take effect...

Extra war weariness for enemies

War weariness isn't a whole lot of fun to be up against. Losing amenities means losing bonuses (or gaining penalties) to all sorts of yields as well as loyalty.

• A city with a deficit of 7 or more amenities is in revolt. It stops growing, has a -40% penalty to all non-food yields, has -6 loyalty per turn and will cause Barbarians to spawn based on the civ's current military technology every few turns.
  
• A city with a deficit of 5 or 6 amenities is in unrest. It stops growing, has a -30% penalty to all non-food yields, has -6 loyalty per turn and will cause Barbarians to spawn based on the civ's current military technology every few turns, albeit in smaller numbers than if it's in revolt.
  
• A city with a deficit of 3 or 4 amenities is unhappy. It has a -30% growth rate, a -20% penalty to all non-food yields. and -6 loyalty per turn.
  
• A city with a deficit of 1 or 2 amenities is displeased. It has a -15% growth rate, a -10% penalty to all non-food yields and -3 loyalty per turn.
  
• A city with between 0 and +2 amenities is content has no yield bonuses or penalties.
  
• A city with a surplus of 3 or 4 amenities is happy. It has a 10% bonus to growth, a 10% bonus to all non-food yields and +3 loyalty per turn.
  
• A city with a surplus of 5 amenities or more is ecstatic. It has a 20% bonus to growth, a 20% bonus to all non-food yields and +6 loyalty per turn.

Any civ up against Gandhi's India will have to deal with double the war weariness, but what does that all mean? Here's some details about how war weariness works This CivFanatics thread[forums.civfanatics.com] was the original source of this information.

First of all, war weariness is measured in points, although this isn't shown in-game. Every 400 points of war weariness costs you an amenity. Amenity loss skews towards larger cities near the battle, before spreading out to smaller cities near the battles and your cities in general.

You gain war weariness through combat. The base value scales through the eras (based on your highest technology/civic, not the game era), in line with rising base warmonger penalties.

• Ancient era: 16
  
• Classical era: 25
  
• Medieval era: 34
  
• Renaissance era: 43
  
• Rest of game: 52

This is modified by use of casus belli (so for example, formal wars reduce this by 25%).

Next, the war weariness is affected by the location of combat and whether or not your unit was killed.

• 1x if in owned territory (or 4x if the unit dies)
  
• 2x if outside owned territory (or 5x if the unit dies)
  
• 2x if it's one of your cities attacking or being attacked.
  
• 12x when you're launching a nuke (regardless of how many units are hit in the process)

With that initial score, additional modifiers can be considered:

• A civ at war with Gandhi will have the war weariness doubled
  
• Retiring the Great Admiral Joaquim Marques Lisboa reduces your future war weariness accumulation by 25%.
  
• The Propaganda military policy card (modern era, requires Mass Media) and the Martial Law wildcard (modern era, requires Totalitarianism and the Fascism government) reduces your war weariness accumulation by 25% each. They stack to provide a 50% reduction.
  
• The Defence of the Motherland wildcard (modern era, requires Class Struggle and the Communism government) prevents war weariness from combat in your own territory.

War weariness decays by 50 points per turn at war, and 200 points per turn at peace. Declaring peace lowers war weariness by 2000 points, and this stacks if you make peace with multiple civs (including city-states) at once.

So, the key point out of all this is if you want to maximise the impact of war weariness on your enemies, kill your enemy's units while they're in your lands. Thankfully, the Varu UU is an effective unit-killer for quite some time. When your enemy's amenity loss gets severe enough, their cities will struggle to grow and their yields will suffer. This includes things like faith, so if a religious civ declares war on you, the faith loss they'll receive from war weariness helps to counterbalance the loss you've suffered from the fact religious civs are at war.

More importantly, the opposing civ will suffer from loyalty penalties making it hard for them to hold onto anything they capture. Eventually, after enough dead units, amenity penalties and flipping cities, the other side will be strongly encouraged to make peace. Or be overrun by Barbarian rebels. Either way is fine.

Alternatively, you can turn a defensive war into a great opportunity. Doubled war weariness for your opponents means when you're fighting in their lands, they'll be hit by it as much as you - not bad for wars of attrition. And yes, you can consider the use of nuclear weapons to create massive amounts of war weariness for your foes (although remember that it produces war weariness for yourself as well).

Conclusion

Gandhi's two bonuses aren't the easiest to control, but provide you with an incentive to explore fairly early for a decent faith bonus and provides other civs with a deterrent from declaring war on you. Fewer wars means you can spread your religion safely, so both bonuses can help out with religious victory.

Unique Unit: Varu

They're slow, and they're expensive, but Varu are the strongest unit prior to the medieval era. Rome's Legions are equivalent in raw strength, but the ability of Varu to make adjacent units weaker essentially makes them even stronger.

Unlocking Varu

To get to Varu, all you need is the Animal Husbandry, Archery and Horseback Riding technologies - though if you want a religion of your own, it might be a good idea to take a detour for Astrology so you can build Holy Sites.

Varu are expensive for their time at 120 production, but they notably lack a resource requirement unlike the other strongest units of its era. That makes them much less dependent on your starting location than many other classical-era unique units.

In Combat

When Varu are adjacent to enemy units, the latter loses 5 strength. Essentially, you can think of Varu as attacking at 45 strength - enough to reliably kill enemy Swordsmen in three hits, and will typically kill an enemy Archer in one hit.


The strength penalties Varu offer doesn't just help themselves; it's great for ranged attacks as well. Even city ranged attacks gain from this! Whether on the defensive or the offensive, training some ranged units can be a good idea as they're cheaper to train and maintain than Varu and can provide some extra damage.

There's a catch to all this strength, however - Varu only provide strength penalties to adjacent units, so enemy ranged units two tiles away won't be affected. Furthermore, the penalty doesn't affect cities and Encampment districts. On top of all this, Varu are pretty expensive both to train and maintain, so you'll probably want to use Manoeuvre policy card to train them faster, and Conscription later on so you can afford them all.

Another distinct bonus of Varu is their high amount of sight. Though not very useful for exploration considering their slow speed (and Chandragupta won't want to waste his speed bonus on revealing a few extra tiles), this still has a number of helpful applications. Having tiles within your line of sight prevents Barbarian Encampments spawning there. More sight lets you see when enemy units are coming sooner. Finally, in peace-time, placing a Varu unit on a hill adjacent to rival lands allows you to know what they're up to without needing open borders.

Chandragupta

Chandragupta relies on Varu as the driving force behind his early conquests. One of the biggest disadvantages of Varu - their slow speed - is eliminated for the first ten turns after declaring a War of Territorial Expansion, while their greatest advantage - their high strength - is made even bigger. Chandragupta's Varu have essentially 50 strength when attacking a unit. Be sure to build some Encampments and Stables so you can secure yourself a Great General for even more strength and mobility.

Varu can handle cities without walls easily enough, but if walls are in the way, build Catapults to support them. Try to put cities under siege by surrounding them before you attack - not only will it prevent the city healing, but any units trained in the besieged city will be weak.

Varu remain useful even into the early industrial era as a supportive unit if you can form them into corps and armies and keep a classical era Great General with them. Remember to form corps and armies by combining a new unit with a promoted one (rather than combining two promoted units together) - that way, you can keep them all strong. An easy way to get new Varu is to have the Grand Master's Chapel building so you can purchase them with faith.

Nonetheless, if you start facing Pike and Shot corps, modern era units or significant quantities of Cavalry or Cuirassiers, it's probably a good idea to hold off on making conquests for a while until you can upgrade most of your Varu to Cuirassiers. You can still keep some Varu around to weaken enemy units, but avoid keeping them in harm's way. Try moving them in, attacking with a more advanced unit, and moving the Varu out again.

Gandhi

Gandhi's India should mainly use Varu defensively. Units in enemy territory gain double the war weariness they would in their own land, and units that are killed lose it even faster. With a few Varu and ranged units, you can slaughter would-be invaders causing their amenities to plummet. Low amenities means low loyalty in cities they may capture, meaning they'll struggle to get much out of a prolonged war.

Summary

• Varu are effective unit-killers offensively and defensively
  
• Varu are key to Chandragupta's early warmongering strategies but less important for Gandhi.
  
• Consider using policy cards and Builders to chop foliage down to handle their high cost
  
• Later in the game, move a Varu in to weaken enemy units, attack those units with your own contemporary units, then move the Varu out to prevent it being killed.

Unique Improvement: Stepwell

Some unique improvements come with very specific placement requirements, or yields which may be of niche usage, but Stepwells are worth building near every city.

Yields

Stepwells are most effective adjacent to both a farm and a Holy Site; +2 food, +1 faith and +1 housing is a strong yield in the ancient era. Even with just farm adjacency, +2 food and +1 housing is exactly twice as good a bonus as offered by a farm (until Feudalism, at least).

The housing yield is particularly notable - farms, camps, plantations and fishing boats only offer 0.5 housing compared to 1 for Stepwells. Once you have Sanitation in the industral era, they'll offer 2 points of housing - as much as a Sewer - reducing your need for Neighbourhoods. Builders are significantly cheaper to train than most sources of housing are to build, and have more ways of being obtained (direct training with production, purchasing with gold, purchasing with faith via the Monumentality Golden Age dedication or even capturing off another civ). Don't worry about amenities - India's civ ability has that covered.

Faith is still useful, especially when it's on a tile you'll want to work anyway. With Feudalism and an adjacent Holy Site, you're getting +2 faith - as good as a Shrine. You can potentially get up to three Stepwells adjacent to a Holy Site per city, but 1-2 is a more reasonable number most of the time. Generally, you should build Holy Sites with its adjacency bonuses in mind rather than those of Stepwells as the bonus to faith will usually turn out better. Getting a +2 faith bonus from a Holy Site instead of +1 at the cost of two potential Stepwell spots sounds bad on paper, but when you consider the Scripture economic policy card (classical era, requires Theology) doubles Holy Site adjacency bonuses, there's no problem.

With the modern-era Replaceable Parts technology, farms gain food based on farm adjacency, meaning they can completely eclipse the food output of Stepwells (even taking into account the extra food from the atomic-era Professional Sports civic). Optimal placement of improvements can prove difficult - you'll want housing to increase your city's population cap, but you'll also want food to reach it faster. If you need more of the latter, don't be afraid to dismantle a few Stepwells to allow for more farms.

Drought Resistance

Note that Stepwells won't stop farms, pastures, plantations and camps being pillaged by droughts, nor will it allow you to fix them until the drought is over.

If there's a large expanse of flat land without features like marsh, woods or rainforest, there's a chance of a drought occuring in the area. Droughts last 10 turns, pillage all farms, pastures, plantations and camps in their area, prevent them being built or repaired in the area for that time, and cause all affected tiles to lose 1 food for the duration.

The food loss within a city's limit can be prevented normally with an Aqueduct or Dam, but India can get the job done with just a Stepwell. While not a huge advantage, it might save a bit of food early in the game, and helps mitigate one of the disadvantages of chopping down foliage to rush Varu units.

Golden Age

A consequence of the timing of Stepwells and Varu is that India will get a lot of era score at once. You can choose to build them in the ancient era and go for a classical-era Golden Age, or hold off a little until the classical game era starts to boost your chances at a medieval-era one (or even a heroic age if you end up with a classical-era dark age).

Gandhi benefits significantly from a classical era Golden Age. The Exodus of the Evangelists dedication gives religious units (except Gurus) +2 charges when trained in the era as well as +2 movement, which really helps you make use of his relatively high early faith output and India's civ ability bonus. If you haven't quite got a religion yet, you'll get +4 Great Prophet Points - probably not enough to secure you a religion on your own, but in conjunction with some early Holy Sites you should be fine.

Chandragupta can get a similar advantage, but it might be tempting to hold off building the first Stepwell so you have a better shot at securing a classical-era Dark Age. That way, you can make use of the Twilight Valour Dark Age wildcard to make Varu units even stronger when attacking.

Summary

• For the first two eras, Stepwells are super-effective farms helping your cities to grow tall and strong.
  
• After the modern-era Replaceable Parts technology, Stepwells are primarily useful for the housing output as farms will eclipse their food yield.
  
• The faith yield is a nice bonus that helps with religious victory, but don't go overboard trying to maximise it at the expense of Holy Site adjacency.

Administration - Government and Policy Cards

Note that the Administration sections strictly cover the options that have particularly good synergy with the civ's uniques. These are not necessarily the best choices, but rather options you should consider more than usual if playing this civ relative to others.

Government

Tier One

Chandragupta can use Autocracy or Oligarchy effectively. Autocracy has reasonable bonuses for development at home, and a reasonable array of policy cards. Oligarchy adds an experience bonus, but the +4 strength bonus doesn't work on Varu. Having two military policy cards is fine considering you'll probably want to take both Manoeuvre and Conscription.

Chandragupta's favoured government building is the Warlord's Throne, which can provide a significant boost to empire-wide production as you take cities.

Gandhi should go with Classical Republic as a government. If you don't have a religion yet, the bonus to Great Person Points will help with that, and the higher number of economic policy cards is great for early religious development. Autocracy is a fair alternative for a strong capital which can later support a wide array of religions.

Gandhi's best government building is either the Audience Chamber or Ancestral Hall depending on how you want to expand. Faith is largely generated on a per-city basis, making the Ancestral Hall a good choice, but the Audience Chamber complements Stepwells nicely if you want powerful cities early - particularly handy if you intend to construct a lot of faith wonders.

Tier Two

Theocracy is great for both leaders, helping your faith output to go further.

For Chandragupta, Theocracy pairs nicely with the Grand Master's Chapel to provide a great use for excess Stepwell faith.

For Gandhi, the Intelligence Agency may be helpful as a means to weaken other civs and strengthen yourself without going to war. The other buildings may be helpful if you find yourself on the receiving end of a lot of wars, however.

Tier Three

Chandragupta should go with Fascism to build on his militaristic advantages.

Chandragupta benefits from the War Department more than many other warmongers, never mind more so than Gandhi. The speed and strength bonuses from declaring a War of Territorial Expansion don't last long, and the need to leave units to heal can really dent his plans. Healing up on kills stops that being so much of a problem.

For Gandhi, Democracy works well as a government due to its good set of policy card slots and bonus food from trading with allies, which neatly complements Stepwell housing and amenities from the civ ability.

The Royal Society is Gandhi's preferred government building, as Builders can be spent to rush Holy Site Prayers projects, hence letting you indirectly convert excess gold into additional faith.

Tier Four

Chandragupta should generally take Corporate Libertarianism as its production boost and higher number of military policy cards is useful in war-time.

Gandhi will prefer Synthetic Technocracy's higher number of economic policy cards (supporting the religious game) and the bonus to Holy Site Prayers (and other) projects.

Policy Cards

Ancient Era

Conscription (Military, requires State Workforce) - Varu cost a fair bit to maintain, so this policy card is pretty important even with a relatively small force.

Ilkum (Economic, requires Craftsmanship) - Getting strong Stepwells up and running can be expensive in terms of Builder charges due to the need to build both them and farms. Ilkum helps you train Builders faster, addressing that problem.

Manoeuvre (Military, requires Military Tradition) - Varu are expensive for their time, but with this policy card they become a little more affordable.

(Chandragupta) Strategos (Wildcard, requires Military Tradition) - Only classical-era Great Generals will make Varu stronger, so you'll want to get plenty of early Great General Points. This policy card will help with that.

Medieval Era

Professional Army (Military, requires Mercenaries) - You probably won't need to put this to substantial use until the modern era, but it'll be quite important at that point to cut down the immense cost of upgrading Varu to Cuirassiers.

Renaissance Era

Logistics (Military, requires Mercantilism) - Still using Varu to weaken enemies? This will allow them to not be quite so slow in your home territory, saving a little time while in defence or when launching a new attack. It's also really helpful for Chandragupta to enhance his leader ability's speed bonus further.

Triangular Trade (Economic, requires Mercantilism) - Trading to spread religious pressure? You can now get a little bit of faith on top.

Wisselbanken (Diplomatic, requires Diplomatic Service) - Made an ally? Want you to grow your cities to meet your Stepwell-enhanced housing? Use this policy card and trade with them.

Industrial Era

Force Modernisation (Military, requires Urbanisation) - The upgrade route from Varu to Cuirassier units is among the most expensive in the game, so halving that harsh gold cost is a good idea.

Modern Era

New Deal (Economic, Democracy only, requires Suffrage) - Who needs Neighbourhoods when you have Stepwells and New Deal? Well, probably you eventually, but for the time being it's quite a nice production-saving and space-saving bonus. You'll also get some amenities as well.

(Gandhi) Their Finest Hour (Wildcard, Democracy only, requires Suffrage) - Enemy units dying in your land suffer a lot of war weariness, and this wildcard will help you kill them.

Future Era

(Gandhi) Global Coalition (Wildcard, requires Smart Power Doctrine) - An enhanced version of Their Finest Hour.

(Chandragupta) Integrated Attack Logistics (Wildcard, requires Information Warfare) - Extra movement coupled with Chandragupta's ability makes for some very fast units. Giant Death Robots enhanced by Chandragupta's leader ability are particularly powerful.

Administration - Age Bonuses and World Congress

Age Bonuses

Only bonuses with notable synergy with the civ's uniques are covered here.

Exodus of the Evangelists (Golden Age, Classical to Renaissance eras) - India has no direct advantage to founding a religion. Thankfully, with both uniques offering era score available early, getting a classical-era Golden Age and therefore this dedication isn't too hard. You can't rely on its Great Prophet Points alone to get you a religion - you'll still need plenty of Holy Sites and Shrines - but you should be building those anyway for the faith. With a religion founded, your religious units (except for Gurus) will be faster and get more charges, letting you convert civs more effectively. Stacked with India's civ ability and Gandhi's leader ability, he can have an incredibly powerful early religious spread.

(Gandhi) Inquisition (Dark Age, Classical to Renaissance eras) - While the science penalty makes this impractical for Chandragupta, and Gandhi can usually get more out of Monasticism, there is a niche for this Dark Age policy card - protecting your Missionaries against theological combat from enemy Apostles.

(Gandhi) Monasticism (Dark Age, Classical to Medieval eras) - Gandhi's lack of direct advantages to Great Prophet generation means you may need to build a lot of Holy Sites early on. That means you may have to neglect other districts, like Campuses. Though you should aim for a classical-era Golden Age for the Exodus of the Evangelists dedication, this can be a good choice if you end up in a medieval-era Dark Age afterwards.

(Chandragupta) Twilight Valour (Dark Age, Classical to Renaissance eras) - Make Varu attack with even more strength.

Reform the Coinage (Dedication, Renaissance to Modern eras) - Forming trade routes for religious pressure spread? Enjoy an easy source of era score.

Reform the Coinage (Golden Age, Renaissance to Modern eras) - With trade routes immune to pillaging, you can safely trade to distant cities to place religious pressure on them.

World Congress

How you should vote in the World Congress will often be specific to your game - if you have a strong rival, for example, it might be better to vote to hurt them than to help yourself. Furthermore, there may be general bonuses to your chosen victory route or gameplay which are more relevant than ones that have stronger synergy with civ-specific bonuses. Otherwise, here's a list of key votes that have high relevance for this civ relative to other civs.

Military Advisory - Effect A (Units of the chosen land promotion class gain +5 strength) on heavy cavalry

Even after Varu are no longer effective in direct combat, their strength penalty to adjacent enemy units is still helpful. +5 strength helps them survive further into the game, allowing all unit classes to benefit from a strength bonus rather than just one.

(Gandhi) Migration Treaty - Effect A (+20% faster population growth but -5 loyalty per turn in this player's cities) on yourself

Fill up your cities' housing faster! The loyalty penalty is manageable thanks to all the amenities India's civ ability grants you.

Trade Policy - Effect A (Trade routes sent to the chosen player provide +4 gold to the sender. The chosen player receives +1 trade route capacity) on yourself or a target for conversion

With the effect on yourself, you get an extra trade route to help spread your religion. But on a target for conversion, it grants you an extra reward for taking the effort to spread your religion there via trade routes.

World Religion - Effect A (+10 strength for all religious units of this faith) on your own religion, or Effect B (All players may condemn units of the chosen religion, and doing so grants 25 diplomatic favor) on a religious rival which operates in land you have open borders to.

Effect A on your own religion helps keep your powerful Missionaries a bit more safe, while Effect B on a rival allows you to use military units to protect your Missionaries. The former is a more consistent advantage, but the latter is potentially more effective.

Administration - Pantheons, Religion and City-States

Pantheons

Divine Spark - India doesn't get bonuses to Great Prophet generation aside from the incentive to build Holy Sites early on, so this pantheon may be necessary, especially on fairly small map sizes where all the religions tend to be taken early.

Fertility Rites - You'll want to grow cities faster to reach the Stepwell-enhanced housing cap, and the bonus Builder also allows you to build even more Stepwells.

God of the Forge - Varu are costly, but this pantheon helps you produce them at a more reasonable rate, as well as any units you might want to support them with.

(Chandragupta) God of the Open Sky - The sooner you can get to Military Training, the sooner you can put Chandragupta's leader ability to work. As such, more culture is very helpful to have.

(Chandragupta) Goddess of Festivals - Extra culture helps you get to Military Training sooner.

(Chandragupta) God of Healing - The less time your units spend healing, the more you can make out of the War of Territorial Expansion casus belli before the strength and speed boost expires.

Goddess of the Hunt - If you start near plenty of camp resources, then this pantheon can be a great way to help grow your cities up to the housing cap.

River Goddess - Allows you to build on your early housing advantage with even more housing - just make sure you've got plenty of food!

Religious Beliefs

You can have one founder, one follower, one enhancer and one worship belief as part of your own religion. All follower beliefs are covered in the civ ability section, but ones that are particularly effective for India to found for themselves are covered here as well.

Cross-Cultural Dialogue (Founder) - India's good city growth makes this a great source of science.

Feed the World (Follower) - Helps you in getting enough food to meet the Stepwell-enhanced housing cap.

Gurdwara (Worship) - Mosques are generally the best choice if you're after a religious victory, but Gurdwaras aren't bad thanks to the food contribution they make, helping your cities to grow.

Holy Order (Enhancer) - An ideal choice of enhancer belief to complement India's better Missionaries, this is important for making your faith go further as you push towards a religious victory.

Missionary Zeal (Enhancer) - Helps your powerful Missionaries evade enemy Apostles and Inquisitors more effectively.

Mosque (Worship) - The ideal choice of worship building for India, as it builds on the civ ability's boost to Missionary charges.

(Gandhi) Pilgrimage (Founder) - Exploiting India's extra Missionary charges and Gandhi's decent early faith allows you to convert lots of cities early on. With this belief, you can extend that early advantage.

Religious Community (Follower) - If food is plentiful, this, combined with Stepwell housing, allows you to avoid other sources of housing (such as Aqueducts) for quite a long time.

Warrior Monks (Follower) - Need some space around your Holy Sites for Stepwells? This belief will give you all the tiles surrounding a Holy Site when you build one (unless the tile is more than three tiles away from the city centre, or has another civ's completed district, wonder or National Park present). The Warrior Monks themselves provide a use for your faith, can handle anti-cavalry units better than Varu and have a similarly decent window of usage, giving them niche usage under Chandragupta.

World Church (Founder) - India's good city growth makes this belief a good source of culture.

City-States

Chinguetti (Religious) - Gain faith from trading, based on your followers in the destination city. Rather useful if you're pressuring a rival city with your religion using trade routes.

(Gandhi) Fez (Scientific) - Becoming suzerain over Fez early can provide a powerful early boost to science output as you spread your religion.

Hunza (Trade) - Trading to distant cities to spread your religion? Enjoy more gold on top.

Mitla (Scientific) - A growth bonus will help you hit the housing cap sooner.

Mogadishu (Trade) - Trading across the seas to spread your religion? Being suzerain over Mogadishu makes those trade routes safe.

Nazca (Religious) - Stepwells can be placed on flat desert tiles, but won't have great yields. Add Nazca Lines in adjacent tiles, however, and the yields become very strong.

Samarkand (Trade) - Extra gold from international trade.

Singapore (Industrial) - Gain extra production from international trade, so you can do more than just spread your religion.

(Chandragupta) Valletta (Militaristic) - The ability to faith-purchase walls in freshly-captured cities means you don't have to waste time putting up a strong defence against counter-attacks, and can move on to the next target - letting you get more out of Chandragupta's leader ability.

Yerevan (Religious) - Being able to pick any promotion for Apostles lets you use Martyr every time. Why is that useful? Because you can use all but one charge overseas, return home and have the unit die in religious combat, giving you a relic while also giving a few followers of foreign religions in your home cities.

Administration - Wonders and Great People

Wonders

Great Bath (Ancient era, Pottery technology) - An extremely competitive wonder, but one that works brilliantly with Stepwells to create a huge early city. Together with a Stepwell, it also provides all the benefits a Dam does for its city two eras early!

Hanging Gardens (Ancient era, Irrigation technology) - Coming at the same technology as Stepwells, the Hanging Gardens will help you grow your cities to fit the increased housing limit they offer. Furthermore, the Hanging Gardens also offers housing itself, allowing you to make one city very strong early in the game.

(Gandhi) Stonehenge (Ancient era, Astrology technology) - It's a risky wonder to build considering how competitive it can be, so it's probably a good idea not to build it if you're in a high-difficulty singleplayer game. Otherwise, it's very powerful. Gandhi's leader ability gives you a strong early faith output which doesn't offer a lot until you found a religion; found a religion early and you can quickly unleash your faith on the world. Chandragupta should generally focus on working towards building a Varu-led military instead.

Temple of Artemis (Ancient era, Archery technology) - In conjunction with Stepwells, you can make a mighty early city.

Colossus (Classical era, Shipbuilding technology) - Extra trade route capacity means more potential religious pressure spread.

Jebel Barkal (Classical era, Iron Working technology) - A very strong source of faith which your Stepwell-enhanced cities should have a good shot of being able to build.

(Gandhi) Mahabodhi Temple (Classical era, Theology civic) - By this point in the game, Stepwells should give your main cities a slight size advantage over those of other civs. That's a great opportunity to pick up this wonder and enjoy two free Apostles. You can use them to enhance your religion, launch an inquisition (allowing you to purchase Inquisitors) or just spread your faith overseas.

Petra (Classical era, Mathematics technology) - Stepwells can be built on flat desert land, and hence can be enhanced considerably with the Petra wonder.

Angkor Wat (Medieval era, Medieval Faires civic) - Grow your cities even taller with +1 housing and +1 food in every city.

Hagia Sophia (Medieval era, Buttress technology) - Build on your advantage to Missionary spread-religion charges.

Meenakshi Temple (Medieval era, Civil Service civic) - Some well-positioned Gurus can make your powerful Missionaries more effective at dodging and mitigating attacks from enemy Apostles and Inquisitors, once you have this wonder.

Mont St. Michel (Medieval era, Divine Right civic) - Here's the plan: You purchase some Apostles, spread your faith around until they have one charge left, bring them home and let them die in theological combat. That allows you to gain some followers of a rival religion in your own cities, which goes nicely with India's civ ability. With this wonder, you'll also get a relic (and hence more faith and tourism) for your trouble.

University of Sankore (Medieval era, Education technology) - Encourage trading from all over the world to this city, ensuring a range of religions have some pressure here.

Great Zimbabwe (Renaissance era, Banking technology) - Spread your religion and get lots of money at the same time via this wonder and trade routes.

Torre de Belém (Renaissance era, Mercantilism civic) - Can function similarly to Great Zimbabwe as an extra source of international trade route gold.

Great People

Great Generals and Admirals are only mentioned if their retirement bonuses have specific synergy with the civ; not merely for providing a strength bonus to a unique unit.

Classical Era

Zhang Qian (Great Merchant) - Extra trade route capacity, helping you spread your religion more effectively.

Medieval Era

El Cid (Great General) - Forming an early Varu corps will give you a unit essentially as strong as a Musketman in the medieval era, and even better if you have one of the three classical-era Great Generals.

(Gandhi) Hildegard of Bingen (Great Scientist) - A good way to help catch up in science when you've been pushing for early Holy Sites.

Ibn Fadlan (Great Merchant) - An extra trade route, and get extra faith from trading with city-states.

Marco Polo (Great Merchant) - An extra trade route.

Zheng He (Great Admiral) - An extra trade route.

Renaissance Era

Ibn Khaldun (Great Scientist) - India's strong amenity output translates to great yields of all kinds with this Great Person's retirement bonus.

Atomic Era

Melitta Bentz (Great Merchant) - An extra trade route.

Counter-Strategies (Part 1/2)

India can play the religious game effectively even with a relatively low faith output, and have strong cities with good defence early in the game. Both Gandhi and Chandragupta play in very different ways, but both have a few glaring weaknesses that can be taken advantage of.

Civilization Ability: Dharma

Multiple religion bonuses

Sending trade routes to India can provide a moderate - but manageable - amount of pressure for the religion present in your own city. If you're not going for a religious victory, that could give India a considerably better advantage than what you're getting. That being said, it usually takes several trade routes for the pressure to be sufficient to start converting followers.

If you have a religion of your own, definitely send any Proselytiser Apostles to India. They'll eliminate most of the presence of religions other than your own, turning India's diverse set of bonuses into something much less effective.

For non-religious civs, remember that India's won't be able to use multiple follower beliefs as long as one religion dominates in their lands. It could be one of their rivals, but it could be their own as well. If you fight a religious rival to India, you can fight or pillage their religious units (lowering their religious pressure in nearby cities) thus lowering the religious diversity in nearby Indian cities. If you're fighting a rival to Gandhi, this is useful as it prevents you having to deal with Gandhi's war weariness, and also lowers their faith output in the meantime (as Gandhi's faith bonus relies on founders of religions being at peace).

Missionaries receive +2 charges

Indian Missionaries can spread their religion considerably more than Missionaries of other civs. By default, they receive 5 charges instead of 3, and potentially more if India can get Mosques, the Hagia Sophia wonder or the Exodus of the Evangelists Golden Age dedication.

If you have a religion of your own, be sure to have Apostles or Inquisitors ready to attack India's Missionaries. Even if you can't destroy them, the spread-religion function is less effective for injured Missionaries. Consider also taking the Hagia Sophia wonder, the Mosques worship belief and/or the Holy Order or Missionary Zeal Enhancer beliefs to deny them to India, ensuring their Missionaries can't become any stronger.

If you lack a religion of your own, you still have a couple of options. Building a Temple in a city that doesn't follow India's majority religion will allow you to purchase Apostles that can fight India's Missionaries. Alternatively, declaring war or passing the second option for the World Religion resolution in the World Congress will allow you to condemn India's many Missionaries to weaken their religious pressure.

Trade route religious pressure doubled

Because trade route religious pressure is a relatively minor thing, India's bonus here usually won't make a huge difference. It's at its most noticeable if India's sending a lot of trade routes to the same city you own - so be aware if you have something like the the University of Sankore wonder which incentivises other civs to send a lot of routes. Even then, some minor precautions are enough to stop the city flipping religion - keep a Missionary, Apostle or Inquisitor around to flip it back if need be, and that should be enough.

Chandragupta Maurya's Leader Ability: Arthashastra

Chandragupta's leader ability is horrifying to be at the receiving end of, but you're given a lot of prior warning.

First of all, if you start near him, keep an eye on his civics progress. He can't use his special casus belli until he's reached classical-era civics, giving you time to train some Archers or other defensive units.

Secondly, he has to denounce you and wait five turns before he can declare war with the casus belli. That allows you to counter with your own declaration of war, preventing him from using the speed and strength advantage.

If you can't stop Chandragupta from using his ability, try to stall him for as long as possible. Fast units can provide a reasonable distraction, and making use of hilly areas makes it harder for him to surround your units. Once 10 turns have passed, his ability will no longer function allowing you to fight on a more equal basis.

Chandragupta Agenda: Maurya Empire

Chandragupta seeks to expand his empire, and dislikes civs that have cities close to his own. He likes civs that keep their distance.

This agenda makes Chandragupta likely to attack civs that are near him, which can make it difficult to avoid being on the receiving end of a declaration of war. If you can't build up an adequate army to defend against Varu, you may want to favour expanding away from him rather than settling cities too close. That should push him into attacking someone else instead of you.

If instead you start far apart, Chandragupta is a decent candidate for a level 2 military alliance. That gives you shared visibility, which will uncover all the lands and seas he's aware of. That's quite useful for revealing more of the map.

Gandhi's Leader Ability: Satyagraha

As a warmongering civ, you can hurt Gandhi without even having anything to do with them - simply declare war on a religious civ and Gandhi will lose some faith generation. Completely eliminating a religious civ completely eliminates a +5 faith bonus for India as well.

On the other hand, warmongers have to deal with Gandhi's doubling of war weariness. In your own lands, Gandhi will suffer as much war weariness as you do, but in India, you'll suffer four times as much as them. And that's not even taking the casus belli into account! Be especially careful about losing units, as that'll triple your war weariness for that round of combat.

So, how should a warmonger deal with India? One option is to rush them early on before Varu can be trained. When warmonger penalties for declaring war is low, so are war weariness penalties. If that isn't possible, it may be a good idea to hold off until you can either amass Pikemen or Pike and Shot units to counter their Varu, or until you can make good use of casus belli to minimise warmonger and war weariness penalties.

For other civs, keep in mind that Gandhi's ability gives them a strong faith edge early on, but it drops off in effectiveness later in the game. Your main concern will be if Gandhi can found a religion before other civs can; in which case you should keep a close watch on where their Missionaries are going so you can react if a religious victory from India seems likely. Consider dedicating a cheap unit or two like Scouts for this purpose.

Counter-Strategies (Part 2/2)

Gandhi's Agenda: Peacekeeper

A computer-controlled Gandhi will never declare war if the act of declaration would cause him to generate grievances against another civ. He'll only declare war if it generates no grievances (such as being a member in an emergency) or he already has grievances with the targeted civ. This thankfully means you will rarely be on the receiving end of a Varu attack from him unless you started the war in the first place.

Furthermore, Gandhi likes peaceful civs and hates warmongers more than other leaders. For many cultural, diplomatic and scientific players, he can make a pretty reliable ally, but any civ that pushes towards even the slightest bit of combat may find it tough to befriend him.

Gandhi will never have the Darwinist hidden agenda as it clashes with his main agenda.

In addition to Gandhi's main agenda, Gandhi has a 70% chance of having the Nuke Happy hidden agenda, as the latest installment of a long-running in-joke in the Civilization series. Just think of Gandhi being replaced by his evil counterpart Ghandi once the atomic era starts. This agenda means while at war, India will not hesitate to use nuclear weapons despite the diplomatic consequences for them. Don't worry, however - Evil Ghandi still has the Peacekeeper agenda, so you'll pretty much only be attacked by India's nuclear weapons if you started the war in the first place. Nukes also arrive very late in the game, so if you're going for a domination victory, you can usually avoid the threat if you're careful not to leave eliminating India too late. If you have nukes of your own, know that Evil Ghandi also likes civs that project power with nuclear weapons.

Gandhi also has a 30% chance of having the Populous hidden agenda, which makes him aim to have as high a population as possible, like civs with a high population and dislike those with a low population. Generally, wonder-builders and civs with food or housing bonuses do the best here, while religious civs tend to have lower populations and hence may struggle here.

Further Reading: Why Does Gandhi Like Nuclear Weapons?

AI opponents in Civilization games have typically been coded with a set of biases on a scale of 0 to 10 to determine how they generally play (Civ 6 also has certain specific coded behaviours to allow them to use some of the more unusual unique abilities). In the very first Civilization game, Gandhi was coded with the lowest bias for aggressiveness of any leader, and was inclined towards Democracy government late in the game.

Problem is, any leader that adopted the Democracy government was coded to lose a couple of points to their aggressiveness bias. For Gandhi, this meant that his already-low aggressiveness bias fell below 0 and underflowed to 255/10. With this change happening around the time nuclear weapons became available, Gandhi's India became infamously associated with them.

Though originally a bug, this behaviour has homages in later Civ games. In Civ 5 for example, Gandhi has a bias to build and use nuclear weapons set at 12/10.

Varu

Though incredibly powerful against units for their time, Varu thankfully are costly to train as well as slow.

At first, go ahead and amass some Spearmen and Archers, and exploit terrain defensive bonuses. Spearmen with the Echelon promotion essentially have 40 strength against Varu and cost just over half as much to train (and half as much to maintain). With a front line of Spearmen, a second line of Archers can help pick off Varu without the risk of being attacked themselves. Archers also won't have their damage output weakened by the strength penalty Varu add while they're firing from two tiles away.

Away from cities, you should always try to target enemy Varu first both to set back India's production and to avoid the strength penalty.

When besieging cities, Varu won't do too much damage so long as you keep your fortifications strong and keep siege weapons at bay. A Spearman, Pikeman, Archer or Crossbowman stationed in a city can safely deal damage to besieging elephants, wearing them down and encouraging a retreat.

While Pikemen and Crossbowmen will perform well against Varu, once you can make use of Pike and Shot units, they shouldn't really be a problem any more.

Stepwell

India's Stepwells help them grow larger cities early in the game, and again in the industrial era when their housing bonus doubles. However, they rely on specific positioning to achieve their best potential. Stepwells need to be adjacent to farms, and preferably Holy Sites as well. The typical best locations for Holy Sites - next to mountains or woods - typically lacks flat land for adjacent Stepwells. As such, India will often have to sacrifice either faith or food to ensure Stepwells, farms and Holy Sites can be built in formation.

If you're fighting India, pay attention to where the Stepwells are. Unlike farms, which only provide up to 25 health when pillaged, Stepwells heal pillagers 50 HP. They should be fairly evenly distributed across India's lands, ensuring you're rarely far away from one.

Other Guides

If you like these guides and want to send a tip, you can click here![ko-fi.com]

Gathering Storm

Compilation Guides

• Civ summaries (Start here for an introduction for all civs)
  
• Civ-specific tricks, secrets and clarifications (Ideal for more experienced players)

Individual Civilization Guides

• America - no additional content* (Cultural/Diplomatic/Domination)
  
• America - all additional content* (Cultural/Diplomatic/Domination/Scientific)
  
• Arabia (Domination/Religious/Scientific)
  
• Australia (Domination/Scientific)
  
• Aztecs (Domination)
  
• Babylon (Cultural/Domination/Scientific)
  
• Brazil (Cultural/Domination/Religious/Scientific)
  
• Byzantium (Domination/Religious)
  
• Canada (Cultural/Diplomatic)
  
• China (Cultural/Domination/Scientific)
  
• Cree (Diplomatic)
  
• Egypt (Cultural/Diplomatic/Religious)
  
• England (Cultural/Domination/Scientific)
  
• Ethiopia (Cultural/Religious)
  
• France (Cultural/Domination)
  
• Gaul (Domination)
  
• Georgia (Diplomatic/Religious)
  
• Germany (Domination/Scientific)
  
• Gran Colombia (Domination)
  
• Greece (Cultural/Diplomatic/Domination)
  
• Hungary (Diplomatic/Domination)
  
• Inca (Religious/Scientific)
  
• India (Domination/Religious)
  
• Indonesia (Cultural/Domination/Religious/Scientific)
  
• Japan (All)
  
• Khmer (Cultural/Religious)
  
• Kongo (Cultural)
  
• Korea (Scientific)
  
• Macedon (Domination/Scientific)
  
• Mali (Diplomatic/Religious)
  
• Māori (Cultural/Religious)
  
• Mapuche (Cultural/Domination)
  
• Maya (Scientific)
  
• Mongolia (Domination)
  
• Netherlands (Scientific)
  
• Norway (Domination)
  
• Nubia (Domination)
  
• Ottomans (Domination)
  
• Persia (Cultural/Domination)
  
• Phoenicia (Domination)
  
• Poland (Cultural/Domination/Religious)
  
• Portugal (Diplomatic/Scientific)
  
• Rome (Domination)
  
• Russia (Cultural/Religious)
  
• Scotland (Scientific)
  
• Scythia (Domination/Religious)
  
• Spain (Domination/Religious/Scientific)
  
• Sumeria (Diplomatic/Domination/Scientific)
  
• Sweden (Cultural/Diplomatic)
  
• Vietnam (Cultural/Domination)
  
• Zulus (Domination)

*The Teddy Roosevelt Persona Pack splits Roosevelt's leader ability in two, meaning the game with it is substantially different from without - hence two different versions of the America guide. Lincoln was added later and is only covered in the latter guide.

Other civs with alternative leader personas are not split because the extra personas added in later content do not change the existing gameplay - as such the guides are perfectly usable by players without them.

Rise and Fall

These guides are for those with the Rise and Fall expansion, but not Gathering Storm. They are no longer updated and have not been kept up to date with patches released since Gathering Storm. To look at them, click here to open the Rise and Fall Civ Summaries guide. The "Other Guides" section of every Rise and Fall guide has links to every other Rise and Fall guide.

Vanilla

The Vanilla guides are for those without the Rise and Fall or Gathering Storm expansions. These guides are no longer updated and have not been kept up to date with patches released since Rise and Fall. To look at them, click here to open the Vanilla Civ Summaries guide. The "Other Guides" section of every Vanilla guide has links to every other Vanilla guide.

[Yensil]

I only just noticed this in my current game, but the wiki confirms: the Religious Community belief now provides gold in Gathering Storm, not housing. So it can still be useful but not as synergistic as before.

[Winston L. S. Churchill]

dude just get to info era and farm thermonukes then get bombers then just frickin nuke everyone

[Zigzagzigal]

Thanks; that should be fixed now.

[gressorialNanites]

Hey Zig! Great guide, as always, but I just wanted to mention, I think at least one mention of the Goddess of Festivals was meant to be Oral Tradition, right?

[Jac]

I'm glad to see that you're updating your guides, Zig.

[RS]

G a n d h i c a n p e r f o r m r e a s o n a b l y w e l l a t i t